Zweig

Policy is essential, but it must be placed in the context of the broadest understanding of how the world works, how our life prospects are shaped, and how we create ad use our great capacity for wealth and community involvement. Introducing class into the national conversation can invigorate the political process and bring new energy and understanding to a broad range of questions, including the continued importance of race and gender as points of tension and needed progress.

Class talk allows us to recall the language of economic and social justice and to revive calls for economic democracy that have been the foundation of progressive social movements for over a hundred years. The corporate agenda has stripped all reference to morality from economic affairs. For the Right, unrestricted markets are all that is relevant in economic matters. This is a core question that progressives must address directly. Class understandings will help us to illuminate and ground the ethical dimensions of our politics and help us imagine and crate organizations, coalitions, and social forces capable of turning back the destructive power of capital and replacing it with values and policies that relieve human suffering and promote the social good.-Michael Zweig, “Six Points on Class”

                I use the last two paragraphs of this piece as an epigraph to this post because I will primarily be addressing this portion of the text. As it is the conclusion one could argue that the main argument of the essay is summarized here. Zweig takes the points he made earlier in the essay and formulates a concise and powerful way of bringing them all together for a strong conclusion. Throughout my reading of the text something didn’t feel right (well, a few things didn’t feel right but I

will primarily focus on one), and it was not until the end that it became glaringly obvious to me: Zweig is, or at least appears to be, a reformist. And, because of my own ideological framework, I cannot get behind Zweig’s general prescription. I do not see the value in “turning back” the destructive power of capital. The text reads as if it is calling for a more conscious and ethical capitalism which is not possible. Capitalism, at its core, is a destructive immoral force. We cannot reform capitalism. If we want to relieve human suffering we need to do away with it entirely.

                Now, one could argue that a destruction of capitalism, particularly in the USA, is idealistic and impossible. I can only say in response that I do not have all of the answers. I am not here to give a complete prescription for what we must do, but I can critique what I have before me. I can know something is wrong and not quite know exactly what to do to fix it/change it (even if I know what the end product should look like, I don’t necessarily have the map for the territory). To poach from Marco McWilliams who devoted this analogy in response to me stating exactly what I’m saying here: I can see that the sink is broken and know that a new sink should be put in, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I know, nor have all of the tools, to go about putting that new sink in. And, just because I may not be able to put the new sink in myself it does not override the fact that I can see that the sink is broken.

                There is no going back to a more ethical time when we are talking about capitalism. Capitalism was never ethical. Capitalism was always about the exploitation of labors. Factor in intersectionality and we have a complete disregard for human life at play. Capital is important, human life and the quality of that life, is not. Policy is like putting a bandaid on a wound that needs to be sutured. Or putting a cast on a leg that needs to be amputated and replaced. It will not give us a new life. It will not give us what we deserve. It will simply make our suffering a little bit less unpleasant. Policy does not speak to the structure enough. Policy works within the structure that’s in place.  

Myths and Constructions--Build on Keith's "Capitalism/Self-Reliance/Drug-Hyperlinks"

                In Keith’s “Capitalism/Self-Reliance/Drug-Hyperlinks” post he states something brilliant while reflecting on the Coontz, Currie, and “Capitalism Hits the Fan” texts. Keith notes that “There are various myths within United States history that we [are] exposed to in our history classes. Depending on your education later in life you either buy into them or you learn that just as everything you are exposed to in life the reality is quite a bit different from what you are taught”. I note that this is brilliant because he is gesturing towards the constructed nature of our history. This is not something that everyone is willing to admit or even see. However, many texts in this course have shown us just that, particularly the Coontz article.

                We are constantly being fed particular myths that we are supposed to believe are fact. We are taught a history that we are supposed to believe is fixed. But history is not fixed. History is relative. People are generally willing to admit this to an extent; they’re inclined to scoff at some of the Southern text books that call the Civil War the “War of Northern Aggression”. But, more often than not, those some people don’t seem to be aware that much of what we read is constructed. So much of the past that we are led to believe is “reality” is not. What is reality, even? Are any one of us so sure? We are constantly reading texts that make it clear to us that our foundation (our history) is actually not what we once thought it was. If our foundation is put into question then shouldn’t our reality be as well?

                We are taught that people pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. That’s how the middle/upper class made it. That’s how the moguls of the past became who they are. But, as Coontz notes in “We Always Stood on Our Own Two Feet: Self-reliance and the American Family”, that is not the case. The middle class family with the picket fence, nice yard, 2.5 kids and a golden retriever didn’t just work hard to get there. There were many subsidies put into place to ensure their mobility, and the reverse is also true. There were many policies put into place to ensure that some people would not be able to experience upward mobility. That is our history. Those are the facts. We are not a country built by hard-working, self-reliant, folks with entrepreneurial spirit. We are a country that was built on community (even if that community had always been exclusionary). Somewhere along the way we lost even that exclusionary community and we are left with a country that believes solely in the individual, not the collective. They believe in the individual so much that they turn a blind eye to the ways in which aid has been received, and is still being received, to help people “better” themselves. 

Waging a Living connection to Media Magic

Waging a Living is a film about the costs of survival. I choose to use the word “survival” because of the weight that such a word carries. Surely we are all “surviving” if we are living, but more often than not when we hear “survival” we think “struggle”. We envision someone who has made it through or is currently trying to make it through hardships that have been thrown their way. That is why I choose to use survival when discussing this film because that’s precisely what these folk are doing. They are trying to live and fight through. They are struggling but they are still with us.

Now, I point out that the film is about the costs of survival because so much of the film deals with the ways in which these folks, and others just like them, are being held between a rock and a hard place. As Barbara, a woman followed in the documentary, says she feels like she is “hustling backwards. The harder I work the harder it gets”. How would the proponents of the bootstrap philosophy argue with that? What would they say in response? Barbara, and the many others like her, are working very hard but because of their positionality things just get worse. Barbara, because of her raise, lost a great deal of aid she was receiving and her rent went up. The amount of money she lost in aid was more than she gained by getting a raise. This is a system that forces people to be “survivors”. They are born into struggle and must constantly fight with every ounce of them, not even necessarily to get a so-called “better life” but to simply exist in the life they have.

People, even those who don’t see themselves as hardcore “bootstrap” philosophers, appear to be blind to the fact that Barbara’s story is all around them. People like Barbara and the other folks in Waging a Living are not unique. In fact, it does us a disservice to think about them simply as individuals. We need to recognize that this is a structural problem. And yet, many people do not see the individuals nor the structure. Why is this? In “Media Magic” Mantsios offers a great explanation. He argues that the American Public “maintain(s) these illusions [about living in an egalitarian society], in large part because the media hides gross inequities from public view. In those instances when inequities are revealed, we are provided with messages that obscure the nature of class realities and blame the victims of class-dominated society for their own plight” (100). We cannot even use this documentary as an example of the media doing the opposite of what Mantsios has described. While Waging a Living is certainly not trying to hide inequities from view it is not enough to counter the countless messages people have taken in over their lifetime. This is why people can watch this documentary and fixate on Barbara’s acrylic nails and the fact that she must spend money to get her nails and hair done as a way of finding a way to feel less sympathy/empathy for Barbara. If people can find a way to feel like a marginalized person has created, or added to, their situation then this allows them to continue to not really see the person’s plight nor the structure behind it. Many people seem to only see those who are struggling long enough to blame them for their struggles before those attempting to survive are rendered invisible again. 

Hooks-Argument

                In “Coming to Class Consciousness” bell hooks describes various aspects of class consciousness as well as classism. She opens with a description of her childhood desires and the ways in which her parents, particularly her mother, would dismiss those desires (especially when these desires would cause a monetary strain on the family). Opening with this allowed the reader to
immediately be clued in on particular family values of hooks’, and it helps the reader to better understand future events (such as her parents disinterest in hooks’ desire to attend Stanford).

                This chapter is not simply memoir style anecdotes upon anecdotes. Although this text is far less theoretical than much of the essays put forth by hooks, we are able to pick up on a lot of characteristics relating to Class (big C class as in the concept). When describing her first White friend at the women’s college she originally attended hooks notes that her fellow working-class friend had not just anger and bitterness towards the more privileged girls but also envy. Hooks notes that “envy was always something I pushed away from my psyche. Kept too close for comfort envy could lead to infatuation and on to desire. I desired nothing that they had” (26).  This passage, as well as a later one which describes her self-hating working-class roommate at Stanford, highlights internalized classism.
The envy that her White friend had was only possible because of an internalized belief that middle/upper class positionality was the superior position. This kind of internalized belief can manifest in a variety of ways. For this particular girl it manifested as envy. For the Stanford roommate it manifested as a passionate desire to “climb-the-ladder” even if that meant putting self-care and safety on the back burner.

                Another moment in which hooks’ addresses internalized classism is when she discusses “class shame”, using the example of her own mother’s refusal to discuss monetary difficulties (28). Much like the manifestation of envy, class shame can only occur when one views their class position as inferior in comparison to other class positions.

                An important aspect of the text is hooks’ discussion of the neo-colonial elite. She rightly points out that there are plenty of Black folk, particularly the “Black elite” who harness the same type of classism and feelings of class superiority that the White hegemonic group possesses. It’s unfortunate that this isn’t brought up until much later in the chapter, I have no doubt it’s meditated on more closely in later chapters but those later chapters are not the topic of discussion. There is so much complexity involved when discussing the neocolonial Black and brown elite, it’s something that deserves a great deal of attention. I appreciate the fact that hooks’ closes with a note on her own need to be self-reflective lest she become a colonized elite herself. 

War on Sex Work

Reading about the ways in which women in the sex work industry are unfairly targeted and harassed by law enforcement agencies came as no surprise to me. Those involved with sex work are often demonized and criminalized, particularly the women involved. I recall reading, about 4-5 years ago, the drastic difference in arrest rates between female sex workers compared to pimps and their johns. Now, in a culture that claims to be anti-sex trafficking you would think that when pimps are involved they would be the number one target. I suppose that the misogynist ideologies of our society tends to trump a supposed desire to be “anti-sex trafficking”.

While sex work can be a choice there are many instances in which it is not, or at least the “choice” isn’t all that clear cut. When addiction* and abject poverty are involved it seems a bit disingenuous to call it a “choice”, as it would appear that particular circumstances limits the amount of options one has. This is a large reason why a “war on sex-trafficking” will never be effectual if there is no genuine “war on poverty”. But, effectiveness is more than likely not actually the goal. It seems that the goal is most likely the continued harassment and marginalization of women. That’s not to say that there hasn’t been great strides when it comes to under-age sex trafficking, but the way in which adult women are treated w(and even under-age women for that matter) when they’re seen as “prostitutes” is deplorable.

The article “The War on Sex Workers” that Deirdre requested we read touches upon something that I find very rarely spoken about, and that is the liberal fetishization of the law. It was hard to hold back from snapping my fingers when I reading the following:

“It’s fascinating that women who claim to be feminists” are so willing to use the law in this way, says Ann Jordan. Supporting anti-prostitution enforcement requires them to call in the muscle of “all these institutions that have oppressed women forever,” she notes. “But they are willing to use the law to coerce a particular kind of behavior from women.”

  It is rare to see an acknowledgment of the inherent problems when activists turn to the law to right certain wrongs. If the structure exists as it is now, we should not expect any legislation to be effectual when it comes to particularly communities. If the structure is  built on certain foundational beliefs (such as patriarchy, misogyny, anti-blackness & white supremacy), then we can never hope to see the “law” act justly when it comes to those communities. This is something that many liberals fail to understand because they have spent so long believing that the law can bring justice when in reality it cannot, for exactly the reasons Ann Jordan stated in the quote above and then some. The only thing we should expect from a broken system that is built upon the marginalization of certain folk is for that system to continue to marginalize and oppress. 

*Please take a look at the "Faces of Addiction" photostream I posted earlier in the semester, as well as the related photostreams. 

Annette Lareau's "Watching, Waiting, and Deciding"--Reflection

                At first the discussion of Mrs. Marshall in the Annette Lareau piece “Watching, Waiting, and Deciding when to Intervene: Race, Class, and the Transmission of Advantage” was a bit irritating. The first couple of examples of her intervening just seems a bit much, and appeared to showcase a sense of entitlement that she had and that she was potentially instilling in to her daughters. However, as the article went on I began to question whether that was truly a sense of entitlement at all. A middle-class Black mother may feel as if she can speak up when she feels her children are possibly being discriminated against, her feeling as if she has a voice that can be listened to may be something that’s been socialized thanks to her class standing. But, the act of speaking up in this case does not highlight a sense of entitlement at all. If anything, it speaks to a situation of dispossession. Her children are potentially being discriminated against simply for existing in Black bodies  and the middle-class Black mother probably only sees a few choices. Either allow this potential discrimination to continue and potentially case trauma to the child (or expose the child to a racist world that the mother does not want to child to see quite yet), or speak up and run the risk of being deemed the “Angry Black Woman” or overbearing mother. The mother in this case is more than likely just trying to protect her child for as long as possible from the cruelty that exists in society.

                I only wish that the article was able to explore gender a bit more deeply. There was a brief discussion of the fact that for the families studied the mothers always had their hands in their children’s education far more than the father. It was interesting that this existed across race lines. I could have missed when this was discussed, but is it also the same over class lines? When we find something so prevalent that crosses several lines of “classes” (in the ‘group’ sense) does that make it easier for us to pinpoint the root of the issue? In this case the argument could easily be made that it’s clearly an issue with roots in gender difference/gender roles, because of the way in which the phenomena exists across race lines and potentially across class lines. 

I read chapter four, conclusion and 7
(writing here so I remember!!!!)

Black Wealth, White Wealth: Quotes

     I suppose I should preface this post by pointing out that while I may seem to have criticisms of a lot of the readings that does not mean that I find them to be without value. I've enjoyed most of the readings, and have found great value in much of what we've looked at.

     This reading, in particular, has left me feeling incredibly uneasy. Black Wealth, White Wealth co-authored by Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro, had a few moments that felt contradictory to me. At times it seemed to recognize the ways in which Black folk in the US have been, and continue to be, marginalized and oppressed in an anti-Black, White Supremacist society. But then, and mainly at points where they cite (in a praising manner to boot) William Julius Wilson, it seems like they devalue the power of racial discrimination and the ways in which it presently affects the life of Black folk. Because these are the moments that caused me the most difficulty while reading the text, these will be the moments that I will focus on in this blog post as it seems less crucial to spend time focusing on points I understood and agreed with.

But, first:

     Are we surprised at the lack of inherited wealth in the Black community? Especially when we currently live in a time where we are trying to move “beyond” race without truly confronting our history? We will forever be haunted by the ghosts of the past if we continue this foolish hope of moving “beyond” it. Is it a surprise that repression of the Black communities continues, although through somewhat different means? Same ends, though. Different means, same ends.

     It is possible that the first several pages ruined the rest of the text for me. For no matter how far away I got from page 7 my mind still went back to it, thinking “how could these authors support such a statement? How could they provide it without comment? How can I consider the rest of the arguments when they are potentially working from a destructive framework?”

The passage that I am referring to is on page 12 (.pdf page 7). They introduce an incredibly problematic William Julius Wilson quote by saying he provides an “eloquent and influential...” statement:

The argument for class, most eloquently and influentially stated by William Julius Wilson in his 1978 book The Declining Significance of Race, suggests that the racial barriers of the past are less important than present-day social class attributes in determining the economic life chances of black Americans…Discrimination and racism, while still actively practiced in many spheres, have marginally less effect on black American’s economic attainment than whether or not blacks have the skills and education necessary to fit in a changing economy. In this view, race assumes importance only as the lingering product of an oppressive past. As Wilson observes, this time in his Truly Disadvantaged, racism and its most harmful injuries occurred in the past, and they are today experienced mainly by those on the bottom of the economic ladder (12, emphasis mine)

…

     Immediately after reading that I took to Facebook and shared that passage with a like-minded friend of mine. He immediately replied with “good old wjwilson” and when I said I hadn’t heard of him before he pointed out that I was probably better off before. This man, William Julius Wilson, is considered by many to be the leading sociologist on race and these are the kinds of arguments he puts forth? That certainly makes me worried for Sociology as a discipline.

     Even now, several days after having read that particular portion, it’s difficult for me to calm the rage brewing inside so that I may adequately express by disfavor with this excerpt. The problem is….where do I even begin? The statement itself is easily read as contradictory to anyone with even an iota of critical race theorizing capabilities. Discrimination and racism is exactly WHY many Blacks do not have the “skills and education necessary to fit in a changing economy”. To imply that anti-black racism is primarily something of the past is incredibly naïve, and perhaps willfully ignorant. If anti-Black racism was truly a thing of the past, if we as Black folk in America today are simply living in this society feeling the residue of past racial discrimination, there would be far less Black death at the hands of the state. There would no longer exist job discrimination on the basis of race. Michelle Alexander would never have had to write The New Jim Crow. And why does she call the prison system The New Jim Crow? Because we have not attended to our past and due to that we are fated to continue to exist within a cycle of repetition! And how can we even begin to attend to our past when “leading sociologists” like Wilson refuse to acknowledge what is happening (what is TRULY happening) in there here and now?!

Race assumes importance only as the lingering product of an oppressive past.

I just can’t even begin to address that sentence. The steam coming out of my ears makes it nearly impossible to type a full sentence.

     The majority of these chapters discuss the ways in which middle-class Black folk are essentially treated as if they are “lower-class”. This is how race is classed (and one could make an argument for ways in which class is also raced, but I will not attend to that at this moment). Sure, “racism and its most harmful injuries occurred in the past, and they are today experienced mainly by those on the bottom of the economic latter” (12). But racism and its PLENTY harmful injuries are still occurring in the here and now, while we continue to be haunted by the past, and this is experienced by all Black folk regardless of where they fall on the economic ladder. But, let’s not forget, regardless of where they fall on the economic ladder they might as well be at the very bottom rung of said ladder.

     It is beyond my comprehension why people cannot see the ways in which class is used as a tool to further anti-Black racism and Black suffering. Why must we try and separate these things, or to place class as the heavier weight? It’s unproductive and it ignores the specificity of Black suffering.

Later, on page 34, Wilson appears again to help bolster the authors’ argument:

The emphasis on race creates problems of evidence. Especially in the contemporary period, as William Wilson notes in The Declining Significance of Race, it is difficult to trace the enduring existence of racial inequality to an articulate ideology of racism. The trail of historical evidence proudly left in previous periods is made less evident by heightened sensitivity to legal sanctions and racial civility in language.

Of course, the long list of Black bodies killed by state sanctioned “human hunters” (Martinot and Sexton, “The Avant-Garde of White Supremacy”) simply for existing in their bodies, doesn’t reflect an “articulate ideology of racism”. It seems as if what is needed are signs saying “Whites Only!!” and lynching during lunch breaks for some people to see that anti-Black racism is very much still alive and strong as ever. In response all I can do is quote at length a portion of Steve Martinot and Jared Sexton’s “TheAvant-Garde of White Supremacy”:

Under conventional definitions of the government, we seem to be restricted to calling upon it for protection from its own agents. But what are we doing when we demonstrate against police brutality, and find ourselves tacitly calling upon the government to help us do so? These notions of the state as the arbiter of justice and the police as the unaccountable arbiters of lethal violence are two sides of the same coin. Narrow understandings of mere racism are proving themselves impoverished because they cannot see this fundamental relationship. What is needed is the development of a radical critique of the structure of the coin (170).

I quoted this particular passage in response because of the way in which Oliver and Shapiro seem to imply that “legal sanctions” and “racial civility in language” somehow works to make the impact of racism less felt. And the fact that the majority of this reading consists of examples of how policy has worked to discriminate and oppress Black folk, but then they also seem to champion the ways in which policy can help. No. We don’t need policy. What we need is a radically new structure or else we will continue to play out the same exact story again and again. 

Why do I spend so much time discussing violence? Because State violence and the quotidian nature of racism that Black folk face every single day has a direct impact on their class status and the way in which they are viewed and treated in society. The fact that these chapters do not even begin to address the prison system or other forms of state violence greatly disappoints me. And it shouldn't just be a chapter in the book. It is relevant to many of the points that they bring up (uhm, hellooo, being a "felon" definitely has an impact on the accumulation of wealth, and that's just one easy way they could've tied the prison system in) and yet they are incredibly quiet on the issue. The text was originally written in the late 90s, and so it would be plenty relevant to them to have mentioned these things. And yet they didn't. Perhaps they threw it all into one chapter, but a "very special episode: chapter edition" is not good enough. We can't have a truly productive and full conversation of Black suffering and Black class/racial inequality if we ignore the points I have brought up. 

About 1/3 through the article.
Already fired up for my blog post
Get ready.
:)

Barbara Jensen's "The Invisible Ism" and "Belonging Versus Becoming"

I’m not quite sure how to properly label this post so I’m leaving it blank. I think this will be somewhat of a reflection post, even though it’s not on our list of post formats to choose from.

I found the two chapters assigned to us from Barbara Jensen’s Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America to be quite…interesting. I definitely learned a few new things that I thought were fascinating (like the entire section on language), but there were also a few moments where I just couldn’t completely feel (to know!) what she was saying.

Before I completely dive in I’d like to first just quote her definition of class and classism, mostly for my own benefit so that I have her definition written in a somewhat permanent space, but also for my peers’ benefit for anyone who has not yet been able to read the text or who simply missed it:

Class is an injustice that says some Americans deserve much more time, leisure, control, and far more financial reward than others. Classism is the set of myths and beliefs that keep those class divisions intact, that is, the belief that working class cultures and people are inherently inferior and that class itself demonstrates who the hardest workers and the rightful winners are (31, emphasis Jensen’s).

I found her definition of class/classism to be quite interesting because it differs a bit from what we’ve heard before. Not so much the classism part, but definitely the class definition. With a quick glance it would also seem as if her definition of class was created simply to bolster her definition and argument surrounding classism. But, if we are to think about it a little longer, it becomes much clearer that her definition of class is not there simply to serve the purpose of her argument about classism but rather to highlight the inequalities inherent in a system that stratifies in such a manner. Class is hierarchical, because of that ordering it means that some folk will be on top (superior) and others will be on the very bottom (ultimate inferiors). To have, and embrace, such a system that categorizes in such a way is to embrace inequality. That is what capitalism does. It produces, and embraces, inequalities. It thrives on inequality. For if there were no lower classes then how could there be a capitalist class? The capitalist class needs the working class because they need a class to manipulate, exploit, and dominate.

Later in the same chapter (“The Invisible Ism”) Jensen goes on to posit what she believes to be the most “common form of classism [which] is solipsism, or my-world-is-the-whole-world”. Of course this is one of the most common, and pervasive, forms of classism. It is a necessary tool in order to ensure that class, beyond simple economics, exists. I made a note of this in my last blog post: colonizers are like viruses. Generalize a bit and switch in “oppressor” for “colonizer”. The key to ensuring that the life of the oppressor will continue is to replicate the oppressor’s beliefs in the bodies of those outside of the oppressing class. The oppressing/dominant/ruling/capitalist class is a statistical minority! They cannot continue to oppress if they have not caused others to internalize classist beliefs. In order to insert these new beliefs the oppressor must erase what once was. If the structure is created to suit the middle-class, then others have to either adapt or not play the game. In order to adapt they must shed some of their own identity so that they may take on some of the oppressor’s identity. This is erasure. Solpsism causes erasure of identity and deracination.

What I find a bit funny, in an interesting way, is that while Jensen brings up, and condemns, a concept that brings my mind to erasure, she somewhat commits the act herself. She continuously mentions “ethnic identity” or “racial identity” but never really spends any time there. And I don’t expect her to, but that’s because I am jaded. However, her attempts at inclusion, at least in these two chapters, often stop after she makes note of “ethnic identity”. She often continues to make broad-based statements about the working-class without a true acknowledgment that most of her studies and observations (or at least the theoretical perspective that she is using to analyze these observations) are not inclusive of POC. Perhaps there was a general disclaimer in the introduction section of the book that I may have missed, as I did not go above and beyond and read more than what was assigned (although I do try to read introductions/prefaces, but I just did not have the time).

To give an example, as so far I have mostly been speaking in generals, let us turn to chapter 3 (“Belonging Versus Becoming”):

For those who cross the class divide, almost everything about the process asks you to forget what you knew before. How does one speak of, or grieve, a place that isn’t even on the map? Invisible, voiceless, unacknowledged—how does one remember what to remember? (53).

Jensen had the perfect opportunity at this point to discuss the way in which race is classed, and the multiple marginalities when it comes to class and people of color. For people of color crossing class lines even more must be forgotten (although it is not truly possible). For those whose skin marks them as being of a lower class even more must be stripped in order to really cross class lines. And then the question remains as to whether they can ever truly do so. For in the end it doesn’t matter quite how much agency one speaks with, or whether they can quote Derrida at length; they will forever walk around with a blatant class marker, one that cannot simply be unlearned or hidden away back home.

It wasn’t until a bit later in the chapter that the realization that perhaps Jensen is one of those ‘post-racial’ people popped into my head (she’s clearly not. She’s simply just not the best at inclusivity, either). On page 62 Jensen states that “when the working class has organized for better economic treatment, as it often has in American history, it has done so in spite of deep ethnic, geographic, gender, and color differences, forging a new and larger sense of ‘us’”. Now…I just didn’t know how to take that. It seems purposefully naïve. And through that naivety she also erases the difficulties of past mass class movements where “togetherness” just wasn’t happening, or at least wasn’t happening without a huge fight and many deaths and even more jailed. It’s as if she is purposefully false-remembering the past, and unfortunately by doing so she commits an act of erasure. I’m not the most well-read on class movements but recently I have been reading Robin D.G. Kelley’s Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depressing. At times reading about the ways in which the White southerners, those of whom would benefit very much from the Communist Party and others like them at the time, were filled with such spiteful hatred just pained me. There was no “us” in their minds, at least not a broader class “us”. That is not to say that the Alabama Communists were not able to come together…eventually. But to put it as simply as “when the working class has organized…in spite of deep ethnic…and color differences, forcing a new and larger sense of ‘us’” erases the difficulties and actual BLOOD shed to make it happen. Of course, there is only so much room in a book so I may be unfairly criticizing Jensen here.

My last critique is less of a critique and moreso genuine confusion. How is it that Jensen could attribute the epistemological framework of what is essentially “connected knowing” (what she calls “emotional” knowledge/wisdom) to being a phenomenon of the working-class? It just seems to not account for things like socialized ways in which the genders are taught to learn. In “Procedural Knowledge: Separate and Connected Knowing” Mary Field Belensky, et al., posit that:

                        Separate and connected [are used] to describe two different conceptions or experiences of the self, as essentially autonomous (separate from others) or as essentially in relationship (connected to others). The separate self experiences relationships in terms of “reciprocity,” considering others as it wishes to be considered. The connected self experiences relationships as “response to others in their terms” (236).

Does this not sound quite familiar to the ways in which Jensen separates the epistemologies of the working and middle class? And yet Belenky et al stated that “separate and connected knowing are not gender-specific. The two modes may be gender-related. It is possible that more women than men tip toward connected knowing and more men than women toward separate knowing” (236). This is due to socialization. Once things are engrained in us enough they begin to seem natural (they are naturalized). Perhaps this, instead of class differences, explains why the couple she mentions on pg 60 were having such trouble. The husband wanting the wife to use more words and just be explicit with her feelings/thoughts whereas the wife is communicating but in the way that she has been taught to communicate. Maybe it was a coincidence that Jensen used the genders in such a way for this example, but by doing so it makes it harder to see whether the wife communicates in such a way because she was raised working class or because she has been socialized to be a connected/emotional learner/communicator because of her gender.

Just some things to think about! I did enjoy this text. So far this is my favorite reading of the semester.

Work Referenced

 Belenky, Mary F., Blythe McVicker Clinchy, Nancy Rule Goldberger, and JillMattuck Tarule. "Procedural Knowledge: Separate and Connected Knowing."Just Methods: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Reader. By Alison M. Jaggar.Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2008. 235-47. Print.

Jensen, Barbara. Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America. Ithaca: ILR,2012. Print.

Kelley, Robin D. G. Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the GreatDepression. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1990. Print.

David Graeber's "Debt" and Colonialism (Quotes/Build)

Where to start? I could have begun by explaining how these loans had originally been taken out by unelected dictators who placed most of it directly in their Swiss bank accounts, and ask her to contemplate the justice of insisting that the lenders be repaid, not by the dictator, or even by his cronies, but by literally taking food from the mouths of hungry children. Or to think about how many of these poor countries had actually already paid back what they’d borrowed three or four times now, but that through the miracle of compounded interest, it still hadn’t made a significant dent in the principal. I could also observe that there was a difference between refinancing loans, and demanding that in order to obtain refinancing, countries have to follow some orthodox free-market economic policy designed in Washington or Zurich that their citizens had never agreed to and never would, and that it was a bit dishonest to insist that countries adopt democratic constitutions and then also insist that, whoever gets elected, they have no control over their country’s policies anyway (3)

                This quote, and the next quote to follow, are from the beginning of the chapter when Graeber described an encounter he had with a so-called activist attorney. The quotes presented here will be in reverse order, a deliberate choice of mine to aid in my analysis. In her blog “Debt and ‘Morality’” Deirdre quotes the same paragraph and begins her analysis by calling this economic colonialism. I both agree and disagree with this label. I have found that nowadays people often use qualifiers before leveling a critique of a system and labeling it colonialism. I think this has to do with the mindset that colonialism is a part of the “colonial period” and the “colonial period” is over. However, Graeber’s excerpt above shows that colonialism is not over, not even close. So yes, it is economic colonialism, and the reason it is economic colonialism is because it is simply colonialism; the economic manipulation and domination is a given. This is a point I feel Graeber could have made a bit more strongly. A bit later on in the chapter he does note that un-coincidentally many of these “third world” nations that are falling into this debt trap are ones that were ‘former’ colonial entities (5). My critique is that he could have been more explicit: these are not simply former colonial entities, these are countries that are still fighting colonialism to this day!

                In “TheWeapon of Theory” Amilcar Cabral offers definitions of colonialism and neocolonialism. He states:

the first [form of imperialist domination] is direct domination, by means of a power made up of people foreign to the dominated people (armed forces police, administrative agents and settlers); this is generally called classical colonialism or colonialism. [The second form] is indirect domination, by a political power made up mainly or completely of native agents; this is called neocolonialism (7) [emphasis Cabral's]

The first definition is one that most people are familiar with and the one that they think of when they hear the word “colonialism”. Unfortunately, the second form of imperialist domination, and the overall nuances of colonialism, is less familiar to most. I would make the argument that neocolonialism is simply a branch of colonialism, and so a colonized entity can have elements of both forms of domination. In truth, in order to have the latter the first must be in place. For the only reason that a native force would engage in this form of imperialist domination is because they have identified with their foreign colonizers and are thus doing the work of their colonizers. Do we not see, then, that the unelected dictators that Graeber mentions are simply doing the work of the empire? I will quote another passage of Cabral, one that is more obviously related to what we are discussing:

The so-called policy of ‘aid for undeveloped countries’ adopted by imperialism with the aim of creating or reinforcing native pseudo-bourgeoisies which are necessarily dependent on the international bourgeoisie, and thus obstructing the path of revolution (9)

Colonizers are like viruses. They infect the host by implanting their own ideologies and multiplying. Because this is the tactic, the original colonizers need not still remain in the host, for they have already replicated and turned native bodies into mirror-images of themselves.

On page two Graeber notes that:

The IMF then stepped in [to the Third World debt crisis] to insist that, in order to obtain refinancing, poor countries would be obliged to abandon price supports on basic foodstuffs, or even policies of keeping strategic food reserves, and abandon free health care and free education; how all of this had led to the collapse of all the most basic supports for some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on earth. I spoke of poverty, of the looting of public resources, the collapse of societies, endemic violence, malnutrition, hopelessness, and broken lives.

After reading these two quotes I would be positively shocked if even a moderately-informed person would try to argue with me as to whether or not colonialism still exists and is showing itself through the “Third World debt crisis”. This is how the virus of colonialism works! Do you not see how in order to “fix” the debt, the IMF is suggesting that forms of socialized structures must be abandoned and that these nations most adopt “democratic constitutions” (3). In this way, democratic constitutions=Capitalist constitutions.  The virus eradicates what was once in place and replaces it with its toxicity. Look at the Tonton Macoutes in Haiti for example. Native forces? Perhaps. They were native forces trained by US military, and funded by the US government. This is how modern imperialist domination works. It creates particular rules concerning debt, enforces these rules in inhumane ways, and uses the debt leverage as a way to further erode “third world” nations. 

Mantsios' "Media Magic"-Hyperlink

                In “Media Magic” Gregory Mantsios argues that the mainstream media works to steer the class narrative in a direction favored by the ruling class. Throughout his essay Mantsios notes the ways in which the media that people are consuming provide a skewed look at poverty and wealth in America. Early in the essay he states that “we maintain these illusions [about living in an egalitarian society], in large part, because the media hides gross inequities from public view. In those instances when inequities are revealed, we are provided with messages that obscure the nature of class realities and blame the victims of class-dominated society for their own plight” (100). The first third of the essay Mantsios backs up this argument by providing examples of how the media clouds the true narrative of poverty into one that portrays the impoverished as undeserving (of help, although deserving of their social status), parasitic, and generally unpleasant. He then goes onto to note the ways in which the media makes people, middle and working class people, believe that they are a part of the wealthy class, or at least believe that they have more commonalities with the wealthy class than with working-class or poor folk.

                Mantsios spends a lot of time using the news media to support his arguments. While reading this essay I began to wonder what shows on television now serve to support the arguments Mantsios puts forth in this essay, and furthermore if there were any nuances to the media’s portrayal of poverty that Mantsios glides over. At some point while reading the essay the show “2 Broke Girls” popped into my head. I began to wonder what exactly is it about those girls that would make them “broke” and therefore more likeable as opposed to “poor”, and thus undeserving, parasitic, etc. Mantsios spends a lot of time talking about the ways in which we, as media consumers, are tricked into identifying with the wealthy and scorning the poor, but he doesn’t spend much time discussing the more subtle ways in which the media works to bolster the us-vs-them mentality (them being the poor, us being…everyone else). I would argue that at times the media does have varied representation, particularly in film and television, but not varied enough to show an accurate representation of the class-landscape of the States. This brings me back to my question of what is the difference between “broke” and “poor”. As that question danced around my brain I was reminded of an article I saw on Jezebel last month about the very same thing (being “broke” vs being “poor”). This article was a summary of a longer (and better) article found on The Nation called “What ‘Girls’ and ‘Shameless’ Teach us About Being Broke, and Being Poor”. I don’t watch either of the shows that Nona Aronowitz uses for her article, but her explanation of the two protagonists’ lifestyles answered my question on what the difference between “broke” and “poor” was in our dominant discourse. “Broke”, what the media chooses to focus on when it deigns to attempt class representation, is basically what a middle-class college student is. It is a temporary position brought upon by life-choices (choosing to work at an artsy non-profit, choosing to attend an expensive liberal arts university and not picking up a side job) and the broke person can often be bailed out by family or have some sort of support system. If you are “poor”, however, your life-chances and opportunities are very different. There is no family support system to bail you out when things get tough. Eating ramen and black beans every night isn’t something you’ll look back at one day with fond memories. If you’re “poor” you are looked at like lazy scum when in reality you are working as many jobs as mouths you have to feed (for example). Media tends to not look at “poor” people, unless it’s to criticize, mock, or provide paternalistic sympathy. The media will, however, give us a few shows about broke people because those broke people generally come from middle-class households and have something aspirational about them. They can serve to be our motivation, “look, so-and-so, is getting her life together, so can I!”

                I feel like there’s something there in the narrative of “broke vs poor”. It would have been interesting to see Mantsios tackle that and other, more nuanced, ways in which the media manipulates the image of class in America.  

Faces of Addiction

I stumbled upon an amazing photostream today, it's called Faces of Addiction. Really powerful images. Here's the photographer's description of the album:

‎"The stories of addicts in the Hunts Point neighborhood, the poorest in all of New York City. I post people's stories as they tell them to me. What I am hoping to do, by allowing my subjects to share their dreams and burdens with the viewer and by photographing them with respect, is to show that everyone, regardless of their station in life, is as valid as anyone else. Its easy to ignore others. By not looking, by not talking to them, we can fall into constructing our own narrative that affirms our limited world view. "

Kozol-Quotes

                Jonathan Kozol’s Amazing Grace is a wonderful example of a text that depicts racial chattel slavery in its afterlife. Perhaps we could address this text from merely a class standpoint but that would be to do the people Kozol mentions, and the other people like them that they represent, a great disservice. For it is the intersection of class and race that created the circumstances present in Kozol’s account. Kozol paints an incredibly bleak and despondent picture for his readers. The people in his story live a life that no one should have to live; a life that, if it were presented without certain details, people would more than likely assume took place in an “underdeveloped” nation as opposed to the “Great US of A”. In reality, as we can see from the text, these lives and stories very much do take place in the United States. I would argue that the history of the States makes these stories incredibly unsurprising. The past actions of the U.S. bleed into the present and work to create communities that seem more like fictive dystopias than real communities in New York (or California, or Mississippi…the list goes on).  

                Before I continue with this post I want to make it very clear: do not fall prey to poverty porn. Very often people will read accounts like these and begin to pity the people they read about. It becomes a sort of paternalistic ‘empathy’, one that works to dehumanize the folks that the readers supposedly care about. These people live lives that we see as depressing, and often times they certainly do as well (which we can see in several of the conversations Kozol recounts for us). However, there are certainly moments of happiness, moments of love and glory, which helps to make the tough times easier. I won’t spend too much time on this point, but I will direct y’all to Nikki Giovanni’s fantastic poem “Nikki Rosa” in which she addresses this.

                Hopelessness was a recurrent theme in Kozol’s piece, although it was not always explicitly stated as such. I personally do not see “hopeless” as an incredibly negative word which is why I feel comfortable using it so frequently in this analysis. For hopelessness can, at times, be the biggest motivator for resistance. Very often it is when we feel like our circumstances cannot get any worse that we become ready for revolutionary action. Sadly, that is not always the outcome (as we see in this text) but it can be, and this is something that I think we should always keep in mind.

                On page five Kozol notes that “in 1991, 84 people, more than half of whom were 21 or younger, were murdered in the precinct”.  This particular statement is salient because of the age that he uses as a marker. Twenty-one. Homicide is the leading cause for young Black males. It is a common adage in the Black community that a Black man should be grateful to make it past 21. This idea is evident in several hip-hop songs as well. In “ADHD” Kendrick Lamar, 23, states “Got a high tolerance when your age don’t exist”. In "Murder to Excellence" Jay Z notes “And they say by 21 I was supposed to die, so I’m out here celebrating my post-demise”. Lastly (for our purposes, although you can certainly Google and find many more examples),  in "So Appalled" Pusha T brags “CNN said I’d be dead by 21, Blackjack, I just pulled an ace”. In all of these cases (except, perhaps, Lamar) these Black men are celebrating, somewhat bitterly, the fact that they beat the odds. They survived past 21, oftentimes considered a feat in some parts of the Black community, like the community depicted in the Kozol text.

                Kozol spends a decent amount of time discussing the waste incinerator in the St Ann’s neighborhood. The incinerator “burns…‘red-bag products’…The waste products of some of these hospitals…were initially going to be burned at an incinerator scheduled to be built along the East Side of Manhattan, but the sitting of a burner there had been successfully resisted by the parents of the area because of fear of cancer risks to children” (7). Lo and behold, the incinerator wound up in the “ghetto”. It is not that the parents did not protest this, but rather their protestations were not taken into account, for their lives were not valuable enough to factor into the equation. The cancer risk that was a danger to the East Side Manhattan children seems to no longer be a problem when the children become those who live near Cypress Avenue.  This is what I would call violence. When talking about the trouble that she needs to go through in order to get her welfare re-instated Mrs. Washington notes that she “feel[s] like somebody beat [her] up” (20). Mrs. Washington feels that way because somebody did beat her up. Society is constantly beating her, her neighbors, and their children up. This is state sanctioned violence!

                To end this post on a depressing note (or, perhaps, perversely optimistic), I will quote the last page of the text. Kozol quotes David Washington as saying, when talking about the drug dealers and their deadly new heroin, “It’s like [the drug dealers are] saying, ‘Come on over here. I’ll show you how to end your life’” (24). Depressing, yes? Yes. However, there is this strange perverse beauty in it. Before you all think me to be sick and depraved let me first draw your attention to the various forms of slave resistance. Suicide was often a form a resistance that slaves, particularly those of the Igbo tribe, undertook. And it wasn’t exactly an act of desperation but rather an act of true rebellion and love. The Igbo, for example, believed that in death they would be returned back (flying Africans!) to their homeland to live with their ancestors; their loved ones. The perversely optimistic way of looking at the acts of suicide happening in modern-day America would be to view them as subconscious forms of resistance bred by hopelessness and desperation. For the shackles could not be cast off in this life, so perhaps it may be better to return to the ancestors. Certainly a reach, but sometimes when reading bleak texts like this Kozol piece even perverse optimism is welcome.

Works Cited

Kozol, Jonathan. Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation. New York: Crown, 1995. Print.

Image from Anisfield-Wolf

Ciao!

Hi, I'm Andrea M. Sterling. I am the "Minister of Information" of a local community organization known as the Providence Africana Reading Collective. Providence Africana Reading Collective (PARC) is a learning community dedicated to advancing liberation through education. PARC takes as its core concern the critical engagement of emancipatory elements developed out of an Africana epistemology, and which structure African and African Diasporic theory, politics, and history. You can find out more about PARC by "liking" the Facebook page or checking out the website (and it's a tumblr so you can follow it as well!).  We meet most Sundays at Tea in Sahara on the East Side of Providence. I more than likely will post some of the events on this blog interspersed with my talking point class posts and whatnot.

During break I continued to work (Three Sisters on Hope Street) as well as organize and meet with PARC. Spent sometime with friends who came home from their schools in other states, hung out with the beau, basically just had a laid back few weeks.

I am a Gender & Women Studies and Africana Studies double major. I am taking this class partially because it is a requirement but also because I find it to be quite interesting. I'm not well versed on class matters (ha?) and hope to learn a lot in this course. 

When I'm not in class I work, spend time with PARC, the beau; and friends; read, and for the next year I will be researching and putting together a substantial piece of work for my independent study project. Not the most exciting life but it satisfies me.