Black History Month!: Important Black Women Quiz

(quiz link is at the bottom of the post)

It is almost February, the shortest month of the year, so you know what that means . . . Black History Month!

(this amazing image is unattributed -grr- comes from here)

As long time readers know, last year I did a post on African-American feminists as part of my multicultural feminism(s) series (see sidebar for other multiculti feminisms links). I also decided to celebrate Female Presidents of African descent and key figures in African American women’s political history with a pictorial post at the end of black history month 2008. Despite the later having very little accompanying text, it was one of the most widely read pieces on the old blog – widely being defined as a geographic location – and was among one of a handful of posts that steadily brought in readers. Clearly there is a thirst for knowledge about black female political leadership.

Now I’d like to delve a little deeper into that same narrative of African American female political and social justice leadership by doing a series this month on African American women who have changed our political landscape. I have defined the category narrowly in the sense that I have not included female performers while I do think that artists, blues singers, and actresses did help shift the black political landscape by nature of being visible, regularly present, and often contributing subtly and/or pointedly subversive texts to the world. Instead, I am going to focus on African American women who started or participated in political parties and movements, as well as held government offices. And I am going to try and choose people you may be less familiar with, while still honoring those whom we should all already know.

At the same time, since I teach media, I also want to focus this month on African American women Directors, since many of them are unsung heroines of the craft who have given their savings, labor, and personal lives over to breaking into an industry that continues to largely exclude them. I hope that by highlighting them, I will encourage all of you to go out and watch their films an write reviews, encourage others to rent or purchase their films, and help keep their industry afloat in a world that has become less open to African American cinema rather than more open. And while I’m going to represent their craft and commitment here at the spot, I’ll admit that not all of them will be people whose films I have seen in advance; so in a way, this is a challenge for me to go out and do the work that I am hoping to foster with you, my new readers.

So, to start the ball rolling. Here is a quiz on “Important African American Women throughout history.” If you take the quiz, come back and tell us how you did.

for quiz click here

Obama Signs Equal Pay Act & Other Feminist Goings On

(Stephen Crowley/ New York Times)

Its been an odd week in the Obama White House. He started it by started it by ending the Global Gag Rule and ended it by Signing the Lillie Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, otherwise known as the Equal Pay Act. At the same time, President Obama sacrificed over $330 Million dollars in women’s reproductive health funding in order to pass his economic reform plan only to find out that sacrificing women’s reproductive choices still won’t motivate Republicans to look out for low income and unemployed people in need of government assistance.

For the first time in U.S. history, equal pay for equal work is essentially mandatory. Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Act into effect on Jan 29, 2008, which allows for anyone who discovers they have received less pay for the same work can sue up to 180 days after each unequal paycheck; essentially this means that you can sue up  to 180 days after the last time you are paid. Since women and people of color are the most likely to experience pay differentials based on identity discrimination, the Act is an important step forward in Women’s and Civil Rights. It also sends a clear message to employers that long accepted discrimination in the workplace will not be tolerated under the new administration.

Call me naive, but I actually had this moment this morning when I wondered if I would be able to scrap my 75 cents on the $1 lecture when I teach my courses on women and the global economy in the future. I am so used to standing at the front and breaking down the differentials which have Native American women in this country earning as little as 35 cents to the white male $1 and watching my students’ faces fall. How great will it be to one day share with my students that women, of all races, make equal money to men of all races for the same jobs and the same work?!

This decision goes hand in hand with one of Obama’s earliest Presidential decisions to end the Global Gag Rule by executive order on Jan 21, 2009. Many feminists around the world lamented the Bush administration’s decision to re-enforce the Global Gag Rule at a time when so many women were facing war and genocide related physical and sexual assault and HIV/AIDs was rapidly becoming a pandemic (and during the Bush years heterosexual women became the number one infected population).  They also clearly cited how lack of reproductive choice and education (sometimes of any kind whatsoever) has led to a drain on women’s social programs, lowered educational attainment for girls, increased teen pregnancy and domestic and sexual violence, increased spread of certain STDs, increased maternal and child mortality, and increased preventable long term complications like fistulas, as well as structural issues that decrease women’s safety, welfare, and opportunities. While Republicans have been implimenting versions of the Gag Rule since Reagan, Bush’s version was particularly insiduous because it often mandated abstenance only programs at places that offered a full array of women’s health information thus preventing them from discussing safe sex practices and sexual choices as well as reproductive ones.

The Global Gag Rule had lasting negative impact beyond women’s health as well. Not only were countries denied U.S. aid on the basis of offering comprehensive family planning, structural issues such as increased out-migration,  drain on state and local funds, and decreased access and quality of basic services. Government instability was even cited in some areas of Africa whose loss of family planning funds dramatically decreased their successful AIDs prevention programs and through their nations into chaos as whole generations were lost and trust in the government dwindled. These are just some of the major issues impacting nations that were unable to secure funding for successful family planning programs, that included discussion of sexual and reproductive health, women’s safety including from domestic and sexual violence, and child rearing and mother-child health courses, all because they also offered information on abortion.

The fact that President Obama considered ending this disparity a top priority inspired many feminists and health advocates alike. When he ended the Gag rule in the first days of his presidency, there was hope that he was going to be the kind of president who recognizes the global impact of women’s equality at all levels. And even as some Republicans and conservative churches marched in the streets against “the killing of babies,” most in Congress agreed that countless numbers of children and their mothers had died already because of the Gag Rule. Regardless of ones reproductive politics, the Gag Rule’s lasting global impact proved it was not the answer.

Unfortunately, when Obama is not acting unilaterally, his commitment to women’s issues seems to waiver. As historiann reported earlier this week, Obama decided to cut $330 million in funding for women’s reproductive health programs in the U.S. In weighing a number of social programs that he could try and trim down to get Republicans on board his economic recovery plan, Obama made the decision to cut women’s health sending a message that directly contradicted the one from earlier this week and making many wonder how expendable we are during times of controversy to the new administration. His decision was based on his promise of bi-partisan governance in which neither part explicitly includes women’s rights (tho obviously women are in both parties).

While some feel the worst part about the cuts is that it did not motivate Republicans to vote for our economic recovery, I think there is a much deeper issue here: the priority Obama placed on fruitless bi-partisanship over the health needs of 1/2 the U.S. population.

This early in the game, it seems fruitless to take any or all of these decisions and determine what kind of president Obama will be for women and women’s rights. There are still 4 more years to go and Obama has shown himself to be actively engaging in discussions about women’s equality as well as pushing forward some of the issues that will support them while neglecting others. Since all of this has unfolded in the first week of his administration, I think the important lesson we can take away from it is that we have to be active members in the dialogue. We cannot sit on the sidelines, commenting on his decisions, but instead must make our needs known and then holding him and the rest of the government accountable for meeting them.

One thing that seems central to this kind of active engagement with the White House, is letting President Obama know that women’s health is not a bargaining chip at the national or the local level. Doing so does not undermine the important steps he has helped this nation take in funding women’s health initiatives globally and in ensuring we get paid equally for our labor.

Coming Up this Weekend

ok I admit it, I am busy with my actual job related writing and have not been keeping up here lately. So here is to things to come this weekend:

1. My final Donald Strachey Review
2. Save Me Review (Filmed in the Land of Enchantment no less)
3. Review of the amazing young adult series The Uglies by Scott Westerfield
4. A long slow glance at the dystopia on BSG and why Starbuck stopped being hot

So let the fluffy gazing into queer and queered media begin.

(Oh yeah, and I will also weigh in on the global gag rule and the $353 million budget cut in Women’s Health, Hillary Clinton’s first week at the SOS wheel, and PETA’s fun with Asparagus commercial.)

All this and more just as soon as I finish that darn article.

Blog Love: Racialicious

Ok, I admit this blog love is a little old skool, as racialicious has been around a very long time and certainly morphed into ever expanding territory since I first started reading it, way back when. However, I was just reading it again for the first time in a long while and thinking to myself: not only do I love this blog but most of the people commenting are really astute.

Not only do they write thoughtful pieces analyzing race and racism from many different vantage points and intersections, but they also have a pretty intellectually sophisticated and talkative audience. (And I like that they have increased their discussion of sexuality from the last time I was a regular reader as well.)

Honestly, I laughed out loud at one of their comment makers who responded to my recent Tropic Thunder comment by saying racial passing in film is ancient, and then just in case that “prof” in front of my name was actually real (and it is) added “I know you know that, I just like repeating it.” It was the perfect way to make a corrective comment so that the people who might not know that racial passing goes all the way back to antebellum, if not further, get the info, while people who already know are not insulted. Assuming your audience is mixed is also a great way to stop flame wars before they start.

It’s a really great blog. So here is to old skool love

Quote of the Week: Cue the Violins

The job market for academics is like a suck hole in hell.  My grad students walk the halls dispondent. Their excuses for not turning in those chapters have transitioned from “I’m too scared of constructive criticism” to “I am too scared of Welfare Lines” and you know what, I feel them.

So here is this week’s quote winner:

But by all indications, recent university hiring freezes and evaporating grant money have reduced the world’s most elite degree to junk-bond status.

- alternet

I think this quote is an exaggeration. The statistics may be dismal but they do not spell out the end, that would be the freak weather (hello, anybody seen any frogs falling from the sky yet?!). While I do think that a PhD has different meanings and advantages based on the field and the proximity to other forms of privilege, particularly class privilege, many should be able to go quite far with a PhD even if it is not in academe.

And now I’m going to give you the speech, I give my grads:

You are a brilliant and amazing scholar. No one can take the heart and soul of your work from you or the extreme accomplishment it is to have finished your dissertation and survived the beat down that is graduate school. You are not worthless based on your employment status, nor will I, or any truly decent academic, look down on you if you are unemployed for an extended period of time in the current market.

The job market is not going to get better any time soon. Instead of fretting on the wiki every day or stockpiling meds (and yes, one of my grads was actually doing this until her gf called my office frantic and I had to stage a back-in-my-social-service-days-style intervention), think about what brought you joy about your research and your dreams for the future. Then figure out how you can get that same joy back in other venues while waiting for the market to turn around.

Things you can do to say relevant in the downturn:

• keep publishing
• network at conferences, on listservs, and yes, even academic blogs (tho get to know the milieu first b/c some are vicious)
• volunteer in an environment that lets you use your teaching skills like a feminist bookstore or cultural center
• keep reading
• if you have not already, get started on turning that diss into a book
• find and participate in intellectual communities in your area
• go to lectures and events at universities and colleges in your area (not just the one you graduated from) and get to know the scholars there by being an active participant and networking afterwards
• NEVER think you are better than the 1 year post-doc or 2 year research position (tho I would caution against anything that lasts longer than 2 years without the possibility of tenure)

Now this is going to be the scary part:

• spend some time thinking about how you can parlay the skills you gained in grad school into a fruitful position outside of academe

If you do not have an offer by the end of this hiring season, YOU ARE NOT A FAILURE. And most of us will be compassionate enough to see that when you try again.

I wish all of you out there, the very best of luck. My thoughts are with you.

More on the “Drunken Negro Face Cookies”

So this is the video of the report I referred to in the previous post with the baker’s, Ted Kefalinos’, own words about the cookie and what it means. The positive part about this issue is that everybody in the Village was clear the cookies were offensive and that it would be impossible not to know that (and they interviewed immigrants and citizens, male and female, black and white). Even the man who says you have to let these things roll off you, acknowledges the offense first.

I highly doubt Ted Kefalinos will be impacted by a writing campaign but I do think it would be interesting to ask people going in and out of the bakery how they can shop there, especially since In Style Magazine claims it is a favorite place of celebrities. While the baker may have nothing to lose from intense scrutiny, the celebrities who shop there without ever once alerting the media to the “drunken negro face” turned “drunken Obama face” for inauguration day cookies, probably do have more at stake.

The bakery owners claim to have sold all 12 of the cookies they made on inauguration day.

Some parents of a near by school are planning to boycott the bakery and others have called to express their concern, disappointment, and in some cases issue pranks. There has also been a lot of backlash in the comment section of online reviews of the bakery that range from constructive criticism to name calling. If you choose to contact the bakery or write a post, I would caution you to use appropriate language and analysis so that the message about racism from the bakery does not get drowned out in cries of inappropriate protest behavior.

The bakery in question:

Lafeyette French Pastry Bakers

26 Greenwich Ave

New York, NY 10011

212-242-7580

Deadlines . . .

You know how Gay Prof has the Never Ending Project of Doom? Well I have the Rapidly Approaching Article of Duh. I’ve had months to write it and . . .

So yeah. I’m actually considering writing it on wordpress in the hopes that I will do it before it becomes the Rapidly Receding Article of Network Killing Destruction . . .

Why do I do this? And why can’t I just turn in an analysis of the last season of Torchwood?! Heck, I already wrote that on wordpress . . .

Urgent: Help Differently-Abled Woman Get Proper Care

It is moments like this that I wish I had not successfully shut down my well read blog, b/c now I have to pass this on here in the hopes that someone out there is listening, instead of confident that they are. If you read this please spread the information as widely as possible.

A woman named Mina has been on a hunger strike for several days in protest of the treatment she has been receiving from her HMO. She says that the nurses, who are contracted from outside, have not been following the doctor’s orders resulting in unnecessary pain, discomfort, and potential health problems. As a result of her complaints, she says the treatment she received has worsened not gotten better.

In response to increased poor treatment , Mina went on a hunger strike to advocate for herself. She trusted that the newspapers that once praised her as an example of a successful woman with ALS would represent her strength once again. But apparently, the local paper took a different tack: they said Mina wants to die and not eating is her exercise of her right to life/death.

Please help before their version of the story comes true. You can:

• Spread the word about Mina’s case by writing a post
• Write the paper and ask them to better investigate the accusations of poor treatment by Mina’s care providers
• Educate yourself and others on the poor care that differently-abled people receive in the U.S. and Canada
• volunteer as an advocate for differently-abled people’s rights

You can read the whole story here

Wow! This Image is a Thing of Beauty

Sometimes I forget to stop and see the beauty in the world around me. While updating my blogroll, I stumbled across this beautiful image and I stopped to enjoy it. You should too.

co. Bush Magazine

For those who do not know, Bush Magazine is an attempt to write lesbians of color back into the mainstream image of queer identity. They used to have a blog, but don’t anymore . . . and I am not linking to myspace.

Michelle Obama’s Dress & The Politics of Race

Apparently the Black Artist Association is upset that neither of Michelle Obama’s outfits were designed by African Americans. They feel that this was a missed opportunity for the Obamas to highlight African American designers and further situate themselves within a particularly black narrative of this nation.

Like Slant Eye for the Round Eye, who first alerted me to this issue, I have a much more positive take. To me, Michelle’s choice was in keeping with the larger multicultural message of the Obama campaign. It also managed to weave in non-black poc into the center of the inauguration discussion where they were otherwise missing. As I noted in my post about the inauguration, the fact that all of the speakers were either black or white during the inauguration was not lost on me even as the faces surrounding Obama and in the audience were far more diverse. By choosing designers of color who were not of African descent Michelle Obama shifted that binary falsehood and ultimately honored all of us.

I was also particularly happy to see Jason Wu among her choices for designers because he embodied all of the characteristics of the base I was worried Obama might leave behind. He was young, queer, and Asian American. And for those who do not know, that particular demographic, as well as the demographics it intersects, was essential to grassroots mobilization for Obama on the West Coast.

The choice of Isabel Toledo was equally important in that it highlighted a Latina immigrant designer who may have lost her job at Anne Klein for failing to meet the same aesthetic as white, N. American born, designers. This of course is the inverse of the typical racialized narrative of immigration in the U.S. Given how little the Obama campaign talked about immigration in public forums, the choice of a Latina immigrant also has particularly powerful implications by simultaneously standing in solidarity with the dominant image of the immigrant and highlighting an industry that continues to be the least vilified and yet among the most implicated in immigrant exploitation in the U.S. Finally, Latinos were another important voting bloc in the general election and if they had not swung left for Obama he would have had a much harder time taking home the win. (Toledo has designed for Michelle Obama before as well.)

While I think most African Americans yearned for a “black narrative” (whatever that really means) in this inauguration, I think Michelle Obama’s clothing choices represented a uniquely feminist of color aesthetic that embraced all people of color. In so doing, Michelle Obama once again reminds us how to navigate these troubled waters with astuteness and grace.

(All though there is still that perming of the kids hair right before the DNC issue . . .)

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both images were unattributed but are likely cropped from AP Photos