I really enjoyed class last Monday. I thought the discussion brought up some aspects of race and race relations that do not get talked about enough, and La Don's and Carol's stories were compelling. To me, it seemed like La Don was still processing some of her experiences after all these years. It was laudable to me  that she still kept in contact with her family back in Mart, and that she wanted to be some type of role model for her niece and nephew even though she conceded that she did not know how much they genuinely accepted her as anything more than just family.

I thought the most contentious point and the most interesting part of the discussion was the idea that desegregation or even changing laws because of perceived discrimination was not always the best thing for a community or society. A few examples of that immediately popped into my head. The first one was the busing catastrophe in Boston that took place in the 1970's. In Michael MacDonald's memoir, All Souls, he explains that his white, South Boston, Irish-Catholic community was so tight-knit that integrating the schools was unfathomable to them. It is interesting to note that he claimed that integrating with the African-American kids at his school made his community reexamine their own poverty because of how insular their projects were to the rest of Boston. Their poverty and crime was just as bad (or probably worse at that time) as the poverty and crime in Roxbury, but as he explained, they were not "black," so, as was implicitly accepted, they just believed their South Boston neighborhood was better. Their violent response was not so much a referendum against African-Americans as much as a projection of their own flaws as a community and not wanting outside forces dictating how their community would function. Ultimately, their communities were more similar than different in terms of the institutional oppression and the corruption they faced, but they would not accept that.

The second example that popped into my head was Spike Lee's movie Do the Right Thing, which depicts race relations between an Italian-American family who runs a pizza joint in the predominantly black and hispanic neighborhood in Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn. In the movie, the pizzeria was an institution within the neighborhood, but it literally and metaphorically collapses because of cultural differences, preconceived stereotypes, and most importantly, a lack of communication between the different groups of people. 

The third example that popped into my head was the history of the federal guidelines in sentencing within the United States' criminal justice system. In the 80s, many liberals thought the discretion of judges for sentencing was discriminatory (in some places it definitely was). This lead to the idea that politicians should create sentencing mandates that determine sentences with little discretion from judges. Since the institution of these guidelines and compounded with the "crime control" method of policing, the United States has seen increased admissions, longer sentences, and less parole for inmates. It has backfired, with many people claiming it is a classist system that lessens due process, and a system where rehabilitation is looked at as a low priority. Who takes the brunt of this "anti-discriminatory policies?" Minorities.

We want to live in a "post-racial" world, but each community is too complex to live in a world like that. I think lack of communication or dialogue or even experience of interactions plays a large role in the misconceptions we put on other people and groups. How do we remedy this? Is a multi-cultural world the right world when we still don't have the genuine want to understand others? Or do we embrace isolated ethnic communities (its positives and negatives)? Does class ultimately play a larger role than race or ethnicity in a multicultural world? 

Adultism/Memory

Is adultism real or is adult "oppression" just a part of parenting, growing up, etc?

In John Ball's essay, he claims that "the systematic disrespect and mistreatment over years simply because of being young are major sources of trouble" (541). He then goes on to list common occurrences of adultism in our society: physical and sexual abuse, other punishments and threats, denied control, verbal interactions, and community incidents. I agree to some extent that many of these may contribute to low self-esteem, depression, etc., but out of all the occurrences I think the first two only have true lasting effects (also i agree with the other essays about unfair practices by the police and criminal justice system) . The other three (denied control, verbal interactions, and community incidents) just seem like part of the process of growing up. With other types of discrimination, one might feel it permeates their lives everyday and is a product of something larger within society, but with those three occurrences, the person knows that as they grow, their acceptance into society will come. I remember many times as a kid watching older kids play basketball and wanting to join, but obviously I wasn't at their level of competition. I knew my time would come though. A lot of adultism has to do with biology and cognition, and to claim that kids are being discriminated against by not letting them interact on an adult level is kind of silly. The majority of us are not Matilda. I believe that adults, relatively speaking, do treat kids with dignity and that with other types of oppression, we as a society knowingly treat oppressed people without dignity. Other oppression is arbitrary, and adultism is an inherently common experience. Reading about this though will make me start thinking about how kids are treated and what things I can do to treat them better.

On a totally separate note, this is a cool musical project about memory.

GLBT Discrimination

I messed up last week and wrote a post about people with disabilities instead of writing about GLBT discrimination, so this post will be about GLBT discrimination.

First, I would like to comment on that video of the City Council member in Fort Worth. It takes a lot of guts to talk about your personal life in front of a room of people like that, and compounded with the fact that he was talking about his experience of growing up gay in Texas and being bullied, I am sure it disarmed many people in that room with him and surely made an impact. Yet, his stories of proposing to his partner and trying to seek approval of his father and mother are pretty universal. Hopefully he got his colleagues thinking about how human we all are rather than focusing on the differences that separate us.

Carol also brought up the idea that sexuality is fluid, and I thought that was interesting. I had thought about that concept before via the Stern Show where stories from George Takei's experiences as a gay man, lesbians, transvestites, transgendereds, and bisexual porn stars (I think I covered all the bases there) are never shied away from . So when she talked about it, I couldn't help but laugh a little to myself because clearly Social Justice class is the last place where I thought I would be making substantive connections to the Stern Show. But in all seriousness, I want to say thanks to Carol for sharing a lot about her life the other day. It made class very compelling.

Also, I stumbled across this article the other day via the twitter of Boston Bruins beat reporter Joe Haggerty. It is interesting not only to see how sports is dealing with gay athletes in general but it also makes the argument that the NHL is one of the more accepting and progressive leagues in the country, which I thought was surprising. Also it was interesting reading some of the other articles about the struggle gay people (especially gay men) have with even being passionate about supporting a sports team. You never really think about how oppression permeates itself within one's daily life when you're coming from the hegemonic position.

WTF?: How George McFly made me critically think about disabilities and pop culture

Many of the essayists in the Adams text are right when they talk about how we rarely think about our world as an ableist society. Maybe there are so many different kinds of disabilities (ranging from being predisposed to seizures to having dyslexia to not being able to walk) that it is hard to comprehensively understand what a disability is. My sister has the equivalent of dyslexia with math, but I never look at her in the context of being disabled in an ableist world. You see so many deaf people doing well with cochlear implants or blind people navigating the cities with seeing-eye dogs, that you almost forget the struggles they go through in terms of dealing with stigmas and how they are basically oppressed in the context of dealing with our institutions (educational barriers, lack of safety net, etc.).

One of the worst movies I have ever seen was a movie made by Crispin Glover named It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine. The movie is about a man with Cerebral Palsy, who inexplicably seduces women and then murders them. It was brutal to watch, but Glover needs to be commended in some way. The script was written by the actor who was the CP serial killer. Glover noted how he wanted to maintain the actor's vision and story because he felt that in the same way that Guillermo Del Toro could make a surreal parable with Pan's Labyrinth, the actor had every right to make a parable through the unique lens of being disabled. Glover then brought up the interesting point that we needed more disabled actors in cinema in the same way we need more minority actors in cinema. He even went as far as saying that he liked to cast disabled actors in roles that are strictly written for people without disabilities. By casting them in those roles, people look at the character first and the disability second. People in the audience asked him if he thought that was exploiting them, but he felt he was empowering them. 

This story may be random, but it stuck with me because that was one of the first times I actually thought about the roles (or lack of roles) disabled people have in our pop culture. Of all people, having Crispin Glover recontextualize the role of disabled persons in our society makes me laugh, but I have to give credit where credit is due. By embracing disabled people  without romanticizing who they are Crispin Glover has become some type of weird innovator, pushing the boundaries and making us rethink prescribed roles in life and in culture.

http://www.crispinglover.com/it_is_fine!.htm

Wasteland

I enjoyed Wasteland. It was nice to see what art can do to really change people's lives. I thought the movie touched on a few key points that play a large role in practicing social work: starting local but keeping in mind global impact, personal involvement from the social worker/facilitator, and ownership by participation of clients.

Thinking Local
I think for social workers this is an important concept because to be successful on a larger scale, one must first start local and cater to the different nuances of different communities and then hope to influence on a greater scale later on. Latin American scholar Gustavo Esteva and Indian scholar Madh Suri Prakash claim that even in the present era of globalization, "'global thinking' is at its best only an illusion, and at its worst, the grounds for the kinds of destructive and dangerous actions perpetrated by global 'think tanks'" (22). The best example they give of a grassroots movement that has been successful on a local level but has greater implications is Community Supported Agriculture. Community Supported Agriculture teaches urban people how to support local farmers. By supporting this movement, pepole invest in their own economy and community and also help to take down that big  agribusiness corporations, who exploit farmers. In Wasteland, it was good to see how the artist's vision never got ahead of itself and that he embraced the particular community around him, witnessed by using the trash in the pieces of art. The artist not only raised awareness of the tough living and working conditions of these workers but also helped empower them on a local scale (having some of the earnings going towards helping the trash-workers union). The raising awareness aspect of the project never outweighed the artist's commitment to the people he employed.

Personal Involvement
One of the more interesting parts of the movie was when the artists wife debated with him if he should take Tiao to London for the auction. Ultimately her thinking was wrong when she thought that taking Tiao out of his environment would make him bitter upon return because he saw a greater way of life in London, but she did bring up the idea of how much personal involvement is too much? For social workers, it is important to set boundaries between a personal and professional life. In community projects, I think the boundaries can be more flexible because the social worker's commitment to the project automatically makes them have a stake in the outcome like everyone else. But what is too much personal involvement? If a social worker was facilitating the art project in Wasteland, would a professional boundary be crossed if he or she took Tiao to London? Because it was the artist taking facilitating the project, I think he had different professional boundaries and it was the right decision to make by bringing Tiao with him to London. If it was a social worker though, I am not so sure what to think.

Ownership
The most important aspect of the project, and the reason why it was so successful was the artist letting his subjects take ownership in the project. A community project can only work if the community is involved. As I mentioned before, the artists commitment to the people and the community outweighed any other motives he had in the project, which helped facilitate the empowerment of his subjects. By investing in them and including them in the project, the subjects ultimately saw that they could in fact, "free themselves in the same voluntary ways they entered [working for the trash companies]" (25). Valuing a person's independence and self-determination is a key part of social work practice, and by letting them take ownership in the project and not letting the project become anything other than what it was supposed to be, the artist did well to help these people and help the community around them.

Esteva, G & Prakash M.S. (1998). Grassroots post-modernism: Remaking the soil of cultures. New York, New York: Zed Books.

I empathize with feminism. With its different matrices and dimensions, it is the most inclusive philosophy there is. According the Black Feminist scholar Patricia Hill Collins, "paradigms of race, class, and gender [are] interlocking systems of oppression" (1), which become "one overarching structure of domination" (2). This is very similar to the systems/ecological framework where there are different levels, which act in conjunction, and cause cycles that can lead to oppression. These philosophies match up with how I see the world, but I face a certain type of dissonance everyday.

Comedy is my favorite outlet, but it clashes with feminism and the systems/ecological framework constantly. Here is one of my favorite comedians Patrice O'Neal:

This set is incredibly misogynistic, yet I love it. Anything he really says makes me laugh, but does it come at price? If I believe in feminism, am I hypocrite for liking this? Am I allowed to separate comedy from real life, or does comedy add to the patriarchal oppression of women?

Patrice is just one comic and does not represent comedy as a whole, but comedy itself has problems dealing with women. There really are not enough women comics, and when a women starts off in comedy I believe they are already at a disadvantage because there are already set roles of what type of comic they should be in order to be successful. To be successful, I think they have to be somewhat good-looking, they have to play up their sexuality, and they have to be somewhat shocking (If you try to refute that idea of success, ask yourself if there are women versions of Zach Galifinakis or Brian Posehn). A good example of an up-and-coming women comic who plays right into these limitations is Amy Schumer:

If you can get through that clip of her on the admittedly obnoxious Opie and Anthony radio show, you can see that she adheres to a type of comedy that men would want (in the clip before this one Opie and Anthony talk about how they usually do not like women comics). For a comic, that show is a big deal, and for her to get on there, her act needed to hit those three points that I mentioned before. The gatekeepers that help launch comics like Opie and Anthony, Howard Stern, and all the other late night talk show hosts are all men, which makes comedy ultimately patriarchal. Yet I happen to like Amy Schumer better than other woman comedians who do more low-key and cerebrally funny material like Maria Bamford or Tig Notaro. Is my being aware of these facts enough to excuse myself from falling in line with sexists, or am I implicitly contributing to sexism?

Hopefully newer woman comics like Amy Schumer can become the gatekeepers themselves and provide recognition to other woman comics. This would create competition amongst all stand-up comedians and maybe lead to more of an opportunity for woman to explore and take more risks in the stand-up world.

Source:

Hill Collins, Patricia. "Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination." Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 1990.

Multiculturalism and Deep Ecology

In class, Dr. Gerstenblatt showed us with her example of Mart that people can put aside their differences (racial, religious) when there is a common goal in which everyone has something to gain. Social capital is exchanged and people's frameworks become altered. There's something organic about it because it's a tangible process full of interactions. 

It is necessary for academics to do qualitative research and publish research about the problems people have in society. There should be literature to challenge people and make people from the hegemonic position feel uncomfortable. I knew there was discrimination against Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs, but I did not think it resonated until after 9/11. I did not know there were the Jersey City Dot Busters in the 1980's or the problems with the California Livingstone School District or city council issues because of the Indo-American festival of Navaratri in the mid-90's.

So the problems have been identified by these essays, and I think that is their end goal, but what about solutions? My complaint about these essays are that they rarely look to solutions. They provide context but seldom provide ideas to how we can take this context and forge new ideas that make radical changes. I suggest that community building like the project in Mart and focusing on the natural environment around us might be a first step to getting rid of some the prejudice and institutional oppression throughout society.

The philosophy of deep ecology-beginning in the 1970's- is one where us as humans are on a level playing field with nature where "'there is no bifurcation [or division] in reality between the human and the nonhuman realms'" (Devall; Sessions; 2). Our common denominator as humans are that we are part of the Earth. Every single person has something to gain by ensuring for ourselves that the Earth regulates itself properly. It is an intrinsic value. 

Devall and Sessions point out that:

                 For thousands of years, Western culture has become increasingly obsessed with the idea of dominance:

                       with dominance of humans over nonhuman Nature, masculine over the feminine, the wealthy and

                       powerful over the poor, with the dominance of the West over the non-Western cultures. 

                      (Devall; Sessions; 1)

If we shift our frameworks to where nature comes first and we as humans second, then the idea of dominance slowly goes away. Some of the ways we can apply that to our society today is by reenergizing poor and dilapidated neighborhoods, by creating more public spaces and upholding high standards for public transportation, and by doing more projects similar to the ones in Mart. If we treat our land and our environment around us accordingly, then a balanced multicultural world becomes much easier to achieve. 

Devall; Sessions. "Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered."Gibbs M Smith Inc. Salt Lake City, UT. 1985.

http://www.earthandspiritcenter.org/Course%20pdfs/Class%204_Principles%20of%20Deep%20Ecology_Bill%20Devail.pdf

Mental Illness in Somalia

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/africa/2011/10/07/mental-illness-rampant-somalia?utm_content=blogs&utm_campaign=Trial4&utm_source=twitter&utm_term=socialflow&utm_medium=tweet

I haven't really thought about mental illness in third world countries. It seems like we forget that most citizens of war torn countries not only experience "collateral damage" but also experience a lot of trauma. If so many people in these countries are mentally ill and not being treated, it contributes to the lack of social infrastructure/stasis and the loss of social capital.

The United States and its Classless Society

"The USA is a classless society."

I am not even sure that anyone believes this anymore. During times when there is "prosperity," it might not seem like the differences between classes is that large, but since the recession, it has been pretty clear that our society is split into two groups, the "haves" and the "have nots." A tangible example of how our society is split into classes is the city of Austin. The city is split up where the East, South, and North parts are the working class areas, and the West and Central parts are the upper class. This is not speculation. A person can see it in the upkeep and sizes of the properties of the areas.

Mantsios proves it in a more academic way with facts and statistics. He claims that "one out of five children in the United States under the age of 6 lives in poverty" (149), "3.5 million people experience homelessness in any given year" (149), and that "between 1979 and 2000, the gap in household income between the top fifth and middle fifth of the population rose by 31 percent" (150). These numbers speak for themselves, yet because many of us are so sheltered in some of our communities, we might not realize the disparity.

Another example is Hurricane Katrina. Michael Eric Dyson makes the argument that the "poor had been abandoned by society and its institutions, and sometimes by their well-off brothers and sisters, long before the storm" (186). He sites the statistics that "more than 90,000 people in each of the areas that stormed by Katrina in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama made less than $10,000 a year" (187). Specifically in New Orleans he talks about how the concentrated poverty "fueled metropolitan expansion" (187) and in effect left the residents in those areas with poor schools and poor health. The cycle of poverty persisted because there were little opportunities for those residents. He also notes that African-Americans were not the only ones affected by the storm in these poor areas. Mexican-American (some illegal), Native American, Vietnamese, and Filipino communities were also heavily displaced.

When the storm hit many of these poor communities were left stranded, while the wealthier communities did not suffer as much damage. A telling statistic is that "in New Orleans, 53 percent of poor blacks were without cars" (159). If people did not realize that our society and its institutions were very much based on class after Katrina, then they were clearly misinformed.

North Korea Photojournalism Essay

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/09/recent_scenes_from_north_korea.html

I thought this was really interesting, especially the pictures of Pyongyang. With America being a consumer-driven, post-modern society, it's amazing to see a city of that size with no advertising or any type of commercialism. The contrast is so stark that in its own singular, anachronistic way, Pyongyang seems kind of beautiful (as art).

Social work academics seem to agree on the NASW's main tenets, but where they differ is their approaches on how to uphold these tenets. The conceptualization of empowering an individual versus empowering a collective group seems like nitpicking, but the nuances of these arguments (and further, the one that prevails) will shape our policies in the future.

Pelton represents the theory where "justice is impersonal and nonjudgemental" (Pelton, 433). The approach is that if one meets a client on their level no matter what race, ethnicity, etc. there would be less discrimination collectively. He believes that by taking into account a person's race, ethnicity, or gender when working with that person, we have already set limits on where they will end up and what they will achieve. His evidence is in the United States' welfare policies where he says "differential benefits to individuals in need have based upon what constructed group one presumably belongs to" (433). In a utilitarian sense, our "color-blindness" enables us to reach more people in need by understanding them as individuals first and seeing them as part of a collective second.

Critical Race theorists though, would say that Pelton's "color-blindness" is part of the problem that perpetuates the cycle of poverty and prevents social workers from empowering the most people as possible. The key of this philosophy is the idea that race, ethnicity, and gender are vital to the formula of helping people. Accepting racism as "abnormal and individualistic"(Abrams, Moio, 251) would be shortchanging a person's experiences in life and would also help to perpetuate institutional racism. The macro-to-micro outlook values advocacy for the change of policies for a collective group of people, while also keeping in mind the uniqueness of the individual. If we create change through public policy, then the micro level problems would easier for the social worker to deal with.

I tend to agree with the latter theory in practice, but in the United States today, it seems harder to reach people that way (The irony of that statement is that I might be committing the white-and-privileged-kid-does-not-know-shit-about-the-real-world fallacy the Critical Race paper talks about). The gap between the have and the have-nots is getting wider and by just focusing on certain groups, we are excluding people. Further, I believe that our institutions are changing by not only being discriminatory to certain races, but also to just poor people in general. That might be unfair to the African-American community or the Mexican-American community, or any other minority community who have valiantly struggled (and are still struggling) to get their share of social justice throughout United States' history, but the way our institutions are run now, money and profits trump race, ethnicity, and gender. Hopefully if and when I practice social work, Critical Race theory plays a large part in how I go about my job, but ultimately it seems like our institutions are so entrenched in a racist and for-profit mindset that a macro-to-micro focus will take a lot more energy away from me when I could be directing that energy to help empower another person or client.

Intergenerational Effects of Oppression

Every time I read or hear something about the Japanese internments camps I am astounded at how much of a parallel there was to the Nazi concentration camps with regards to the arbitrary arrests the night of Pearl Harbor, the numbered family identities, the shades drawn down on the buses or trains they were traveling in, and the barbed wire and guard towers surrounding the camps. How the US got away with doing that really is an amazing feat. I think it is appropriate to note though, how much we have moved on as a society by not doing the same thing to Muslims after 9/11 (the Japanese internment camps were only approximately 60 years before).

Although the US does not blatantly oppress minorities like that anymore, oppression of minorities still lies throughout our institutions. Similar to how the Nisei felt that "internment was a 'direct assault on their expectations and identity'" (Nagata, 129), I do not think it would be a major leap to assume economically disadvantaged minorities have similar crises in today's society. Being part of the privileged, white class I have never had to struggle with those ideas. Sure, I have my Jewish-American heritage to think about but living in the Northeast, my identity was never really a problem. Maybe in growing up in Texas as a jew would be different, but the fact is that I would still be a white kid living in America. The next step of researching intergenerational effects of oppression would be comparing how gradual institutional oppression compares to something like an event that defined the Japanese experience. I think the results would be somewhat similar.

Guardian Article on Rick Perry/Austin/Texas

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/04/rick-perry-economic-mirage?CMP=twt_gu

Recently I have argued to my friends and family that right now more than any time in America's history, apathy is at its highest. There are still wars going on in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya even though we as a collective society have identified that these wars are a detriment to our future growth. Corporations are making record profits in a time when unemployment is at 9%. Our journalism institutions are outraged at Wikileaks even though these same institutions are being slowly disassembled by the powers Wikileaks are providing checks against. In theory, the middle and lower classes should be outraged at the exploitative nature of our government and corporations, yet there is not much being done to organize and seriously react. The London Riots were something of a push back, but anarchy only leads to the upper classes feeling reinforced in their views that their privileged ways are more humane. Astonishingly, the people who are organizing in America are the people who qualify as the dominant class in Kirk and Okazawa-Rey's graph. So, what is the problem in America today? Are we implicitly letting the wealthy get away with exploitation? Or are we so socialized to social injustice in America that our apathy is a product of the institutions that make up our society? I hope it is the latter.

In Harro's "Cycle of Socialization," the most important part other than understanding how our institutions and culture socialize us to conform to the dominant culture is the idea that there is a "direction for change" or a "movement towards liberation." In order to start a path toward this liberation, Harro believes that we need "something [to make] us begin to think, to challenge, to question the system." Unfortunately in America, the catalyst to get us to start thinking like that is a neglected and unequal public school system. As the situation stands, the most underfunded school districts are in the most poverty-stricken and oppressed areas. It is no wonder students drop or go on to join gangs because with poorly accommodated school systems and very little opportunity for jobs, kids are alienated and see that education provides them with no future. As a country, we need to value education over profits and see that neither the teachers nor the kids are the problem because poor public schooling is a symptom of a larger institutional problem.

If the public education system has failed minorities as a catalyst for organizing, then an outside influence needs to step up, but who can we/they rally around as inspirational figures if there are a lack of them in our society? It seems that our generation has no Malcolm X's, Martin Luther King Jr.

's, Cesar Chavez's, Muhattama Ghandi's, Harvey Milk's, Gloria Steinem's, James Baldwin's, Spike Lee's, or Chuck D.'s to carry on a tradition of social justice within oppressed and minority groups (Sure, we have President Obama, but how much actual social justice has he provided/inspired during his Presidency? Not all of that is his fault though). This is in part because our education system is so bad and undervalued, but it is also because of the vilification of these types of more "radical" or outspoken people in the media. The vilification not only comes from individuals like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, but it also comes from the larger problem of for-profit media. In today's society, a Spike Lee film or a Public Enemy album does not sell because people do not want to see the harsh reality around them. The majority of the market only wants to watch or listen or read about inconsequential things. Because of this, people who have messages like David Simon (the Wire, Generation Kill, Treme) or Spike Lee or Chuck D. are pushed to the fringes and are not as widely viewed or heard as they should be. 

If we do not have inspirational leaders who provide that catalyst towards a "movement of liberation" coming from education, politics, or art where do we find them? To be honest, I have no clue and would love to hear other peoples' takes on this (although that may be a cop out, I am admittedly cynical myself and feel we are so entrenched in this individualist/capitalist society we will have trouble finding solutions).