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