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qqueenofhades · 4 years

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Do you think there will be another civil war in America? I’m afraid. Im trying to read about the first civil war to understand it more. What happened on both sides. What was the cost. What Americans can learn from then to help us now. But it’s so hard. There are so many screaming voices. Would love to know your thoughts as a historian and as an American.

Well, nonnie, I don’t know if this will be comforting to you or not, but in my view, the war has been going on for years -- decades, even -- and just because it doesn’t take the traditional form of two uniformed armies on a battlefield doesn’t mean that it’s any less a war, and any less deadly. Americans live in the most deeply and violently militarized of any supposedly first-world country on the entire planet, and the recent protests have, if nothing else, made the actors in our present civil war explicitly visible. On the one side, cops in military-grade hardware. On the other, largely unarmed protestors and civilians. This intersects with a toxic political climate and runaway gun violence problem, which adds up to a staggering annual death toll comparable to any war. While this may seem to come from the Department of Duh, let’s drop some knowledge:

There have been 21,191 gun-related deaths in the U.S. already in 2020 (including 279 mass shootings).

There were 434 mass shootings in the U.S. in 2019, equal to approximately 1.19 mass shootings a day, killing 2,160 people.

Approximately 36,000 Americans are killed by guns every year (an average of 100 a day.)

In 2017, 39,773 Americans were killed by or killed themselves with guns, a trend which is on the rise.

U.S. police have killed 598 people already in 2020, and in all of 2019, there were only 27 days when they did not kill anyone. (I recommend clicking on that link, since Mapping Police Violence is one of the few free nonprofit databases dedicated to tracking the issue -- the animated map is also worth a look because it’s horrifying.)

U.S. police also kill civilians at grossly high rates compared to peer nations -- an average of 1,000 a year and 33.5 deaths per 10 million citizens. The next closest is Canada at 9.8 deaths per 10 million.

And just like everyone’s been protesting about, police violence and officer-related shootings affect people of color at grotesquely higher percentages relative to their overall presence in the U.S. population.

In comparison, 89 law enforcement officers died in 2019. Over half of these (48) died in accidents. Only 41 law enforcement officers, in a nation of 330 million people, died as a result of violence/felonious acts.

Just to recap, 100 Americans die from gun violence a day.

In other words, it’s a lot more dangerous to be an average citizen in America than it is to be a law enforcement officer in America.

By... a very wide margin.

The University of Chicago Law School recently completed a three-year-long study (2015--2018) and concluded that not one of the police departments in the 20 largest American cities meet basic human rights standards/the rules of international warfare in the Geneva Convention.

So while the 21st-century political structures of America make it highly unlikely that we’d ever have a Union and Confederacy fighting each other on the battlefield a la the first Civil War, the people of this country have already been under attack for decades from a private army that, I repeat, does not meet basic conventions for international warfare used against our enemies. The events of 2020 have also, if nothing else, proved that the extreme-right gun-nut rhetoric about “rising up to defeat a tyrannical government,” which they have cited forever as the reason why they need all their weapons, is exactly as much bullshit as we all thought it was. (Spoiler alert: they don’t mean the tyrannical government as long as it’s Trump’s, and they want license, such as the two white men who killed Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, to kill people of color at any point and without punishment.) They’ll put on their AK-47s and picket courthouse steps in the middle of a pandemic to whine about not being able to get haircuts and being forced (like communists, evidently) to wear masks to protect the health of other people. They’ll also run their cars into protestors and point guns at them for variety. But when the president tear-gasses peaceful protestors for a photo-op at a church, the kind of thing that should really piss them off for all their talk about religious freedom? Crickets.

That’s because at heart, these people are cowards, and all their talk of “defending America” are based on wildly militarized fantasies that, like most fantasies, they’re never going to carry out. This is not in the least to downplay the threat from organized white terrorism groups -- in fact, white terrorism is currently the biggest and most ignored threat in America. (I recommend reading that document, from a former white skinhead testifying in front of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security last September, in full.) They are the militants who are very deliberately preparing for a “race war” and who embody Nazi and white supremacist ideology, and if there was a new Civil War, it would be divided by ideological, rather than geographical (North vs. South) lines. That is exactly what these people want, and they would be more than happy to have. That’s also why we keep having these fake reports of “Antifa terrorists,” which result in heavily armed white supremacists rushing to counter a threat that doesn’t actually exist. There are plenty of reasons to be scared of that. But we’ve also seen that, again: they are cowards. They’re never going to openly present themselves because they can’t take it when their identities are exposed to the public and they suffer some miniscule amount of consequences for their actions. That is because these identities are often based on what is known as white rage. Any impetus toward being forced to examine white privilege, or acknowledge racial discrimination, literally sends them off the deep end. So if they’re ever actually put in the position of risking something, they... don’t. That doesn’t make them any less toxic and dangerous, but it does mean that all the hateful rhetoric and promises of uprising on the internet are far from the actual truth of their collective behavior.

(You can and should also read White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson, which examines this topic in more detail, and Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America by Kathleen Belew, which examines how this movement began as an organized force in the 1970s and expanded to its current incarnation today.)

In short: punching Nazis works, fuck the police, and abolish white supremacy. This has been your TED talk with Salty Internet Auntie Hilary for the evening.

#gun culture #tw gun violence #politics for ts #police brutality for ts #history of racism #a cheery ask i know #anonymous #ask

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jewish-privilege · 4 years

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On Thursday, Nov. 21, a week before Thanksgiving, 500 high school students settled into their seats in the auditorium of the Fieldston School’s main campus, which sprawls over 18 leafy, manicured acres in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, to learn about apartheid. The invited speaker was Kayum Ahmed, an employee of the Open Society Foundations and adjunct faculty member at Columbia University Law School.

Ahmed’s initial presentation at Fieldston went off without a hitch, according to multiple people who attended the talk. But then came the question and answer period. In a video of his response to a student’s query, Ahmed explained his theory of patterns of trauma and oppression, and how they relate to Jews who were massacred during the Holocaust.

“The [Nazi] attacks are a shameful part of history, but in some ways it reflects the fluidity between those who are victims becoming perpetrators,” Ahmed told the Fieldston students and faculty. “I use the same example in talking about the Holocaust. That Jews who suffered in the Holocaust and established the State of Israel today—they perpetuate violence against Palestinians that [is] unthinkable,” he opined.

Ahmed’s comment sent a jolt through the room, students who were present there told Tablet, yet no one present questioned Ahmed’s assertion that survivors of the Holocaust had metabolized the trauma of their own mass murder to inflict “unthinkable” violence on Palestinians. Jewish parents at Fieldston who heard about Ahmed’s remarks were shaken and outraged, texting in chat circles and even threatening, privately, to withdraw their children from the school. A video clip of Ahmed’s presentation began to circulate amongst the school’s community, confirming the veracity of the recollections that upset students had shared with their parents.

As the crowd filtered out of the auditorium, some of the Jewish students present registered the moment with fear and confusion, according to multiple parents and others familiar with the event. In a classroom later that day, one Jewish student shared that Ahmed’s comment was upsetting. According to someone with direct knowledge of the situation, the teacher allegedly responded that there might be less concern about the Holocaust if more people were familiar with the genocides in other nations.

...Parents certainly had reason to be upset; some were the direct descendants of Holocaust survivors, and others had familial or emotional ties to Israel, a small country located in a region of the world where there is no shortage of states and radical fundamentalist groups that routinely echo Nazi calls for the extermination of Jewish populations. Moreover, the Ahmed event was only the latest in a series of what a number of Jewish parents saw as problematic experiences for Jews at the school, which they said had been escalating since 2015...

...In the wake of the event, J.B. Brager, one of the history department’s instructors who teaches a Holocaust elective, posted several public Twitter messages about the event and the resulting upset—none of which acknowledged the feelings of Jewish students or parents, or even the history of the Holocaust and the effects of trauma on its victims. Instead, Brager chose to use the moment to assert her support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. “I refuse to ‘reaffirm the value’ of ethno-nationalist settler colonialism,” Brager wrote. “I support BDS and Palestinian sovereignty and I have for my entire adult life.”

...Tablet also interviewed the parents of more than two dozen Jewish students, past and present—all of whom, regardless of wealth or status, said that they were too frightened to be quoted by name. All said they specifically feared that public disclosure of their discomfort would cause retaliation by administrators and faculty—who they needed to write recommendations for their children’s college applications or transfer applications to other private high schools. The situation at Fieldston could be worse, they told me, though that perhaps depends on your perspective. “So far, no one’s throwing things at me and yelling ‘Dirty Jew,’ so it’s fine,” one parent wryly noted, in resignation. “But everyone else is going to leave.”

...In their purchase of a Fieldston education, parents aren’t buying an assurance that their children will be able to read Latin, apply basic principles of physics, or score a standard deviation or two higher than the norm on calculus tests. In exchange for the financial support and volunteer board hours, what Fieldston and other New York private schools are rewarding their patrons with is safe passage to the American elite.

...For many of Fieldston’s Jewish families, several told me, what distinguishes the problem at their school can be traced to the recently implemented Affinity Group program. Rolled out in 2015 as a new mandatory part of the curriculum, the Affinity groups asked parents of students in the third, fourth, and fifth grades to tell their children that they would need to select a group to join based on how that student defined their own identity. Over the course of the spring semester, parents were told, students would be segregated into groups based on a single selection from a set of options: African American or Black; Asian or Pacific Islander; Latino; Multiracial; White; or “Not Sure,” which consisted of “a cross-racial dialogue group” designed to make “your child feel more comfortable.”

...At the time, several families asked the school to add a Jewish affinity group; they acknowledged that no other religious group was offered, but argued that Jewishness should also be seen as a marker of ethnic and minority identity—not least because it has been for centuries by Jewish oppressors. According to several parents, they were politely but firmly told that no such group would be forthcoming. “Many parents were aghast,” one parent with multiple children at Fieldston told me.

...As certain teachers remodeled their courses, Jewish students found that their concerns about anti-Semitism were met by fellow classmates who plainly suggested that, first, they should be considered white and privileged—and that second, as such, they could not be considered victims of discrimination.

It was a two-step that shocked and frightened certain Jewish parents—first erasing what they understood to be the history of Jewish exclusion, isolation and murder, while simultaneously confining Jews to the category of history’s not-good people.

...For Jewish parents, the result of these changes isn’t simply the sense of injustice at the prospect of their children becoming targets for social exclusion, bullying, and officially-sanctioned condemnation for holding or expressing normative in-group beliefs —like a belief in the uniqueness of the Holocaust, or that the State of Israel isn’t effusively evil. The lit match here was that “Jews” were nowhere to be found on the roster of oppressed groups.

It’s an absence that is quite deliberate, and yet, because many Jews don’t seem to quite get that, it results in furious and often unintentionally hilariously medieval-seeming debates, both within Jewish communities, and between Jews and “woke” believers about whether Jews with white skin or dark skin are in fact “white,” what degree of victim-privilege Jewish “whiteness” or non-“whiteness” should properly confer, how much possible Sephardic or Mizrahi blood can one reasonably lay claim to in order to join the good team, and so on.

During that same academic year, swastikas began appearing in Fieldston halls and classrooms. In what would become a recurring theme for some Jewish families, parents told me that they were taken aback when school leadership responded to the initial appearance of the swastikas with a presentation for students that foregrounded “the ancient history of the symbol,” as one parent who saw the presentation told me. There appeared to be no significant scrutiny of what the symbol meant after it had become the Nazi emblem, and there appeared to be no mention of its relation to the slaughter of millions of Jews, the parent said.

Facing an uproar over the presentation and the lack of any strong, community-wide condemnation of the incidents, the school sent out a second letter, shared with Tablet, that identified the swastika “as a hateful symbol of the Nazi genocide, the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, fascism, and the destruction of European Jewry and other victims of the Nazi regime.”

...Of course the problem then got worse. Toward the end of the 2017 spring semester, George Burns, who for almost two decades had been the principal of the grade school’s younger division and who had been an advocate of the Affinity Group program, abruptly left. His departure was as much of a surprise as the rumored reason behind it.

According to a report in the New York Times, Burns was discussing parent pushback to the Affinity Groups with the recently hired head of the school, Jessica Bagby, who allegedly then told him who she thought the program’s critics were: “It’s the Zionists—the Jews.” Burns later filed a report to the school’s human resources department; shortly after, Burns announced his retirement. “Mr. Burns had worked there for 18 years and had given no indication that he planned to retire,” the Times report said. “Almost no one believed that his departure was entirely voluntary.”

In an interview with the Times, Bagby disputed the account. “I said to him at the time, ʻWe have a problem in that some members of our community who identify themselves as Jewish, and some who even might identify themselves—self-identify—as Zionists, do not feel embraced by this program.’”

For some Jewish parents, it was a distinction without much difference. Bagby’s remarks had a perhaps unintentional but palpable edge. Since no one in the progressive cultural sphere has used the word “Zionist” as anything other than a curseword for at least a decade, her remarks implied to them that parents “who even might identify—self-identify—as Zionists” had themselves to blame for not being embraced by a program that would not and should not, in fact, embrace them.

Whatever the proper interpretation of Bagby’s remarks might be, the willingness of her school to take anti-Semitism seriously was about to be tested by national tragedy. On Oct. 27, 2018, 11 Jews were murdered during a religious service at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. The night of the attack, the school sent out a note expressing sympathy for the victims, and horror at the attack.

But later that week, the school sent out another letter, shared with Tablet, which declared the committee’s dismay at the slayings while highlighting the positive reaction by the Muslim community of Pittsburgh—as though anti-Semitism was somehow a narrow detail in relations between Jews and Muslims. “[We are] heartsick for the state of our national dialogue and concerned for the safety of the vulnerable among us. We are also heartened by the clear voices of empathy across the spectrum of political views and overflowing acts of kindness, such as the pledge by the Muslim community of Pittsburgh to protect synagogues,” they wrote.

The letter then went on to explain that the theme of the year’s multicultural programming would be “Intersectionality,” with the first event a community day where guest speakers will explain “what Intersectionality means to them and what effect it has on their lives as they work toward equity and social justice.” The committee signed off by highlighting the Multicultural Committee’s recent progress, including a mention of the various faculty who over the summer participated in “anti-bias training for white educators.”

According to several Jewish parents who read the letter, they were stunned by the absence of the word “anti-Semitism”—the specific hatred against Jews that was the defining characteristic of the mass shooting.

“There was no mention of the murder of Jews,” one parent told me. “It talked about how the Muslim community really helped the Jewish community in a time of crisis. And you know, that’s great they did. I think that’s beautiful they helped. But what’s the point of including that in a letter that should be about a horrendous act of anti-Semitism?”

The school’s disparate tone was made all the more stark several days later, when after a gunman killed one and left three injured in a shooting at a synagogue in Poway, California, near San Diego, Fieldston distributed a community-wide letter that did not identify the victims as Jewish but instead as “Passover worshippers”—and which then contextualized the shooting among other recent events. “Hatred and religious violence across our globe at houses of worship since the 2015 murder of congregants at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, should be unimaginable. Nevertheless, in just the last three months, since the horrific mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, this once unfathomable crime seems unrelenting in our news cycle.”

Though this letter mentioned the word “anti-Semitism,” according to multiple parents Bagby’s contextualizing of the anti-Semitic shooting with hate crimes against other religious denominations...was one further example of the school’s apparent aversion to explicitly singling out violence or hatred against Jews as worthy of specific concern or condemnation.

...Several Jewish parents said that this emerging herd mentality had other more direct repercussions: While some of the school’s administrators and faculty have expressed solidarity with Jewish families in private, there’s a fear, according to multiple employees, that any public activism on behalf of the Jewish families will lead to that member of the staff becoming ostracized by their colleagues. This is particularly important because, unlike nearly every other elite private school in New York City, the faculty at Fieldston are unionized—which endows them with a power their colleagues at other schools lack in disputes with the board or the administration.

...By Monday, the leadership of the school was anxious to quell the growing unrest, a person familiar with the leadership’s decision making said, but lawyers cautioned school leaders that a revised statement being circulated was too critical of Kayum Ahmed directly and might ostensibly expose the school to libel charges, according to this person. Some involved in the discussion of the response felt the risk was justified by the necessity to reaffirm an unequivocal position against anti-Semitism, particularly in light of other recent incidents at the school—but that position, according to a person familiar with the drafting process, was not universally endorsed by all parties involved in finalizing the statement. There was enough dissent among the board and administration about how to properly respond that some proposed waiting for after the Thanksgiving break to publicly acknowledge the incident...

Following the wide dissemination of the video clip, concerned parents now reached out directly to the school wondering about the circumstances that led to Ahmed’s presentation. On Wednesday morning, Bagby signed off on a final letter that was sent to the Fieldston community at large. “We are taking the opportunity brought by this incident not to discuss this particular speaker or his words, but to reaffirm our institution’s firmly held values,” she declared. “We will not accept Anti-Semitism. We will not accept racism. We will not accept sexism. We will not accept homophobia. We will not accept transphobia. We will not accept xenophobia. We will not accept hatred in all its ugly shapes and forms.”

Bagby’s response landed with a thud among Jewish parents, several of them told me. “That letter was worse than doing nothing,” one father explained, pointing out that school’s inability to single out anti-Semitism, coupled with the lack of any direct condemnation of the content of Ahmed’s remarks, reflected a lack of courage or willingness to stand up against this particular form of hatred. “It was simply a ‘fuck you,’ and entirely infuriating,” he said. Another parent I spoke with wearily acknowledged to herself that the school’s response was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” and immediately began the process of finding another school for her children.

For these parents who’d themselves encountered incidents of anti-Semitism at Fieldston or watched their children endure such trials, there was a hope that if the school would only ramp up its educational offerings on the Holocaust or on anti-Semitic bias the campus experience of Jewish students would improve, several parents told me. There had been a time, they recalled, when the school held regular assemblies with Holocaust survivors, including a Holocaust Remembrance Day—which the school no longer includes in its annual calendar of events.

Yet, as some of these same parents recognized, Fieldston is a different place for Jews than it was before, perhaps because New York City is a different place. As one parent observed, Jewish education in New York happened every day for children who would encounter Holocaust survivors at the synagogue, at the kosher butcher’s, and at family birthday parties where explanations would accompany the tattoos on guests’ forearms. At this point, the expectation that elite schools like Fieldston will wholeheartedly embrace Jewish students—let alone encourage the kind of Jewish self-awareness that students are not receiving in their home environments—seems, at best, misplaced. All of which is rather unfortunate—and not just for Jewish students and their parents...

----

I don’t agree with everything in this piece, especially with respect to the author’s “understanding” of intersectionality and white privilege. That being said, the underlying issue at Fieldston and the denial of antisemitism as an actual, real type of discrimination when Jews are being killed, beaten, and harassed for being Jews (regardless of whether we’re white or not) is something that bears acknowledgment.

#long post

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somnilogical · 4 years

Text

no shelter

some of you may have had occasion to run into transfems preforming cryptographically secure tests for cissexism and to wonder therefore how they got that way, and here, in partial explanation perhaps, is a story of the one transfem, somnulence logencia:

(mostly cut and pasted from messages to my friends)

i called this homeless shelter and asked if they had any rooms and they said they did and to come on in and then when they saw my id they were like "how about you go to the mens side" and i was like "how about i dont want to be raped" and they were like okay and told me to sleep in a foldable cot in the entrance room. with a harsh white light on all night, i stretched it to two nights and then they kicked me out and said they had no room.

a thing about being oppressed is theres so much opportunity for snark because things are obviously fucked.

they were like "no one can come in to your room you are safe here" "so no one can come in to the main area with my cot?" "er, no, people have to pass through there to use the restroom" "i seeee"

anyway they told me they couldnt house me because suddenly they were full. i looked at a checklist for rooms that they had ppl sign and some but not all of the room numbers were highlighted. and at the end of everyone signing their names none of the nonhighlighted regions were signed except for where i signed my name next to 'cot'. a day after they told me to leave because they were full i asked my friend to call them and check if they were full, and they gave them the same answer they gave me, that there were a few openings in the upper bunks.

i talked twice in private with the most empathetic looking humans i could find that i thought the other people were turning me out asap (instead of after 45 days which was their printed policy) because of discrimination. and they both said that it was because they were full.

this isnt a shelter that really does one-day stays.

during my ""intake"":

"this is a christian organization so we have to ask you some religious questions. ~so how do you feel about christian stuff?"

"well christians tried to forcibly convert my grandmother-"

"sounds bad, not something jesus would do"

"..."

"well this is a christian organization so if you are staying here we do require you to go to chapel so i dont want to hear anything about "forcible conversion""

because you, the homeless person, choose to sleep there and consume their resources you see!

i dislike arguments of the form "oh but how could be horrible when we give people cookies and fluffy pillows? does that seem horrible to you? i think you are miscomprehending this entire situation somni."

they forced us all to go to christian religious services 2x a day weekdays, 1x a day sundays. and if you missed them 3x they kicked you out. and when an old lady fell asleep during services they poked her and when i said "let her sleep huh? :)" they were like "nuh uh" and poked her some more until she woke up. clockwork orange kinda stuff.

they had a rule about only wardens being able to let people in from outside which i defied to let someone in who everyone knew was staying there, but the warden was on lunch break. she thanked me. i told her these rules were unjust, she would complain to the wardens that everyone would violate rules about eating food in their rooms.

<<May a church or church-run business/non-profit discriminate against me?

Under California law, there is no religious “exception” for discrimination in housing or public accommodations. This means that a religious-based hospital cannot deny you care just because you are transgender, nor can a religious-based homeless shelter refuse to house you as the gender you identify as. HOWEVER, certain religious organizations and religious educational institutions are not subject to California (or federal) non-discrimination laws.>>

https://transgenderlawcenter.org/resources/know-your-rights/faq-the-gender-nondiscrimination-act

they lied because they expected that i would sue them into oblivion if they told the truth.

i want ppl to see the structure of this sort of thing. like the details. its not true that everyone does this all the time. it is actually hard to tell when this is happening.

at this point i am very paranoid about this and i still believed they didnt have rooms with ~10-30% of my heart, enough uncertainty for the test to feel like it could go either way before i performed it. because of the way their body moved and i talked with multiple people in private and they didnt stumble over their words or hesitate.

like i practiced noticing the difference between [peoples words and social affect] and [what they were optimizing for] on homeless people who were less intelligent than me. where they would be like "i am not sexually attracted to you, that would be like being attracted to my child you are like a baby to me" while also feeling up my thigh and back. hear the smooth words and see their disconnect from actions if you took them as veritical.

and after specifically training for discerning this i was still uncertain.

im now even more paranoid about this sort of thing (in an alternate universe where the test failed and the person on the other end of the phone said that there were no open beds this would be evidence against gaslighting and i would update to a human whose coarse features look less paranoid from, i guess, the point of view of someone with less accurate beliefs whose perspective im internalizing in my description because i still apparently have outside-view security holes).

you know i got along fine with the other women in the shelter. lots of them were half-crazy black women and thats relatable. like one of the people was making >100,000$/year before she had a psychotic break and issues with schizo for 10 years. at least thats what she said and i actually belive her.

a cis woman there was threatening to fill a bag with rocks and bash someones heads in as a means of conflict resolution.

only issue was with wardens who saw my id & decided to break the laws of this state to follow the laws of their religion. remember when emma was there with me and i said she was a transsexual too and they were like "its not illegal" yet they acted like it was because they wouldnt house me and lied about why. throughout all of this, except for once, they called me "she" and "her" and yet acted like i was a ~violent male~.

spent the first 20 minutes of "intake" "processing questions" crying because they were being transphobic and processing it by making wry replies to their questions wasnt enough to parse through this. i was crying when they took my photo and entered me into their database as part of "processing me".

the missionaries took great interest in my native american ID.

i initially walked up to the building on the mens side and people prevented me from coming in and escorted me to the womens. because sex segregation. and then i go to the womens side and they see my id and suggest that i go to the mens!!!

its important to see beyond the surface level emotional performances, to be able to conduct tests that discriminate between different possible optimization targets.

#irl

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trans-advice · 5 years

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Our Columnists

The Dread of Waiting for the Supreme Court to Rule on L.G.B.T. Rights

April 23, 2019

Masha Gessen

On Monday, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear three cases that seek to determine whether existing federal law bans workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Among L.G.B.T. activists and advocates, one could sense something like a deep intake of breath, of the sort one makes when a fragile object is starting to tumble off a shelf across the room. You know it’s going to shatter, you are too far away to try to catch it, and you watch, helplessly, its interminable path to catastrophe.

“Not great news from the Supreme Court this morning,” Katherine Franke, a law professor and the director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia University, wrote on her Facebook page. She said it was “unlikely” that the court’s conservative majority would find that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, under its provisions prohibiting sex discrimination in the workplace, protects L.G.B.T. employees. “Our work, like in almost all other areas now, will be harm reduction,” Franke added.

For nearly two decades, the dominant legal strategy of the L.G.B.T.-rights movement, and its ultimate measure of success, was marriage equality. It wasn’t always so: earlier legal gains for gay people were in repealing sodomy laws and in passing municipal- and state-level bans on discrimination. (Wisconsin became the first state to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in all employment, in 1982; Massachusetts became the second, in 1989.) On the federal level, it took until 2003 for the Supreme Court to rule that all state sodomy laws were unconstitutional. Bills that would have amended Title VII to include protections from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity have died many deaths in Congress, beginning in 1974. But, starting in the two-thousands, most of the gay legal muscle went to marriage.

Progress in securing the right to marry was head-spinningly swift. Most L.G.B.T. adults will tell you that when they first experienced same-sex attraction, they were certain that they would never be able to have a legally, publicly sanctioned relationship. Then, in 2003, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage. Twelve years later, marriage equality became the law of the land. People who were in committed relationships with one other person of the same sex experienced tremendous changes. American citizens who were in relationships with non-citizens could secure immigration status. Gay and lesbian parents no longer had to undertake the humiliating process of legally adopting their own (nonbiological) children. Partners would not be denied hospital-visitation rights. A great financial burden was lifted for many couples: people could add their partners to their health-insurance plans, couples could file joint federal tax returns, and surviving partners wouldn’t have to pay backbreaking taxes on money or property they inherited from their partners.

The gains in visibility and public acceptance were perhaps even more striking. If the state now recognized and celebrated same-sex relationships, it seemed there was no longer any reason for L.G.B.T. people to hide. Here, for my straight readers, I want to explain what I mean by hiding. I’m not necessarily talking about the closet but, rather, about a daily acquiescence to a set of norms. This acquiescence becomes second nature. I was a queer journalist and activist in the United States in the nineteen-eighties and early nineties, and then I left the country for twenty years. Within a couple of years of returning, in 2015, I was covering a high-profile trial in federal court in Boston. A public defender was scheduled to present a crucial argument. She stood up to face the court, and my heart sank. She was wearing a baggy man’s suit. She had close-cropped gray hair. She was a butch lesbian who was not hiding one bit, and I just knew, as certainly as I had walked this earth in suits for several decades, that it was going to cost her. But, talking to colleagues over lunch that day, I realized, to my great surprise, that, of everyone in the press room, I was the only person who felt this way.

But you didn’t need to have left the U.S. for two decades to experience a kind of victory vertigo in the final years of the Obama Presidency. Many of my friends described the same sensation. Some even complained that there was nothing left to accomplish. Others, however, warnedof an inevitable backlash, and noted that L.G.B.T. people had little to protect ourselves against it. The marriage-equality movement had performed a kind of legal leapfrog: in more than half of the states, one could legally marry a partner of the same sex and get fired for it, or be denied housing. In a sense, the marriage movement laid the groundwork for backlash by making queer people more visible—including those who didn’t even stand to benefit from marriage rights.

The backlash took the shape of a variety of “religious freedom” laws that effectively sanction anti-L.G.B.T. discrimination—including one signed in 2015 by Mike Pence, who was then the governor of Indiana. It took the shape of so-called bathroom bills, the first of which passed in North Carolina, in 2016, which would require people to use the bathroom designated for the sex they were assigned at birth. It took the shape of President Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military.

Federal courts have been divided on the question of whether Title VII bars discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Two of the cases that the Supreme Court plans to take up are cases of employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. In one of them, involving a skydiving business on Long Island, in New York, the Second Circuit interpreted Title VII as applying to sexual orientation; in the other case, involving a child-welfare-services coördinator in Clayton County, Georgia, the Eleventh Circuit came to the opposite conclusion. The third case, from Michigan, concerns a transgender woman who was fired from her job at a funeral home because of her gender expression; the court in the Sixth Circuit ruled that she was protected by Title VII.

As currently constituted, the Supreme Court appears likely to resolve the contradictions by ruling that the Civil Rights Act does not ban discrimination against L.G.B.T. people. This would be the kind of legal backlash that could take a generation to undo. But the decision itself may not appear for another year. Until then, all most of us can do is watch this fragile object—queer rights in the United States—take an excruciatingly slow tumble.

#spread this like wildfire #signal boooooost #scotus #title vii #sexist discrimination #lgbtqia rights #feminism #contact your congresspeople to clarify article vii to protect lgbtqia people #contact congress to spell out article vii in favor of protecting sexuality & gender identity & gender nonconformists #use resist bot #signal boost #this article has been copied in its entirety to protect against deletion & paywalls. please double check the source for updates & due wages

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yasminsqueendom · 5 years

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Antique the Vamp Geek Pt1 Ep8

CW:Potential starvation, more economic talk, discrimination.

A/N: Another Q and A

W/C: 1357

Whooooo lawd! I'm on 10 today babes!

So let's get into it.

You have questions and so do I. So let's talk.

Starting off with a question from @beyonbeat313: I can’t believe I let my daughter listen to your show! Why would you say those things about weird sex? She’s too young to hear things like that!

Ok. So, you do bring up a good point that I should at least rate the content of the shows. Thank you for the reminder. I suppose it would be much more helpful to control the content that your children engage in. I don’t know how old your daughter is, but the site that all my casts are posted to does in fact specify that adult topics are going to be discussed, and that parental discretion is advised. You would know this if you bothered to further look into it.

I don’t apologize for any of my content because ultimately, it’s all true. The real life experiences of my listeners, and my own personal experiences are what fuel the content of my casts. I can be more mindful of my ratings, but I will not stop my discussions about my status and the state of the society I live in.

But anyway, next a question from @CCIT021: Hey, Tique! Your cast about how expensive being a vamp is was really interesting. The cost is astronomical! Would you say that the reason baby vamps die at such an alarming rate is because of the cost?

Yes and no…..

Yes, because the majority of baby vamps are from low income households. Every once in a while, one might be adopted by an older, wealthier vamp, but at the end of the day that doesn’t happen often. It’s only really romantic like that in the movies. The expenses do make it feel almost impossible. Interesting fact: baby vamps in areas with a lower population have a slightly higher survival rate. That is largely do the cost of living in urban (read black) areas being so high. But, that’s a different discussion.

No, because baby vamps are usually turned by other inexperienced baby vamps that don’t know any better. So essentially, there is no education on what you’ve become and how to deal with it. Some people are religious and feel that they have become some sort of demon. Those ones usually kill themselves or go on a killing spree (which still ends with them dying). Some start out ok, but they reveal themselves to their parents, and their parents kill them. Some of them already were a part of gangs or in areas of high violence, and they are killed the ways that regular humans are. Some get turned in jail, and die or locked in solitary and eventually starve.

It all depends upon the circumstances. Some are lucky enough to link up with few good people and find themselves a source. Sources are really the saving grace of baby vamps. There are links to several resources regarding safe sourcing on the station’s website.

Another one from @okurrrr.b!tch318: How have you been surviving? I know you said your source/plug or whatever stopped coming through. It’s been weeks. Do you have a source?

Just in case you didn’t know this already, while the government can’t technically make it illegal for normal humans to bleed (and others to drink it), they can make it illegal for that blood to be sold for use by vamps. And they have, in a way. If a regular human reports that a vamp has sourced any blood from them, and decides to press charges, that vamp is arrested immediately, without question. There are other little sneaky loopholes, too. For example, family members can call authorities on their vamp relatives if they are caught sourcing blood. For any documented vamps, there is a mandatory Power of Attorney signed to give legal authority to a relative to make decisions on the behalf of the vamp. The reason for this is the likelihood of the virus taking over, and the vamp immediately becoming unable to make sound decisions. There are lots of sneaky things like that happening.

You may wonder why I went on that random ass tangent. Basically, I can’t say shit about that. I cannot risk getting caught revealing any info about my feeding habits. It would put my life in immediate danger due to my family’s beliefs. I want to talk to you guys, but my health matters too much for me to discuss anything more personal than I already have.

I don’t know if you’re a fucking cop or something.

So please stop asking. I won’t tell you. I’m alright. I appreciate the concern if it’s genuine. That’s all you need to know.

Another question from @danielthemaniel.shadeking1: How is the situation with your school working out? Have you reported your status yet?

So……. no I haven’t reported my status yet. It gives me an absurd amount of anxiety and I’m terrified that I could lose everything. There are no laws that forbid suspending government assistance based on infection status. And, as I’ve stated, a couple of my grants come from religious-based institutions. Also, my college is Catholic. I don’t know how bad it would be, but I know that nothing good would happen if I disclosed my status. I’ve been seeing if I could transfer to a public university in the even that I have to drop out of here. I’ve only got about a month left until the deadline.

A question from @qween.sansa98: Can you share the links for all the info to help baby vamps adjusting? I’m terrified after reading your last post.

Certainly! It takes a few loopholes to get through everything, but if you’re determined to go through them.... It’s more like there are chat rooms where people share info anonymously. But if someone decides they don’t trust you, the room will be closed and a new one will be set up under a different name. For baby vamp safety, these rooms change and rotate regularly. I can point you in the right direction, but you have to do the work.

Also, I hate your handle. Sansa fucking sucks.

One last question from @lolo.appointments.qw33n: Your statistics for the rates of survival for baby vamps is incredibly disturbing, but also isn't it beneficial that there isn't a large number of baby vamps around? Doesn't it benefit the society that everyone isn't getting infected because at some point there would be no fresh sources of blood? Shouldn't we be concerned about the repercussions of providing any assistance to vamps?

….ok…. It took me a minute to think of a response for this one. A lot of people feel that our existence is a direct threat to humanity.

IT ISN'T.

We are not a fucking threat for simply existing.

Our kind has been existing right alongside you for FUCKING EVER. Completely unregulated by government. At no point has there ever been an overwhelming amount of us that has in any way threatened uninfected humanity.

We are not draining medical resources away from the sick people that “really” need it.

Which fucking reminds me that those of us who are turned have a goddamn medical condition! We need that blood to survive as well. Our kidneys don't do what they're supposed to either. We aren't stealing resources from other patients. WE ARE THE PATIENTS.

Everyone gets infected when you try to ignore it to make it go away. Innocent people die when you just try to kill it away. Assisting poor people never robs the rich of anything. Stop telling that bullshit story. Most of us don't even want to spread it. We just don't want to starve to death.

Anyway. Look forward to Tique 9 for more excitement. Or just more loud ranting from me. I'm tired of answering y'all questions today. Keep ‘em coming though. I'll get to you eventually.

Stay safe and follow me on all my social media. Links posted to the main site.

Stay moisturized and hydrated y'all.

Love Tique

#black vamps #black women in fiction #black fic #black fiction #black women #vamps #vampire #vampires

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confrontingbabble-on · 5 years

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Imagine...

Following a public shooting...a private health professional, with primitive hateful bigotries* revives an unconscious member of the public...to quiz them on their sexual orientation...and then walks away as they bleed to death...

A security guard, with primitive hateful bigotries*...leaves the scene of a rape in progress...because he knows the victim is gay...

A bank officer, with primitive hateful bigotries*...refuses to allow a client to access their savings account...as soon as he learns of their contrary but lawful lifestyle...

A private fire fighter walks away from a house on fire...because he sees a poster on the wall...expressing love for another adult...that he claims contravenes his primitive hateful bigotries*...despite others in his group claiming that those primitive hateful bigotries* are no longer in effect...

Conversely, imagine society with no government endorsed primitive hateful bigotries*... John Lennon (amplified...)

“For the last four years, Bailey Brazzel has gone to Carter Tax Service in Russiaville to have her taxes done by Nancy Fivecoate, who runs the business.

That changed this year when Brazzel showed up with her wife, Samantha, on Tuesday. The two were married in Peru in July and were filing their taxes jointly for the first time.

When Fivecoate realized they were a gay married couple, she refused to do their taxes – civilly and matter-of-factly – citing her religious beliefs, and recommended another tax service business which would work with them.

“At first we thought she was kidding,” Brazzel said. “But when she started talking about the Bible, we knew she was serious – and I was completely shocked.”

Brazzel, who works at the FCA plant in Tipton, said she’s been openly gay for years and never felt discriminated against because of her sexual orientation. That held true after she married Samantha last year.

But that all changed on Tuesday.

“You hear about it all the time, but nothing like this has happened to us before,” Brazzel said. “She had done my taxes with no issues before, but now that we were married and she didn’t agree with my life choices, she wouldn’t.”

So the couple left, in shock.

“We were pretty upset,” Brazzel said. “My wife was trying to console me and I was crying.”

But for Fivecoate, she said she was simply sticking to her religious convictions.

“This year, [Brazzel] came with her wife and I declined to prepare the taxes because of my religious beliefs,” Fivecoate said in a released statement. “I am a Christian and I believe marriage is between one man and one woman. I was very respectful to them. I told them where I thought she might be able to get her taxes prepared.”

Fivecoate said she has other gay clients, and has no issues preparing their taxes. She said it becomes an issue when the couple is married.

“A few years ago, I had a couple of gay clients that married,” she said. “When it was time to prepare their taxes they called me and asked if I had a problem since they were married. I told them that as a Christian that I could not prepare their taxes. I thanked them for calling and wished them well.”

But for Brazzel’s father, William, who was with the couple on Tuesday during the incident, the decision boiled down to just one thing: discrimination.

“I told Nancy, ‘That’s flat out discrimination,’” he said. “I just think it’s wrong. I told her we all wake up and put on our pants the same way.”

In Kokomo, what Fivecoate did would have been considered discrimination and could have come with a fine up to $2,000. The city in 2016 approved legislation protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens through the city’s human rights municipal code.

But denying a gay couple service is perfectly legal in parts of Indiana that haven’t passed ordinances specifically protecting people who are LGBT. That includes Russiaville and Howard County.

Indiana law makes it illegal to deny services to people based on their race, color, national origin, ancestry, religion, sex, familial status (having children under 18) and disability – but not sexual orientation.

Steve Sanders, an associate professor of law at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law, said the state’s lack of LGBT protections has led to a glaring incongruity.

Since 2015, gay couples have been able to legally marry anywhere in the country following a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. But it’s still legal to deny those couples services because of their sexual orientation in Indiana – and more than half of other states.

Sanders called it an “odd anomaly” that leaves gay couples, who feel discriminated against, powerless to do anything to defend themselves.

“The only recourse is good-old fashioned shaming – going on Facebook and telling their friends this is a discriminatory business and people might want to think twice about visiting,” he said.

Most major metropolitan areas in Indiana have approved legislation protecting residents based on their sexual orientation, including Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Bloomington and South Bend.

But in most rural areas of the state, along with smaller cities and towns, those protections don’t exist.

For Brazzel, being denied service anywhere in Indiana because she’s married to a woman just doesn’t make sense.

“For me, it’s one thing to have an opinion,” she said. “I don’t need you to agree with me, but you should be respectful of other people’s decisions. What do taxes have to do with my marriage?”

For her father, William, denying gay couples services seems like a slippery slope that could put his daughter and daughter-in-law in danger.

“What’s next? Are they going to be discriminated against when they go to the grocery store and want to buy food? Where’s it going to stop?” he said...”

http://www.kokomotribune.com/news/tax-business-denies-service-to-local-gay-couple-citing-religion/article_eaa6c228-3153-11e9-96ca-039ea787a33c.html

* religion...!

#nonrelious #atheist #agnostic #secular humanist #skeptic #Religion #Christianity #religious insanity

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swestergren19ahsgov-blog · 6 years

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The 3 Ps Assessment: Parties, Political Interest Groups, and PACs

Republican Party Platform

“Parents are a child’s first and foremost educators, and have primary responsibility for the education of their children. Parents have a right to direct their children’s education, care, and upbringing. We support a constitutional amendment to protect that right from interference by states, the federal government, or international bodies such as the United Nations.”

“Their education reform movement calls for choice-based, parent-driven accountability at every stage of schooling.”

“We call on state officials to preserve our public colleges, universities, and trade schools as places of learning and the exchange of ideas, not zones of intellectual intolerance or “safe zones,” as if college students need protection from the free exchange of ideas. A student’s First Amendment rights do not end at the schoolhouse gates. Colleges, universities, and trade schools must not infringe on their freedom of speech and association in the name of political correctness.

The Republican Party would most likely vouche for parent involvement in a case of cyberbullying, as they have “primary responsibility for the education of their children”. It also appears the Party would allow for free speech without interference at the school level, regardless of its contents.

I do not agree with this (inferred) position. Often, parents are kept in the dark as to their children’s online activity. It’s not fair to assume a parent can aid their child in the case of cyberbullying, as they may not recognize it is happening. I also believe hurtful words must be censored, as they benefit no one.

Democratic Party

“Democrats believe all students should be taught to high academic standards. Schools should have adequate resources to provide programs and support to help meet the needs of every child. We will hold schools, districts, communities, and states accountable for raising achievement levels for all students—particularly low-income students, students of color, English Language Learners, and students with disabilities”

“The Democratic Party is committed to eliminating opportunity gaps—particularly those that lead to students from low-income communities arriving on day one of kindergarten several years behind their peers.

The Democratic Party would most likely vouche for school-level interference in a case of cyberbullying, specifically invested in “eliminating opportunity gaps” (as cyberbullying does in discriminating/hating on another student [creating a distraction etc] ). I think this party is dedicated to the success of every student.

I agree with the Democratic Party’s approach to classroom expectations. I think cyberbullying presents an education barrier unacceptable to Democrats, as it creates a gap between students.

Libertarian Party

“We support full freedom of expression and oppose government censorship, regulation or control of communications media and technology. We favor the freedom to engage in or abstain from any religious activities that do not violate the rights of others. We oppose government actions which either aid or attack any religion.”

“Consequently, we defend each person’s right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the diversity that freedom brings. The world we seek to build is one where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their own ways, without interference from government or any authoritarian power.

I think one thing to note is this idea of a person’s right to engage in free speech that is “peaceful and honest”. I believe the Libertarian Party would not tolerate cyberbullying, as it’s anything but “peaceful and honest”.

I completely agree with this standpoint. Free speech is freedom of the truth… not freedom of internet stalkers, hidden behind false accusations and made-up usernames.

Green Party

“Social diversity is the wellspring of community life where old and young, rich and poor, and people of all races and beliefs can interact individually and learn to care for each other, and to understand and cooperate. We emphasize a return to local, face-to-face relationships that humans can understand and care about.”

It’s interesting that the Green Party emphasizes a return to face-to-face relationships. As I mentioned with the Libertarian party, cyberbullying is quite the opposite. There’s nothing face-to-face about anonymous comments.

I also agree with the Green Party’s view on social interaction. I believe there is no benefit to online communication, especially hateful communication.

Peace And Freedom Party

“Equal treatment and benefits under the law for all families. Guarantee equal child custody, adoption, visitation privileges, and foster parenthood rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.”

“Equal treatment for all people in the military regardless of sexual orientation.”

“People with disabilities are entitled to equal rights to education, housing, health care, recreation, and transportation. Attendant care and other services or adaptations must be provided to enable fuller participation in all aspects of society.”

I can infer that the Peace and Freedom Party does not support cyberbullying. They believe in a society that does not discriminate against people based on race, sexual orientation, or disabilities. Unfortunately, these same people are often targeted as part of online attacks (@ my last post’s Supreme Court case).

I agree that a person should never be discriminated against for their race, sexual orientation, or disability, and therefore agree with the Peace and Freedom Party’s stance on kindness/equality for all.

C. Other than the Republican Party’s platform, I agree with each party’s stance. Each is built on a similar pillar of character and respect for all--regardless of race, sexual orientation, wealth or disability; all critical target points of cyber bullying. I would vote for a Democratic nominee, as its often a Republican or Democratic candidate that takes office.

2. Identify one national interest group that represents your issue. Include:

a. Interest group name: End to Cyber Bullying Organization

b. A brief statement assessing the position/perspective of the interest group: This organization hopes to provide awareness of cyber bullying by creating a network of students, teachers and parents who are educated on the topic.

c. Visit the interest group’s website. Spend a few minutes exploring and reading about what this group believes, what it wants to happen in Washington, and how it seeks to influence politicians. List five important pieces of information which gives a picture of what this interest group believes.

Educators must learn how to protect themselves and others from cyber bullying

Protecting staff is key… each school should have one staffer charged with all investigations of cyber bullying reports

There are currently no laws about cyberbullying, but this organization is lobbying for the addition of such laws

Local police departments and the FBI branch are good starting points for tackling cyber bullying

Victims should always discuss their attacks and never feel alone

d. From your research, describe one (preferably current) piece of legislation, specific policy action, or candidate this group desires or endorses.

One tab on the website is actually labeled “laws and legislation”. Underneath it lists every state code regarding cyber bullying which the organization supports.

e. Where is this interest group located? Are there any local meetings you could attend? When?

This interest group is located in New York. There are no local events. All events take place in New York.

f. Are there volunteer opportunities? If so, what are they?

Under the volunteer tab, you can apply to become a member of the ETCB, pledging to take efforts to end cyberbullying. This means maintaining internet etiquette and reporting cyber bullying.

g. Identify additional developments you find interesting from the website/group.

None

3. Identify one state interest group that represents your issue. Include:

a. Interest group name: California School Boards Association

b. A brief statement assessing the position/perspective of the interest group: This board issues regulations, policy briefs and publications on topics like student conduct and technology.

Students should talk to staff when an incident of cyber bullying occurs

In response to a report of cyber bullying, a district should determine the legitimacy of a threat or if it is a joke

Staffers should supervise students as they’re online

Cyber bullying is the act of bullying through message/sound/text/image

Schools may block websites that are obscene, child pornography or harmful to minors

d. From your research, describe one (preferably current) piece of legislation, specific policy action, or candidate this group desires or endorses.

Education Code 32261 and 48900(r) defines cyber bullying, including pretending to be someone else, sending mean/threatening messages and posting private information about another.

e. Where is this interest group located? Are there any local meetings you could attend? When?

This group is located in California.

f. Are there volunteer opportunities? If so, what are they?

It does not appear there are volunteer opportunities, other than to oblique to their codes of conduct.

g. Identify additional developments you find interesting from the website/group.

None

4. Finally, compare the two interest groups. Which one seems more organized? More successful? Who is their target audience? Supporters? Additional thoughts, concerns, observations welcome. Be sure to follow them on twitter.

The California School Boards Association seems more successful, as schools are more inclined to adhere to their policies. The other organization has no actual control over how schools handle cyberbullying; they simply list the ways schools could handle such cases, but have no legal standing or authority.

5. Choose one PAC or Super PAC that pertains to your civic action issue. Include:

a. PAC name: KidsPAC

b. A brief statement assessing the position/perspective of the PAC: KidsPac supports lawmakers who believe in a strong educational system. (This pertains to cyberbullying as school board members are often supported, who can create school codes to address cyberbullying.)

c. How much money have they raised/total receipt? How much have they spent? How much cash do they have on hand? They have raised $356,448, spent $264,578 and have $160,365 on hand.

d. How much of their budget is spent on: Republicans? Democrats? Referencing the side-by-side bar graph, it appears almost all of their budget is spent on Democrats, not Republicans.

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lodelss · 4 years

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Reparations – Has the Time Finally Come?

During a lull one afternoon when I was a high school student selling Black Panther Party newspapers on the streets of downtown Washington, D.C., in 1971, I sat down on the curb and opened the tabloid to the 10-point program, “What We Want; What We Believe.” The graphic assertion of “Point Number 3” particularly grabbed me:

“We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules … promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people. Therefore, we feel this is a modest demand that we make.”

The absence of justice continually flustered me because, even at that young age, I knew that Black people had been kidnapped and brought to this country to labor for free as slaves; stripped of our language, religion, and culture; raped and tortured; and then subjected to a Jim Crow-era of lynchings, police brutality, inferior education, substandard housing, and mediocre health care. I did not know then about the massacres in Rosewood, Florida, or Tulsa, Oklahoma; the merciless experimentations on defenseless Black women devoid of anesthesia that led to modern gynecology; or about the enormous profits from slavery made by corporations, insurance companies, the banking and investment industries, and academic institutions. But on a psychic level, I could feel in my bones the enslavement era’s inhumane cruelty to Black children — its destruction of kindred ties and its economic exploitation and cultural deprivation. There was an incessant gnawing in my soul for amends and redress. I was passionate about injustice, felt the idea of reparations to be reasonable and fair, and vowed to talk about the concept whenever and wherever I could. My analysis, however, had not crystallized beyond a check. But just to mouth the word “reparations” was a starting point to its validity. Thus talk about it I did, despite my views being often rejected, ridiculed, or otherwise summarily dismissed. Standing on the street corner that afternoon nearly five decades ago, little did I realize that I would one day be in the company of leading academics, economists, historians, attorneys, psychiatrists, politicians, and more — domestically and internationally — promoting the right to, and the need for, reparations.

Several members of the Black Panther party carry copies of the Black Panther newspaper

Credit: Associated Press

The Fight for Reparations Has a Long History

But that day would be far into the future. Despite my advocacy and that of many others during my high school, college, and law school years and beyond, the issue of reparations for descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States was not fashionable, but fringe, and definitely not part of the mainstream popular discourse. Indeed, one would be branded as a militant or a revolutionary (both of which I was), or just plain crazy (which I was not), or in today’s dubious governmental surveillance parlance, a “Black Identity Extremist.” Indeed, it is almost surreal being amidst all the buzz surrounding reparations today, from universities to talk show pundits and, interestingly, to 2020 Democratic candidates vying for the presidency. Despite or perhaps because of today’s surge in attention to this longstanding issue, I feel it critical that the populace understands that the demand for reparations in the U.S. for unpaid labor during the enslavement era and post-slavery discrimination is not novel or new. The claim did not drop from the sky with Ta’Nehisi Coates’ brilliant treatise, “The Case for Reparations,” in The Atlantic, or from Randall Robinson’s impassioned book, “The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks,” both of which galvanized the issue in different decades and thrust it into national conversation.

Although there have been hills and valleys in national attention to the issue, there has been no substantial period of time when the call for redress was not passionately voiced. The first formal record of a petition for reparations in the United States was pursued and won by a formerly enslaved woman, Belinda Royall. Professor Ray Winbush’s book, “Belinda’s Petition,” describes a petition she presented to the Massachusetts General Assembly in 1783, requesting a pension from the proceeds of her enslaver’s estate — an estate partly the product of her own uncompensated labor. Belinda’s petition yielded a pension of 15 pounds and 12 shillings. Former U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Mary Frances Berry illuminated the case of Callie House in her book, “My Face Is Black Is True.” Callie, along with Rev. Isaiah Dickerson, headed the first mass reparations movement in the United States, founded in 1898. The National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief Bounty and Pension Association had 600,000 dues-paying members who sought to obtain compensation for slavery from federal agencies. During the 1920s, Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association galvanized hundreds of thousands of Black people seeking repatriation with reparation, proclaiming, “Hand back to us our own civilisation. Hand back to us that which you have robbed and exploited of us … for the last 500 years.” During the 1950s and 1960s, New York’s Queen Mother Audley Moore was perhaps the best-known advocate for reparations. As president of the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women, she presented a petition against genocide and for self-determination, land, and reparations to the United Nations in both 1957 and 1959. She was active in every major reparations movement until her death in 1996.

Queen Mother Audley Moore

Credit: Associated Press

In his 1963 book, “Why We Can’t Wait,” Dr. Martin Luther King proposed a “Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged,” which emphasized redress for both the historical victimization and exploitation of Blacks as well as their present-day degradation. “The ancient common law has always provided a remedy for the appropriation of labor on one human being by another,” he wrote. “This law should be made to apply for the American Negroes.” After the Black Panther Party’s stance in 1966, the Republic of New Afrika proclaimed in its 1968 “Declaration of Independence:

“We claim no rights from the United States of America other than those rights belonging to people anywhere in the world, and these include the right to damages, reparations, due us from the grievous injuries sustained by ourselves and our ancestors by reason of United States’ lawlessness.”

In April 1969, the “Black Manifesto” was adopted at a National Black Economic Development Conference. The manifesto, presented by civil rights activist James Forman, included a demand that white churches and synagogues pay $500 million in reparations to Blacks in the U.S. The amount was based on a calculation of $15 for each of the estimated 20 to 30 million African Americans residing in the U.S. He touted it as only the beginning of the amount owed. The following month, Forman interrupted Sunday service at Riverside Church in New York to announce the reparations demand from the “Black Manifesto.” Notably, several religious institutions did respond with financial donations. In 1972, the National Black Political Assembly Convention meeting in Gary, Indiana, adopted “The Anti-Depression Program,” an act authorizing the payment of a sum of money in reparations for slavery as well as the creation of a negotiating commission to determine kind, dates, and other details of paying reparations. Consistently, the Nation of Islam’s publications — such as Muhammad Speaks and, later, The Final Call — have demanded that the United States exempt Black people “from all taxation as long as we are deprived of equal justice.”

The Modern-Day Reparations Movement

But it was the end of the 20th century that brought broad national attention to the call for reparations for people of African descent in the United States with the founding of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA). I was proud to be a founding member of NCOBRA at the historic gathering on Sept. 26, 1987, which brought together diverse groups under one umbrella, from the Republic of New Afrika to the National Conference of Black Lawyers. For its first decade in existence, I served as chair of NCOBRA’s legislative commission. Since the creation of NCOBRA, the demand for reparations in the United States substantially leaped forward, generating what I’ve dubbed “The Modern-Day Reparations Movement.” Inspired by and organized on the heels of the passage of the 1988 Civil Liberties Act, which granted reparations to Japanese-Americans for their unjust incarceration during World War II, NCOBRA reinvigorated the demand for reparations for African Americans and broadened the concept through public education, accompanied by legislative and litigation-based initiatives. Also encouraged by the 1988 Civil Liberties Act, Rep. John Conyers introduced a bill in 1989 to “establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery and subsequent racial and economic discrimination against African Americans and the impact of these forces on Black people today.” This commission would be charged with making recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies. The bill’s number “H.R. 40” was in remembrance of the unfulfilled 19th-century campaign promise to give freed Blacks 40 acres and a mule. Conyers’ “Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act” provided the cover and vehicle to have a public policy discussion on the issue of reparations in Congress.

Rep. John Conyers

Credit: Associated Press

The 1988 Civil Liberties Act authorized the payment of $20,000 to each Japanese-American detention-camp survivor, a trust fund to be used to educate Americans about the suffering of the Japanese-Americans, a formal apology from the U.S. government, and a pardon for all those convicted of resisting detention camp incarceration. It is a sad commentary that the U.S. government has not taken formal responsibility for its role in the enslavement or post-slavery apartheid segregation of millions of Blacks. It has never attempted reparations to African Americans for the extortion of labor for many generations, deprivation of their freedom and human rights, and terrorism against them throughout the centuries. The U.S. Senate and House did pass symbolic resolutions apologizing for slavery and segregation. However, the 2009 bill passed by the Senate contained a disclaimer that those seeking reparations or cash compensation could not use the apology to support a legal claim against the U.S. Since the introduction of H.R. 40, several state legislatures and scores of city councils across the country have passed reparations-type legislation or resolutions endorsing H.R. 40. In 1990, the Louisiana House of Representatives passed a resolution in support of reparations. In 1991, legislation was introduced in the Massachusetts Senate providing for the payment of reparations for slavery, the slave trade, and individual discrimination against the people of African descent born or residing in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. In 1994, the Florida Legislature paid $150,000 to each of the 11 survivors of the 1923 Rosewood Race Massacre and created a scholarship fund for students of color. In 2001, the California State Assembly passed a resolution in support of reparations. After a four-year investigation, the Tulsa Race Riot Reconciliation Act was enacted in 2001. Oklahoma legislators settled on a scholarship fund and memorial to commemorate the June 1921 massacre that left as many as 300 Black people dead and 40 square blocks of exclusively Black businesses, homes, and schools obliterated. That same year, a bill was introduced in the New York State Assembly to create a “Commission to Quantify the Debt Owed to African Americans.” Bills are also pending within several other state legislatures, but the reparations movement isn’t just targeting state houses. City councils in the states of Arkansas, California, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and the District of Columbia have all passed resolutions in support of H.R. 40. Reparations advocates have also challenged corporations who benefited from the profits made from trafficking in human beings during the enslavement era. Countless companies and industries benefited and were enriched from the profits made as a result of chattel slavery. There are companies that sold life insurance policies on the lives of enslaved persons, such as Aetna, New York Life, and AIG. Financial gains were accrued by the predecessor banks of financial giants like J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America. Others with documented ties to slavery included railroads like Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific, and Canadian National. Newspaper publishers that assisted in the capture of runaway persons include Knight Rider, Tribune, E.W. Scripps, and Gannett. The financial backers of many of the country’s top universities were wealthy slave owners, and it has been disclosed that the reason Georgetown University stands today is because the Jesuits who ran the college used profits from the sale of Black people to continue its operation. Survivors of torture by Chicago police received an unprecedented compensatory package based on a reparations ordinance passed by the Chicago City Council in 2015. Numerous civil and human rights organizations, religious groups, professional organizations, civic groups, sororities, fraternities, and labor unions have also officially endorsed the call for reparations. In 2016, the Movement for Black Lives Policy Table released its platform, which prominently featured the issue of reparations. The role that governments, corporations, industries, religious institutions, educational institutions, private estates, and other entities played in supporting the institution of slavery and its vestiges are roles that can no longer be ignored, dismissed outright, or swept under the rug. The time is now ripe that their involvement be recognized, examined, discussed, and redressed.

The Demand Deserves Serious Consideration

I am part of the inaugural cohort of commissioners on the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC), convened by the Institute of the Black World 21st Century in 2016. The commission’s preamble asserts:

“No amount of material resources or monetary compensation can ever be sufficient restitution for the spiritual, mental, cultural and physical damages inflicted on Africans by centuries of the MAAFA, the holocaust of enslavement and the institution of chattel slavery.”

Recognizing these as “crimes against humanity,” as acknowledged by the 2001 Durban Declaration and Program of Action of the World Conference Against Racism in South Africa, the preamble goes on to assert that “the devastating damages of enslavement and systems of apartheid and de facto segregation spanned generations to negatively affect the collective well-being of Africans in America to this very moment.” NAARC has advanced a comprehensive, yet preliminary, reparations program to guide reparatory justice demands by people of African descent in the United States. Finally, although my primary focus has been on obtaining reparations for African descendants in the United States, it is critical to recognize that our quest is part of the international movement for reparations as well. As such, I have worked closely with supporters of reparations throughout the world, recognizing that the success of the movement for reparations for diasporic Africans anywhere advances the movement for reparations by Africans and African descendants everywhere. I am thrilled that my quest to have reparations seen as a legitimate concept for African Americans, begun nearly 50 years ago, is becoming a reality. The issue has become more precise, less rhetorical, and has entered the mainstream. And while cash payments remain an important and necessary component of any claim for damages, it is crystal clear today that a reparations settlement can be fashioned in as many ways as necessary to equitably address the countless manifestations of injury sustained from chattel slavery and its continuing vestiges. Some forms of redress may include land, economic development, or scholarships. Other amends may embrace community development, repatriation resources, or truthful textbooks. Still, other areas of reparatory justice may encompass the erection of monuments and museums, pardons for impacted prisoners from the COINTELPRO-era, and repairing the harms from the War on Drugs. Fifty years after I first entered the reparations movement, I’m optimistic. It’s hard not to be when H.R. 40 has been updated to include not just a mere study of proposals but also their development. It’s also hard not to be optimistic when a Senate companion bill to H.R. 40 has been introduced and even more astonishing when some Democratic candidates for the 2020 presidential race are saying they will sign the legislation if elected president. Despite a resurfacing of white supremacy in the U.S., I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am buoyed by the reemergence of the spirits of Belinda, Callie House, and Queen Mother Moore as well as the resilience of “Reparations Ray” Jenkins, who kept the fire alive in Rep. Conyers to introduce H.R. 40 year after year. And I am inspired by the words of the great anti-slavery orator Frederick Douglass, who poignantly instructed that “power concedes nothing without a demand.” The demand has been made and the time to seriously consider reparations has finally come.

READ THE FULL REPARATIONS SERIES

Nkechi Taifa is founder and president of The Taifa Group, LLC. An accomplished human rights attorney, she is a justice system reform strategist, advocate, and scholar.

Published May 27, 2020 at 12:05AM via ACLU https://ift.tt/3grc5uE

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glittergummicandypeach · 4 years

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Why the Media and Democrats Should Reject the Christian Right’s Pearl-Clutching and Address Problematic Religious Views | Religion Dispatches

America is trapped in an abusive relationship—not just with the pussy-grabbing President Donald Trump, our abuser-in-chief, but also with the Republican Party, its white Christian base, the police, and the increasingly uninhibited “good guys with guns,” whose vigilante actions are evidently becoming increasingly brazen. And unless liberals, leftists, and all Americans of good conscience are willing to confront the abusive character of the authoritarian right in no uncertain terms, I frankly don’t see how we can defeat surging fascism and set this country on a healthy democratic path.

To riff on the work of retired UC Berkeley cognitive scientist George Lakoff, who documented the ways in which Americans understand politics through family-related metaphors, if the United States is a dysfunctional family, then much of the media has taken on the role of the peacemaker.

In a dysfunctional family, the peacemaker “may become anger-phobic and attempt to smooth out differences before a healthy interchange can take place,” according to couples’ counselors Linda and Charlie Bloom. The flurry of discussion around Judge Amy Coney Barrett, the apparent frontrunner to be named Trump’s pick to fill the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat, neatly illustrates the dynamic in which the right gaslights the American public, and the media normalizes and perpetuates the gaslighting.

In the case of Barrett, context matters. Trump has been stacking the federal judiciary specifically with right-wing Catholics and members of the Federalist Society, which even The New York Times describes as “a legal group with views once considered on the ‘fringe.’” Barrett is a Catholic, a Federalist Society member, and a member of the high-control “covenant community” known as People of Praise, a Christian group with about 90% Catholic membership that emerged from the Catholic “charismatic renewal” that began in 1967.

People of Praise assigns its members spiritual leaders; men are assigned “heads” and women are assigned “woman leaders” (formerly “handmaids”). In the case of a married woman, this leader is automatically her husband. Meanwhile, Barrett’s far-right bona fides are not in question. She is an acolyte of the late arch-conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, but influential right-wingers are already trying to make serious discussion of her politics off limits by crying loudly with faux outrage over legitimate public scrutiny of her religious commitments:

Regardless of where anyone stands on the prudence of a SCOTUS nomination and vote during an election, the already-emerging attacks on Amy Coney Barrett's faith are utterly repugnant. Can we not separate the person from the policy and treat her with dignity and respect?

— David French (@DavidAFrench) September 22, 2020

President @realDonaldTrump hasn’t even made his pick yet and the liberal mob is already viciously attacking Judge Amy Coney Barrett for being a Christian and a working mom of seven kids. American women should be paying close attention to what Democrats really think of us.

— Sarah Huckabee Sanders (@SarahHuckabee) September 22, 2020

Of course, right-wingers loudly questioned President Barack Obama’s religion when he was a candidate, and when he was in office. But what’s good for the goose is never good for the gander with the openly hypocritical American Right, whose leaders are now working to push through a SCOTUS appointment in an election year just four years after inventing a “tradition” of leaving such vacancies open for the victor of the ensuing presidential election to fill.

Note also that former Trump Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who perfected her gaslighting skills during her time working for the Trump administration, claims that “a liberal mob” is “viciously attacking Judge Amy Coney Barrett for being a Christian” when she’s knows quite well that this is patently untrue. It also smoothly juxtaposes politics and religion, falsely implying that Barrett’s Christianity is above politics.

No one is raising objections to the possible nomination of Barrett for a SCOTUS seat on the basis of her being a Christian. If anyone actually contended that Christian faith is disqualifying, that would leave very few eligible appointees to any position in a majority Christian nation. But to effectively push back on the flood of gaslighting currently being unleashed by the Christian Right, we need to flip the script.

Lord knows (if you’ll pardon the expression), the Democratic Party is far from godless. But, while God talk in the party may sometimes annoy non-religious Democrats, no serious liberal argues that adherence to a religion itself is disqualifying for public office, which would be to advocate for an unconstitutional position. The difference is this: in the vast majority of cases, Democrats of faith understand their religious commitments as compatible with an approach to pluralism that provides robust equality for all in the public square. Right-wing Christians, on the other hand, espouse an anti-pluralist understanding of their faith, using and abusing the rhetoric of “religious freedom” to demand the right to be, as it were, “more equal than others.”

And when Democrats object to the politics of right-wing bigotry, conservative Christians respond with moral panic, spewing flurries of concern-trolling comments on “religious freedom” and America’s commitment to apply no religious test for public office. In the case of Barrett, notably, even Catholic scholar Massimo Faggioli contends that it’s not anti-Catholic to ask questions about how her specific beliefs might shape her decisionmaking as a justice. But the Christian Right carries on with its moral panic and faux outrage in the hopes of making such questioning politically impossible. The same issue came up when Trump nominated Barrett to the federal judiciary in 2017, and this move is perennially in play with respect to the Christian Right’s attempts to ban abortion and prevent LGBTQ equality by obscuring a bigoted desire to dominate women and “sexual deviants” behind “sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Meanwhile, as we saw in the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop, America lets “hostility to religious beliefs” stand unquestioned as a reason to overturn rulings that favor robust equality in the public square. Somehow, though, we never seem to question the Christian Right’s hostility toward progressive people of faith in any major media outlet, and we take for granted right-wing Christians’ hostility to the non-religious in general, and to atheists in particular, treating it as normal. But we should not blame members of othered groups for the presence of hostility between them and the authoritarian Christians who don’t approve of their existence,, as Trump’s new executive order effectively banning anti-racist education for all government agencies, federal grantees, and federal contractors does.

Unfortunately, our major media outlets generally fail to consider power dynamics and let stand the widespread impression that “real” Christianity is conservative, and that critical scrutiny of conservative Christian views is strictly verboten. To do so while Christian nationalists are stacking the federal judiciary, removing protections for women and queer people in schools, and undermining our response to a deadly pandemic by refusing to wear masks and challenging public health initiatives in court, is wildly irresponsible.

As I recently argued elsewhere, criticism of religious views that are mobilized to affect those who do not share them must be on the table in a fair, democratic society:

Like freedom of the press, religious freedom is an important First Amendment right. But when believers use their faith as a bludgeon to attack othered groups and to prevent equal accommodation of members of those groups in the public square, we have moved beyond the bounds of a truly democratic approach to pluralism.

To be sure, some media coverage is directing critical attention at the red flags raised by Barrett’s affiliation with People of Praise, though with the exception of Massimo Faggioli’s excellent piece at Politico it’s mostly been unnuanced. But for the most part, we are getting hand-wringing and bothesidesism at best, and dismissiveness with a heavy dose of false equivalence at worst.

In a particularly egregious example of the latter, Fordham University theology professor Charles C. Camosy argued in Religion News Service that there is no reason to view Barrett’s desire to “advance the Kingdom of God” through law as substantially different from the devotion of liberal Christians like President Obama to their version of that ideal. “Neither is a dangerous theocrat,” Camosy tells us flatly, even claiming that “Kingdom of God” rhetoric, no matter what sort of Christian it comes from, is “not so different from the Jewish concept of tikkun olam” in its expression of a commitment to realizing justice on earth.

If one were comparing theological concepts in a vacuum Camosy might have a point, but this isn’t a theological issue so much as a cultural and political one. Theological concepts take on political meaning in a given cultural context. By ignoring both Barrett’s past comments and the way that kingdom rhetoric has often been deployed to uphold discrimination, to say nothing of the hegemonic nature of Christianity in the United States,, Camosy is gaslighting his readers. In contrast, there is no Jewish tradition in the United States of using the concept of tikkun olam as a bludgeon to control non-Jews.

While Democrats must undoubtedly be careful in how they question Barrett, assuming Trump does nominate her to fill Ginsburg’s seat, public discussion that questions the relationship between Barrett’s far-right politics and her religious views is absolutely valid, and we should not let the double standards that characterize our politics and media because of Christian supremacism prevent us from doing so.

In addition, we would do well to remember that any nominee put up by Trump is illegitimate, as constitutional law expert Andrew Seidel recently contended here on RD, because of the GOP’s openly hypocritical power grab. The Republican Party has become an authoritarian organization, and the politics of authoritarianism is a politics of abuse. If we hope to defeat it, we must stop letting our abusers get into our heads with their bad-faith rhetoric, and we must loudly and clearly call out their gaslighting wherever we see it.

This content was originally published here.

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outlyingthoughts · 4 years

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My mom was right, or a story on my privileges and microaggressions: Jul 20

Sometimes, your thoughts appear to meet at a cosmic intersection, everything coinciding and suddenly unlocking another level of understanding about your reality.

The start of Summer 2020 was a cosmic intersection for my reality. From populations around the world finally leading global protests against racism and police brutality, the escalation of Police-state-like situations in France and reading more books like « So you want to talk about race » by Ijeoma Oluo; everything confirmed an uncanny feeling I grew up to have an increased acuity for: my Mom was right, the world around me, despite how privileged I had seemed to be so far, was viciously racist and being blind to the racism I suffered from didn’t make it unreal.

Growing up in France with the myth of colorblindness, « because we are all one, indivisible and equal » in the eyes of the Republic and the Laïcité, makes it easy to deny the existence of institutionalized racism. French secularism, as the central pillar of our civic culture, provides a logic for our republic to conceal its racism under the soft blanket of a republican model of integration.

The French government officially rejects both censuses and data collection based on ethnic, religious or linguistic nature of groups. As such our national social cohesion is solely relying on the idealistic dream that from the moment that we have a French nationality, it grants us all an absolute equality in treatment, legally ensured by our all-mighty constitution.

Don’t get me wrong: I loved this principle that the state should be outlawed from seeing race and obliged by the law to treat us all equally. I loved attending my civic education classes and having a program that preached that we were all included because what mattered was that we were all French before anything else. I loved feeling like it was true thanks to my already existing privileges. I’ve had the luxury to believe in this illusion, all of it, until I had to navigate the « adult world » on my own, face racism with my own eyes and discovered how facts were radically different from our nicely designed civic education program.

My privileges allowed me to swim in sweet denial of the social reality of our country. But what happens if you're not French? What happens if you’re not perceived as French by the rising extreme right wing and populist political parties, by the people in the street, by a large portion of the voters in local and national elections ? What happens when the social reality doesn’t match those beautiful principles of equality and both the public discourse and authorities turn blind to systemic injustice ?

The problem is that not every French kid of color has the luxury to feel included and valued within the French society. When adults outside of your house are biased towards people that look like you, whether it be in the street, in fancy shops or even teachers at school; when politicians and people in the news are framing people from your ethnic or religious group or even from the neighborhood you come from as dangers, criminals or frauds of the system; how can you feel French before all, equal and included ?

Unfortunately, when sociologists and researchers are interested in studying this phenomenon, it is virtually impossible for them to do so since such data and measures are deemed inherently illegal in the government’s eyes. Even minorities asking for acknowledgment of systemic discrimination and inequalities through ethnic and/or religious demographic statistics are thus called out for being separatist and/or communitarist, all of this based on the adoption of the Law on « Informatique et liberté » in January 1978 which prevented public authorities from collecting data based on racial, ethnic or religious criteria.

Since then, even laws aiming at allowing the study of diversity, social integration and discrimination have been deemed anti-constitutional. As such, there is no way in France to account for socio-economic inequalities of ethnic and religious minorities, which -of course- makes it easier to deny their existence since they legally cannot be accounted for and studied.

This lack of acknowledgment does translate into French society and the way many French people think -regardless of their skin color and religion, even though more regularly among people of caucasian appearance-. Since I started growing more and more aware of the insidious racism around me and calling it out, I received backlash on many topics like cultural appropriation or reversed racism and a lot of denying of racial issues in our country.

In France, like in many Western countries with large non-white populations, many people refer to the existence of a so-called « reversed racism » when minorities start to call out systemic racism in our societies. So much that even some of my own relatives have thrown this term in my face when I started arguing against them on institutional racism in our country.

Sadly, in France the inability to account for discrimination, inequalities and even violence against minorities makes it virtually impossible to prove with numbers how rare what they refer to as « reversed racism » is compared to the urgency to address the too common racism against people of colors.

In the context of social justice, the goal is to highlight the institutional character of racism in our societies. Reversed racism in this context does not exist because white people in Western societies do not suffer from systemic inequalities and discrimination. Because last time I checked, Caucasians looking people in France do not risk institutionalized racial profiling and violence by the police or discrimination in employment because of « reversed racism ».

To have family members, who can witness how racism plays out in my everyday life and still believe in reversed racism comes to me as a denial of the experience of people of color when facing racism. It is like turning the cheek to the other side and say « yes you may suffer because of racism but please let’s not focus on your pain because I found a concept that fits me and all my unchecked privileges and allows me to deny the experience of a whole part of the population justifying it with a form of racism that does not impact my everyday life and doesn’t exist on a systemic scale »: News flash this is extremely insulting.

These forms of insidious white privileges in people’s discourse; to be able to be blind to racism and deny its existence because it does not affect your everyday life are microaggressions to people of color, denials of our pain and prevent a fruitful debate on how to solve the issue of institutionalized racism in our societies.

On my own privileges

My mom was right, in the tender years of my childhood I was privileged enough to virtually not see a difference between me and the other white kids (apart from the hairstyles I couldn’t do or that I was tanner than them regardless of the seasons).

My paternal grandfather was white and mayor of his town, I loved going to his workplace as much as I could, always showered in compliments and candies. Sometimes I would look up at the portrait of the current president hung in a big ceremonial room in the townhall and despite knowing that my parents didn’t approve of him, still I felt so at home within the bounds of our republic.

And while such privileges didn’t lead me to be « colorblind », it did make me blind to a large part of the discrimination I suffered from when I finally old enough to face it myself. I was convinced to be living in a post-racist society, convinced that only a minority of uneducated countryside freaks who had never seen a black person could be racist. I was convinced of all of this because I lived in a country with such beautiful laws and principles on equality and republican inclusion that it seemed unimaginable that the contrary could be real.

When my black mother was trying to make me notice micro-aggressions and subtly racist situations from our everyday life, I was denying everything (“it’s not racism mom, it’s -enter whatever excuse I could make up for them-). Sometimes I’d even make fun of her for being so imaginative and overly sensitive. Worse, I would go crazy with my democratic propaganda when she’d tell me she couldn’t be bothered to go vote because she did not feel included or represented in the elections. While I still condemn not voting because (forgetting the debate on whether it is rational or not) it is both a right and a privilege that isn’t respected by the autocratic leader in my maternal country, now I also understand my mom’s stand, feeling ignored and not included in political debates.

Today, I’m calling myself out for blindly believing in this integrative republican lie despite my own mother’s truth. When first generation but also second, third or even fourth generation immigrants are massively deemed as frauds of the system, it is logical that they have a reluctance to waste their time and resources on getting informed and involved in a system that pisses on them while still exploiting with joy their labor for the benefits of the national economy.

On Microaggressions

After reading a couple books and many essays on race like « So you want to talk about race », I felt discouraged as the wanna-be essayist I am. I didn't want to become yet another mixed essayist since we all apparently had the same stories on the way our bodies had been shamed, fetishized and sexualized whether it is our big butts, big hair, the same stories on exceptionalism and belittling compliments we receive, either making us exceptions of the group we identify as (« you’re pretty for a black girl ») or even categorizing our successes solely as a result of affirmative action (when I was applying to one of the top universities in Political Science in France, a friend of mine who was also a person of color told me that I was sure to get in because I was a great and lucky token black person).

Such discourses are so normalized and internalized that as I entered adulthood, I found myself sharing with my Caucasian father my deep fears of making it in life only because I was very often the only black or person of color in the circles and institutions I evolved within. Luckily, after a year of attending university abroad, I recovered confidence in my intelligence and abilities; but still had this fear when writing about my experience to not want to be seen as yet another angry black woman. But now the cosmic intersection struck me like a truck in my face: we all have the same story, not because we are whiny individuals and all the same but because everywhere people of color are suffering from the same discrimination and/or micro-aggressions.

What I had interpreted as my non-originality which would make me unable to succeed as a writer is just yet another proof of the systemic nature of racism and the discriminating ways of thinking and standards in our societies which we all suffer from.

Somehow, I found myself wishing at times that I had been an outcast like Ijeoma, but sadly I was socialized to match and please people’s expectations. When puberty and reality hit, I found a way to fold away myself and straighten the black out of me to fit the mold: whether it be in school, in my mostly white friend circles, in my behavior or appearance.

For the longest time from the start of my teenage years, I began internalizing all the ways societies and people told me that my “blackness” was ugly. How my hair was too big or deemed disgusting, how my fellow classmates saw me as a milking cow for starting puberty earlier than most girls. It came to a point where I genuinely believed that I could never be seen as beautiful if I let my natural bouncy curls and curvy shapes out. I was in denial of how much daily microaggressions had destroyed my self-esteem and standards of beauty.

Micro-aggressions are actions or remarks that are received as subtle or non-intentional forms of discrimination against minorities and/or marginalized group. An example of micro-aggression is someone telling you that you’ve never been arrested by the police because “you’re not that black for a black person” or that your hair is “impractical” and annoying because African hair requires more time and care to be maintained.

The problem with such remarks isn’t necessarily the intent or the way the person who made it thinks about the micro-aggression but rather the way it is received and hurts the receiver. Often times, when we do dare to stand up for ourselves against a micro-aggression, we are being told the same things I use to tell my own mother: that we are too sensitive or easily offended (especially if you’re from my generation I’m convinced you know the pleasure to hear older generations complain that we’re “a generation of offended sheep”) and only now I can understand how disrespectful and unsensitive my privileges made me towards my mom. Because I was so blinded by legal formalities and public discourse on the way society was supposed to be based on our laws, I was completely disregarding my own mother’s experience and struggle and some of you still do. That’s what unchecked privileges do.

But the violence of micro-aggressions generally isn’t rooted in the action or statement or its intent per say. Rather, most of the time, it’s in the way they are enshrined in wider systemic discrimination as repetitive and accumulated attacks on an individual across different moments and perpetrators. It turns an action which might appear inoffensive to the perpetrator (like touching someone’s hair) but will be taken as something extremely disrespectful to the receiver.

Growing up in France, hair on TV ads and the hair products on supermarket shelves were different than mine, the same way my friends at school could all have those flowy ponytails which I felt very sad my hair type didn’t allow I couldn’t have (until I begged my mom to relax my hair and she agreed when I was 7 because being a kid of a divorced couple she couldn’t take care of my hair for the whole month of summer at my father’s). But in any case, my relationship to my hair was the first instance where I felt part of a “minority” let’s say.

Getting into middle school and puberty, of course everybody gets criticized, shamed or made fun of for their difference: it’s part of teenage years. But when minor teenage bullying cross-cuts a subject which society marginalizes you for (as futile as hair and physical appearance can) and which throughout your life you’re going to get comments and/or random people’s opinions on all the time. All of this tends to weigh on one’s mind and if all the while, it is being deemed unattractive by the male gaze, then this innocent teenage bullying suddenly makes you, from a young age, internalize racism and hatred towards your own self, with the courtesy of mainstream western beauty standards.

(And yes, still today some men that I’ve frequented have dared to tell me they “didn’t mind my hair curly but they preferred my hair straight because they think I’m much prettier with” DID I ASK YOU FOR YOUR OPINION ON MY HAIR?)

I hope now it is pretty straightforward, why when my relatives tell me that my hair is impractical, I go bonkers. I’m simply sick of society, of men, of my teenage years, everything that made me internalize white beauty standards and told me that my natural appearance was not enough, not practical or not fit for them. And don’t even get me started on the ones that feel entitled enough to touch a part of my body without asking for my consent (here, only, my hair but still): Don’t touch my hair nor feel entitled to give me a judgement on my appearance.

Lastly, to put it all perspective, would you go around touching people’s ass and telling them: “well I don’t really like your butt, I'd rather you wear shapewear to change it” ?

Sources:

https://theconversation.com/how-french-law-makes-minorities-invisible-66723

https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?idArticle=LEGIARTI000026268247&cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006070719

https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2019/03/19/la-difficile-utilisation-des-statistiques-ethniques-en-france_5438453_4355770.html

Oluo, I. (2018). So you want to talk about race. New York, NY : Seal Press

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stopkingobama · 7 years

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‘Feminist Economics’: Coming to a College Campus Near You

If you haven’t yet heard of “feminist economics,” get ready, because liberal economists, policy organizations, and activist groups are pushing the concept as the next battleground for women’s rights.

Because condemning catcalling and “toxic masculinity” in cultural terms isn’t enough, they’re now targeting government policies and institutions they contend are oppressive and discriminatory toward women.

In order to level the playing field, feminist economists are calling for a massive expansion in government benefits, from universal child care to universal health care plans that cover abortion, birth control, sterilization, fertility, and surrogacy.

What Is ‘Feminist Economics’?

In order to understand “feminist economics,” you must first understand what those on the left side of the aisle call the “economics of misogyny.”

The economics of misogyny describes “how these anti-woman beliefs are deeply ingrained in economic theory and policy in such a way that devalues women’s contributions and limits women’s capabilities and opportunities,” explained Kate Bahn in an article for the liberal Center for American Progress. “[D]espite the central role of women in the economy throughout history, our economic policy and government institutions often treat women’s diverse needs and capabilities as an afterthought to ‘real issues’ in the ‘real economy.’”

The topic was discussed at length last month at a Center for American Progress event, “The Economics of Misogyny.” Scholars and economists gathered from a handful of top colleges and universities from around the nation for panel discussions on “The Intersection of the Family and the Labor Market” and “The Economics of Bodily Autonomy.”

One of the goals behind feminist economics is to put a monetary dollar to the cost of the work women traditionally do for free, such as child, elderly, or sickness care. By ignoring the monetary value of this work, they suggest, women themselves are being undervalued and held back.

How It’s Happening and What to Do About It

Discrimination against women in the labor market has a long history, explained Nina Banks, an associate professor of economics at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. And central to it is the concept of intersectionality—the idea that categories such as race, class, immigration status, and gender are all connected. An African-American woman, for example, is more disadvantaged than a white woman.

Intersectionality explains the “grand narrative about work that is framed around the labor market experiences of white women, primarily white, married women,” she said. “It’s a white-centered bias when we look at these experiences. That’s a problem.”

Building on this idea, Michelle Holder, an assistant professor of economics at John Jay College of the City University of New York, suggested that government policies that encourage marriage should be abolished, because the black community has significantly lower marriage rates than white Americans. (According to a study on marriage patterns performed by the National Institutes of Health, black women, compared with white and Hispanic women, “marry later in life, are less likely to marry at all, and have higher rates of marital instability.”)

“Most African-American women aren’t a part of a couple, [so] I think it’s problematic to privilege couples, whether they are same-sex or different-sex couples,” Holder said. “I think we need to redefine unpaid work around these different kinds of family structures.”

Conservatives generally disagree and have long supported government policies that encourage—or “privilege”—marriage, because couples who get married prior to having children are far more likely to flourish financially.

Panelists didn’t just want to remove policies that encourage marriage, however. They also proposed subsidizing “care labor”; meaning, instead of working with your husband, wife, or the surrounding community to raise children and take care of sick or elderly family members, the state does it for you.

“Women doing unpaid care work creates particularly difficulties for women in the economy,” said Randy Albelda, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and director of the College of Liberal Arts.

In order to address this “discrimination and occupational segregation,” Albelda proposed helping families “by providing the care work through a collectivized way that most countries do.” For example, she said:

Universal education and care, which I actually think would probably be the most important policy for all women, particularly low-income women in this country … It’s sort of a no-brainer … . If economists were really concerned about efficiency … they would be on top of this in a flash, because it is such a waste of all sorts of things. It increases our poverty rate. It reduces women’s labor force participation. It generates more inequality. Early education and care is one of the biggest engines of inequality in the United States.

Judith Warner, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, floated the idea that the hours a mother spends caring for her children or family could be factored “into someone’s Social Security payments down the line.”

“That’s a great point. It’s not just symbolic value; it’s actual production,” responded Joyce Jacobsen, an economics professor at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. “We used to talk about strikes of household workers—that you would actually lose a huge amount of production if … people just refused to take care of their children, refused to take care of their sick parents, refused to do housework. It would be chaos. It’s not even just symbolic.

“We can come up with actual dollar amounts for the loss of productivity, and I think that’s, again, where economists can be of great help in pointing out that there are methods to do those calculations.”

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‘The Economics of Bodily Autonomy’

It’s not just care work that feminist economics strives to monetize. They contend that “bodily autonomy” also plays a crucial role in women’s ability to fully engage in the economy.

“Targeted regulation for abortion providers, mandatory waiting periods, limitations on late-term abortions, all these things are happening in a much bigger group of states,” said Adriana Kugler, a professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. “And actually, we find, really limit labor market opportunities and economic opportunities for women.”

Until the government provides universal health care plans that cover unrestricted access to abortion, birth control, sterilization, fertility, and surrogacy, women will never truly be equal, she contends.

Conservatives—and conservative women, in particular—say the abortion industry itself undermines women’s rights.

“The abortion industry not interested in abortion clinic regulations that are crafted to protect women’s health and safety, or informed consent requirements that include scientifically accurate information about the unborn child and information about the risks and alternatives to abortion,” said Melanie Israel, a research associate at The Heritage Foundation focused on the issue of life. “And the abortion industry is certainly not interested in a health care system that empowers women to obtain a plan that both meets their needs and reflects their religious and moral values.”

Furthermore, Israel said, “Telling women that the path to success requires destroying the life inside them presents a false ‘choice.’”

The reality is, ensuring that both mom and baby are able to thrive is not an either/or endeavor. That’s why across the country, the pro-life community, and life-affirming pregnancy resource centers strive so hard to offer women services, education, supplies, counseling, and compassionate options to women experiencing a tough pregnancy.

Another area where economics plays into bodily autonomy, the panelists argued, is the national debate over transgender individuals and public restrooms.

Lee Badgett, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, cited the so-called “bathroom bill” in North Carolina, which mandated people use bathrooms and locker rooms in schools, public universities, and other government buildings based on the gender listed on their birth certificates, as an example of a government policy regulating bodily autonomy.

These regulations, she argued, can hold women—and all people, for that matter—back.

“There was an exodus of businesses who were thinking of investing in Charlotte, and the other areas of North Carolina … so who’s hurt the most? It was actually, probably … hereosexual people. They’re the ones who would mainly have had those jobs, and they’re not having them. So I think it’s a way … we all have an incentive to have an inclusive society for everybody.”

An “inclusive society,” according to liberal groups such as the Center for American Progress, takes the form of government mandating society to use certain pronouns, teach transgender ideology to children, and open public restrooms to people based on their gender identity. But if transgender-friendly bathrooms made good economic sense, one might think there’d be no need for a law forcing businesses—public or private—to adopt these policies.

In North Carolina, however, it wasn’t just the government that got involved. Big businesses and special-interest groups stepped in, attempting to use their influence and economic power to impose their liberal values via bullying and boycotts.

Ryan T. Anderson, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow and author of “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment,” calls this“textbook cultural cronyism” at “the expense of the common good.”

The Future of ‘Feminist Economics’

The role of “feminist economics” in our political conversation is still young. And with Democrats arguing Ivanka Trump’s paid family leave proposal doesn’t go far enough, it’s likely to continue. As the Center for American Progress put it: “Feminist economics provides a starting point to developing a broader understanding of how women’s varied lives and complex needs interact with the economy.”

At its heart is one idea: Women are better off with government as our husbands, fathers, caretakers, and moral arbiters. Anything short is discriminatory against women.

Commentary by Kelsey Harkness. Originally published at The Daily Signal.

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