YoungVoteTheYoungVoteTheYoungVoteTheYou

Do You Know Them?

The Sisters of the Revolution performing some damn fine poetry on Apollo, late 60s. We need more of this.

Misinformation and Education

The first meeting of my Intro to Women's Studies course commenced yesterday. Before I walked through the door I assumed, wrongly so, that I would learn no new concepts in this class (I always feel like my brain is at the brink of exploding with conceptual diarrhea), and I would instead soak up all the factual information that I possibly could - which woman did ____, how many women went through ___, how many women died from _____. A pre-conception if there ever was one.
I suppose that the first thing I felt I could take away from the class (the FIRST class, so dayyuuum) and use in my spare with Republican dinner guest is the effect of misinformation on the conceptual. 
The professor asked "Who was the first African-American to run for president of the U.S.?" Surprise! It wasn't Barack Obama. Surprise! It wasn't Jesse Jackson, although one woman sitting by me was pretty intent upon Jesse Jackson. Well, I knew it was Shirley Chisholm, 1972, on a few tickets across the US. I spend a lot of time on Wikipedia, k? You would assume this is the factual and not the conceptual? "Its another fact we can just pile on the fact-mobile." But it isn't just a fact that Shirley Chisholm was the first Black-American to run for president on a major-party ticket, nor is it only factual that she is a woman.
These are only facts:

Ants are social insects of the family Formicidae
Martha Washington was born on Chestnut Grove Plantation on June 2, 1731
The Walk Disney Concert Hall is located at 111 South Grand Avenue

These facts do little or nothing to the way(s) in which we conceptualize or re-conceptualize society. On the other hand, the fact that Shirley Chisholm was the first Black-American to run for president of the US on a major ticket and the fact that she is identified as a woman and the fact that she was a schoolteacher and the fact that she was the child of immigrant parents and the fact that she graduated from Brooklyn College- these are all facts that, when known, force us to vastly re-conceptualize what is generally accepted in society:  racism, sexism, classism, and anti-Immigrantism.They force us to re-conceptualize because they blatantly contradict pre-conceived notions of society which we received when we were very young by seemingly authoratative adults.
Unfortunately, as I learned, the vast majority of the class, many of whom were Black and female, didn't know who Shirley Chisholm even was let alone that she ran for president in 1972. When I came to think about it, I learned about the damn thing on the Internet. Come to think of it, I've learned most things of importance on the Internet. So what did I learn in primary school:

George Washington was the first president of the United States
George Washington cut down a damn cherry tree
George Washington was a white, straight, Christian, war hero

I think the question at hand is: who does it empower to have access to this information?  Further, how much did it empower the Black-American, Brooklyn College-educated, women with immigrant parents to learn this piece of information?
Does the phenomenon by which we are systematically denied information in primary school, which would otherwise help us contradict large racist, sexist, classist, and anti-Immigrantism structures, even have a name?
It does: Disinformation and Misinformation.
The Washington Post has an article:
"In experiments conducted by political scientist John Bullock at Yale University, volunteers were given various items of political misinformation from real life. One group of volunteers was shown a transcript of an ad created by NARAL Pro-Choice America that accused John G. Roberts Jr., President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court at the time, of "supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber."

A variety of psychological experiments have shown that political misinformation primarily works by feeding into people's preexisting views. People who did not like Roberts to begin with, then, ought to have been most receptive to the damaging allegation, and this is exactly what Bullock found.Democrats were far more likely than Republicans to disapprove of Roberts after hearing the allegation.Bullock then showed volunteers a refutation of the ad by abortion-rights supporters. He also told the volunteers that the advocacy group had withdrawn the ad. Although 56 percent of Democrats had originally disapproved of Roberts before hearing the misinformation, 80 percent of Democrats disapproved of the Supreme Court nominee afterward. Upon hearing the refutation, Democratic disapproval of Roberts dropped only to 72 percent."



For the 6 percent left with flexible thinking: Chisholm won three states, by the by.

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Thou Shalt Not Chick-ify

Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle was recently featured in the New York Times Magazine.
He has a bunch of youtube videos out. One video, titled ““macho man” (with headnoddic background music that is sure to please everyone) explores the complex issues of the ever present chick-ification of the Christian faith. From fuscia walls to sea-foam green interior, present day churches drip with femininity (I hear there are even tampons in most bathrooms, sick)! Sweet bros like John the Baptist and Elijah were total “dudes” and should serve as models for how Christian men should be—they would NOT appreciate the chickification and they are likely shaking there heads at us in heaven. The opposite of dudes are total faggy-fags with sweater vests who sing romantic love ballads to Jesus Christ (you know, like, those songs about wanting to make out withJesus). What can we do about the fact that 60% of Christian church-goers are “chicks” and the 40% of men who attend church are still essentially LIKE chicks (and could be homos)? Where are all the real men??? Don’t worry, Driscoll has an answer—he explains they are at home watching football and being innovative—climbing mountains, making money and working on their trucks (so THAT’S why my father never went to church! He was rejecting the feminized church environment, subverting chick-church culture and climbing the mountains in our backyard!)

Driscoll suggests we find these men and bring them to church. Why are young men so important? Why does “the church need dudes?” Because they know what is up--“they are going to get married, make money, make babies…buy real estate, build companies…they are going to make the culture…if you don’t get the young men, you get nothing.” Bring these innovative mountain climbers to church and the war is won. Other youtube videos to explore: biblical oral sex and is homosexuality a sin?

Note: You must be 17 or over to view most videos.  Its for MATURE and hip audiences only.

Affirmative Action: Self Haterz and Irrational Women

 NPR’s Talk of The Nation recently addressed the issue of affirmative action and how issues of race, class and sex can be negotiated under the Obama administration. Two of the featured guests included Shanta Driver, “chairperson and national spokesperson of By Any Means Necessary, who advocates affirmative action,” andJohn McWhorter, “an author and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who is against affirmative action”. The discussion was mediated/hosted by Neal Conan.

I listened to the pod cast on the subway and got angry when I starting picking up on the fact that Conan interrupts Driver 8 billion times and McWhorter treats her like naughty little infant.

Driver explained how racism only increases when affirmative action is eliminated (especially in higher education) and how she, the daughter of a black man and Indian woman personally benefitted from affirmative action as a Harvard graduate—as a woman and woman of color, she would not have been able to attend Harvard without affirmative action. Similarly, she adds, Obama benefitted from affirmative action, and look where he is today.

She goes on to state that she felt every bit and entitled and worthy of a Harvard education as white students and men. Students of color face challenges in their college application process and the SAT is a flawed system to use because it is bias. As her argument gains momentum, Conan cuts her off—“okay, we get your point there” and turns the discussion to McWhorter.

McWhorter scolds Driver (that bad, bad baby!) for suggesting the SAT favors upper class, white and privileged students—after all, you can search high and low but you will not find one section of the SAT that tests students on vacation homes in Cape Cod or Ladies Luncheon etiquette—the test itself cannot be bias because it doesn’t ask which type of wine to serve with chicken (only white students in their late teens/early 20’s know that answer, duh!) surely, it cannot be benefitting some and failing others. Sure, students of color tend to score lower on the test, but that’s neither here nor there, Driver!

Is it a coincidence that Driver is woman of color? Is it possible that as she started to get “emotional” and “personal” and “irrational” and began to “over-react”  (as women ALWAYS do) she was intentionally silenced?

As for McWhorter, many have deemed him a “hater” and worse, a self hater because he is black. He admits to feeling bullied by other black kids growing up and preferred spending time at home and away from “them .” Simply put, McWhorter thinks African Americans are held back (or hold themselves back) because of "black culture"—they are not held back (by oppressors) because of racism. McWhorter, a man who entered college at the age of 15 after attending private schools and is the son of two Temple University employed parents did not “feel” the racism other people of color felt when “so-called black issues” came up in the 1990’s. And if he did not feel this racism (as he was playing the piano, listening to spanish language records and studying in his home) it probably did not exist.

As a professor at University of California-Berkeley, he has an insiders perspective on race in the classroom—he claims more black students than white students blithely turn in incomplete work and choose not to take their education seriously. Black students, according to McWhorter, tend to stretch the truth when it comes to racism--they even make up stories about the racism they face from professors and other students (who think they are stupid and are only there because of affirmative action).

Is McWhorter a hater? A self-hater? Or is he simply a victim of internalized racism and oppression???? A great book on this topic is Beverly Daniel Tatum’s book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?