I read Andrew Sullivan from time to time - he occasionally posts interesting things and I like the views from the windows. But not once – ever - do I forget that he thinks that whether I and those of my skin tone are a fully developed human beings, with fully developed brains and cognitive abilities is a matter that is up for “debate.”

I was going to write about something else this morning but then I made the mistake of reading the comments on a post by Tasha Fierce, on feministe. I am not actually going to link to the comment because the comment itself has little or no relation to Tasha’s post – about the “coming race war” rhetoric, which I want to write about later, and will link then – and I don’t want to derail the conversation because of an automatic trackback. Also, I am just using him as an example – this sort of language is all over the primarily White “progressive” blogosphere.

Anyway, the commenter says:

Obama hasn’t been a great president; he’s been disappointing in a lot of ways and indistinguishable from Bush on some very important issues. We still detain people without trial, we still torture, we’re still neck deep in two expensive wars with fuzzy mission parameters and increasing irrelevance, the economy is still weak, his handling of the BP situation was laughable, he’s broken every major campaign promise he made with regards to transparency and accountability, he promised health care reform and instead delivered watered down regulation and a huge corporate welfare system.

These are mostly legitimate, though arguable, points. Many people have  been disappointed with various actions (or inactions) of the Obama administration and that is only natural. I am possibly less disappointed than some because I was not so expectant – it was obvious from the beginning that, for all his soaring rhetoric, Obama was not, and likely will never be, some sort of radical leftist firebrand. I decided that I could live with a moderately left pragmatist as president because it was highly unlikely that we could elect anything but, at the moment, and that was that.

But anyway, more of the comment - he says something about how a reasoned challenge could be politically disastrous for Obama (I guess he means a challenge from reasonable Republicans? Not sure they exist, but that’s neither here nor there), and then writes:

Unfortunately, people like Beck, Brietbart, the Tea Party, and Palin manage to make even as poor a president as Obama look…well…really desirable. On the left you have a subpar president on the right you have a conversation that sounds like its moderated by David Duke and Charles Manson.

A subpar president. I wanted to make sure I understood that term so I looked it up – “Not measuring up to traditional standards of performance, value, or production.” So.

Of  course my mind winged its way back over the presidents we’ve had in just my lifetime (I was born in 1958) and I did a very quick comparison with Obama. The first president I was aware of was Kennedy, only because he was assassinated I think (I was four,) but then there was Johnson (“Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”); Nixon – who, you see, was not a crook; Ford… well, you know the list. Land wars, covert wars, CIA scandals, funding anti-Communist groups, supporting vile governments, etc., etc.

Even given that all the commenters complaints were true in and of themselves, with no nuance, would that not make Obama at least on par with the “traditional standards of performance, value, or production” of past presidents? Why is his malfeasance, if that is what one believes it is, below the standard? Or why are his accomplishments, some historic by many measures if not by the measure of their adherence to an all-or-nothing political view, thought to not measure up to the standards of production or value or performance of past presidents who also may have compromised to get what they wanted – or were unable to get even a half of a loaf at all?

I came across another feminist site a couple of weeks ago, following a link from feministe. The blogger wrote a post about Obama and government, her disappointment with Obama and all that… but the first few paragraphs of the post are about South Africa, the disappointment that the ANC turned out to be, so on and so forth, and she uses this as a segue into her issues with Obama. I left a comment something to the effect that there was little difference between the set up of the blog post and the people carrying signs with Obama as a witch doctor. My comment remained unpublished, but the point still stands.

Words matter. Dog whistles matter. And make no mistake, these ARE dog whistles. Conscious and deliberate? I don’t know. Attacking minorities, including women, on what are their perceived (by mainstream or White society) weaknesses or stereotypes is so embedded in our culture that we often just do it instinctively. When you want to attack a Black person you imply (or state right out) that they are below the standard, not capable of governing or leading, easily led, weak (primarily targeted toward Black men), and all the rest. Just like you attack a woman by implying she is hysterical or weak (except that non-white woman are attacked as being strong, but in the wrong way) and all the other nonsense. It doesn’t really matter if it is deliberate, because if an unintentionally sent dog whistle reaches an even unintentionally receptive ear, the result is the same regardless of intent.

Should it be let go because it is happening on the left instead  of - or in addition to - the right? I don’t think so. I am a pessimistic optimist, so I fully believe that not too long from now (as the arc of history goes, that is) we’ll have a woman president. A gay or lesbian president. Any one of the other non-white, non-male, non-gender normative, non-Christian categories of U.S. Americans will be striding in to “Hail to the Chief” one day. Perhaps we should use this time of the “first” to practice how to react to someone “different” even when we disagree or dislike them intensely, in a ways that do not perpetuate stereotypes, do not replicate right-wing tropes, or the inequities of the past.

Not even half the stuff that is in this article occurred to me, but I wrote last year about picking up Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” from the library and the trouble I was having getting through it. I am a very fast reader and, when I put my mind to it, I can read just about anything. But this… no, it wasn’t working at all. Even just thinking about it now I can feel that sickness and dread in the pit of my stomach – I tried to talk myself around it, reminded myself what a classic it was and all of that. None of that mattered, I simply hated the book. Couldn’t get it back to the library fast enough. And no, I didn’t finish it, either (this time.)

I am 52 years old or so, and all the time I am reminded of how much I have yet to learn about listening to my own inner self, my own conscience, and not to um… conventional wisdom, I guess. Or what always was and what should be. I get really annoyed with myself when I realize that I am hesitant about not trusting myself, if I even recognize in time that that is what is happening. Age and upbringing has something to do with it, I think – I missed out on a lot of certain kinds of internal growth as a woman of color because of this, that or the other thing. I am making up for it now, as well as I can, by concentrating on what is important to me at any given point in time but still…

Not that I have been thinking about it all the time or anything but it’s taken me about a year to just come out and say, plainly, that I hated that book.

Three Women and a Suitcase (1930s)

From the Charles “Teenie” Harris Collection (via Omega418’s photostream again – a wonderful resource)

Doesn’t this picture just make you wish you were going wherever these three women were going? Love the hat on the seated one, too. In fact, have those styles come back into fashion yet? If not, they  should.

What an amazing archive of work. Here is one collection of Harris’ photos – each picture a part of telling our stories. In his work he didn’t just photograph celebs but also working-class/blue collar people, the poor, the middle class, and children. In other words, a full-spectrum of lived lives – more than just a single story.

BBC – Anglesey writer, 82, lands three-book deal

An 82-year-old teacher and theatre director has been given a three-book deal after writing her first novel.

The Great Lie, the start of Myrrha Stanford-Smith’s trilogy, is a fictional look at William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe’s rivalry.

The Brighton-born grandmother from Anglesey said she was gobsmacked to be offered the book agreement.

She decided to seek a deal after positive feedback to a children’s story she sent to BBC Radio Wales.

She said she was unprepared for the reaction from publishers Honno, however.

“I had to put the phone down and ring them back as I was so taken aback by the whole thing,” she said.

Good for her. What a hoot!

via

Disney, in the planning and making of the movie featuring their first Black princess, tried to please the wrong demographic. The story would have made a good second, or maybe third, Black princess movie, but for the first? No. For the first film, they needed a real, capital “P” Princess (said, in my mind, with the British pronunciation. Which sounds far more official.)

This isn’t a review of a year old film, though. In fact, before I sat down to write I had no intentions of mentioning anything at all about frogs, princesses or films. I just wanted to highlight what I think is a really nice photo of a young Black girl.

Except. The photo, on the flickr site where I found it, is titled “Boogie Woogie Girl”, maybe because of the hair. I don’t think the person meant anything by it; this photo set seems to be lovingly made up of vintage photos of Black women in all their variety. Still, this title rubbed me the wrong way. The effort to tease out just why sent my mind whirring off to mainstream cultural views of young (and old) Black women, Snow White, and then on a beeline straight to the Princess and the Frog. Simple, no, when you see the progression?

She’s lovely, isn’t she, the girl in the photo. Sweet smile, bright eyes and that hair! It was picture day and we all know what that means. Momma probably sat her down on the kitchen chair and dragged the sides up into the clip or rubber band, teasing the front then working each curl to make it lie perfectly against the next, before making sure the cascading curls in the back were just fluffy enough – but not too much. I think the lipstick was the addition of whoever tinted the photo – either the original photographer or someone in later years, but it looks good.

She just looks like a nice young girl. And that, I think, is why the photo title hit the wrong nerve. Because, in traditional U.S. and colonial culture, young Black girls (and boys) are barely allowed childhood, let alone niceness and innocence -,even when they are small children.

For instance, not long after Katrina I was reading a post, I think about how the recovery was going, on one of the White feminist blogs. One nice, liberal White woman commented, saying she was a resident of New Orleans and that the schools would be starting back up soon. Because of where she lived and how the school system had been jerry rigged together, she was going to have to send her children – kindergarteners – to a kindergarten that had almost all Black children in it. She was worried, you see, for her children’s safety because her little snowflakes would be surrounded by all these children who were – not to be racist or anything – Black! What should she do? And, she asked, was it racist even to worry and to wonder? 

Many of the other commenters gave her advice and consoled her and stuff (mainly about being a victim of the storm), but not one said “Yes, that IS racist to worry that these Black babies are all violent criminals or something.” I finally signed on and said so… I would point you to the comment but the site had some issues and lost all their comments. When they were finally restored mine was not among them. A glitch, I’m sure.

Anyway, back to the young girl and Snow White and the Princess Frog. Snow White really has little to do with anything except that the film came out in 1937 and it’s entirely possible that this young girl saw it and instead of a hoochie momma or a boogie woogie girl, imagines herself a princess. Well, sure, she doesn’t resemble Snow White at all, except for maybe the hair but, particularly back in those days, if one is Black and is going to identify with a Disney character, it will likely be a princess and not one of Disney’s racist caricatures of Black people.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if, even today, if a young Black girl (or boy) is going to identify with a Disney princess that it won’t be Cinderella or Snow White or someone, instead of Tiana or whatever her name was (I liked the name they were originally going to use, Maddy, better, personally.) Why? Because they were real princesses. And yes, looking at Disney movies from a feminist prospective the princess movies are dreadful, dreadful things, which must be placed within their sexist context and all that. But, as I’ve mentioned before, little Black girls have no such context, in the mainstream consciousness, of being pampered and coddled and innocent and protected. Of course many had those things within their own family circles, where to momma and daddy and all the extended family, they have always been princesses. But you know how things go – few things are real (growing up) unless everyone else knows it.

After all, many feminists are not kicking back against the actuality of all those things in their lives but at the perception of (White) women as helpless and needing protection and extra care for their feelings and all that. This is not something that Black girl children have had to fight against in popular consciousness because they are not portrayed as any of those things. This is why, in my view, the Princess and the Frog was targeted toward the wrong demographic. Whoever it was targeted to – and I suspect I know – it wasn’t to an ignored young girl who had hoped to finally have her place on the pedestal.

Apparently there is more to her than that, though, because I keep seeing her name on various feminist sites – some posts going… well, gaga over her. Others condemning this or that Lady Gaga has done (though with regret, because they love her!). Some of these conversations have many, many comments – and I think, “wow, I should figure out what that’s all about.”

And I resolve to start … somewhere, and get Gaga-ized. That resolution lasts until I click off whatever page, when I then decide that I can’t be bothered.

Oh, well.

That all just seems so strange.

Sorry for the families and all their losses.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Luddites were a social movement of British textile artisans in the nineteenth century who protested—often by destroying mechanised looms—against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution, which they felt were leaving them without work and changing their entire way of life.

 The Leader of the Luddites, engraving of 1812

This English historical movement should be seen in the context of the era’s harsh economic climate due to the Napoleonic Wars, and the degrading working conditions in the new textile factories. Since then, however, the term Luddite has been used derisively to describe anyone opposed to (or perceived to be opposed to) technological progress and technological change.

The Luddite movement, which began in 1811 and 1812 when mills and pieces of factory machinery were burned by handloom weavers, took its name from the fictive Ned Ludd. For a short time the movement was so strong that it clashed in battles with the British Army. Measures taken by the British government included a mass trial at York in 1812 that resulted in many executions and penal transportations.

The principal objection of the Luddites was against the introduction of new wide-framed automated looms that could be operated by cheap, relatively unskilled labour, resulting in the loss of jobs for many skilled textile workers.

My immediate thought – well, it’s right here, in many on and offline communities of color, in Labor, in some feminism, in some liberalism. In other words, pretty much where it’s always been – but I guess it has even less of an audible voice than it had in times past if people are having to ask.

There are reasons for this that I’d like to explore (with access to those far more knowledgeable than I, when I am able) – from racism (consciously or unconsciously thinking that primarily the white left counts here – which is sort of true, in the way that banks like to (or used to) only lend money to those who don’t need it) to accomodationist (or just plain embarrassed by the margins, by the “identity groups”) Liberalism/Progressivism, to incessant right-wing rhetoric and more.

I also think one answer to the question of where the activist, political Left is may lie in the reason the question is asked in the first place: this Left, peopled often with those to whom issues are not so much a matter of policy or political strategy but of life or death, are sought out for the express purpose of being a type of foil to the mainstream left. Of having these same imperative issues brought forward so that they can be explicitly and loudly dismissed by the mainstream Left – which serves to make them (the mainstream) look moderate and “sane” – and serves the “far Left” not at all, that I can see. Or little, anyway.

So, I don’t know. Many I know, while not completely disdaining the political process, are not exactly enamored with their place on the dance card that’s been set out for them. Maybe some have decided not to dance to this tune at all.

Organizing within communities quietly and fiercely, using freely available (to some) tools such as the internet to communicate issues and needs – and successes and strategies – across national, political, religious, racial and ethnic lines instead of (or, at times, in addition to) agitating in the streets or the US Congress, may yet bring a better return for the far left in the US, and other places, than all the political theater of being the designated “fringe” can do.

None of this is to say, by the way, that I don’t agree that President Obama should be pushed from the left, or that I wouldn’t love to see a vibrant, activist and active politically relevant (and represented) class opening up huge spaces for Obama (and other politicians), not only pushing him leftward but providing an opening for him to move there – but with seats at the table, not as just more political theater, to be marginalized with little return.