What if You Believed You Could Change the World?

Chavez mural/John Estrada

Cesar Chavez did and with help from friend and colleague Dolores Huerta he started a movement for migrant workers’ rights and Latin@ pride. Though the struggle continues, Chavez’s ideas and commitment to social justice are so frightening to the status quo that members of the Arizona Legislature fought to have him removed from the curriculum, Texas initiated changes in national history books to remove his story, and the Mayor of Portland Oregon actually sided with racists to prevent the naming of a street after him (which I am told was finally settled after the Mayor then stepped on the API community by arbitrarily deciding to put it in China Town where no streets are named after API Americans either and then another heated vote occurred). For those of us who live in places where Chavez Street is a given and his history has always been part of our own, it is easy to forget the truly revolutionary legacy of the man who dared to believe he could change the world. And if the neo-cons have their way, whole generations will lose yet another example of committed, engaged, social justice in the U.S.

What could you do, if you washed the apathy off, stopped believing the news when it tells you no one in the U.S. stands up for anything anymore, and/or stopped participating in mindless or violent rallies (people who abused horses this weekend in the name of ending brutality against humans, I am talking to you) and started to believe that you had the power to change the world?

Another Martin Comes Out

Ricky Martin/unattributed

For many people, celebrating the Monday mid-day Coming Out tweet by Ricky Martin, and the post to which it linked, seems a little late. Very few celebrities who have garnered as much critical acclaim and public adoration have been so clearly living inside a glass closet than Ricky Martin. However, it would be wrong to dismiss Martin’s coming out story just because we all saw it coming. His struggle for self-acceptance is no less relevant or heartbreaking than any other. Perhaps more importantly to the rest of us, his struggle highlights the continued power of homophobia and heterosexism to make people turn on themselves and deny the very heart of who they are just to be accepted. And unlike 18 year old Derrick Martin from the previous post who is learning the lessons of hatred far too early, Ricky Martin is unlearning them so very late.

As he put it in his own words:
ENGLISH:

Many people told me: “Ricky it’s not important”, “it’s not worth it”, “all the years you’ve worked and everything you’ve built will collapse”, “many people in the world are not ready to accept your truth, your reality, your nature”. Because all this advice came from people who I love dearly, I decided to move on with my life not sharing with the world my entire truth.  Allowing myself to be seduced by fear and insecurity became a self-fulfilling prophecy of sabotage. Today I take full responsibility for my decisions and my actions.

SPANISH:

Mucha gente me dijo que no era importante hacerlo, que no valía la pena, que todo lo que trabaje y todo lo que había logrado se colapsaría. Que muchos en este mundo no estarían preparados para aceptar mi verdad, mi naturaleza. Y como  estos consejos venían de personas que amo con locura, decidí seguir adelante con mi “casi verdad”. MUY MAL. Dejarme seducir por el miedo fue un verdadero sabotaje a mi vida. Hoy me responsabilizo por completo de todas mis decisiones, y de todas mis acciones.

This is the lesson that not only society but often our loved ones (friends, family, mentors) teach us. Derrick Martin learned it from his parents when they kicked him out this month for wanting to bring his boyfriend to prom and is re-learning it every day from the adults in his small town. Ricky Martin learned it from his own friends and colleagues, some of whom just wanted to ride the Vida Loca gravy train and some who really thought they had his best interests at heart. Everyone who has ever come out to themselves and to others can point to these people in their own lives. The “good intentions” of homophobia unite us across regions, languages, spaces, classes, etc. And each of us has had to ask who will we love more? How will we love?

So no, Ricky Martin’s coming out saga is not a revelation to anyone paying attention. But to watch a young boy go from Menudo to Soap Opera Heart Throb to evasive denial on 20-20 complete with a beautiful beard to claim he “was always the macho” to finally, this:

ENGLISH:

But fear of my truth? Not at all!  On the contrary, It fills me with strength and courage …

These years in silence and reflection made me stronger and reminded me that acceptance has to come from within and that this kind of truth gives me the power to conquer emotions I didn’t even know existed.

…

I am proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man. I am very blessed to be who I am.

SPANISH:

Pero miedo a mi naturaleza, a mi verdad? NO MAS! Al contrario, estas me dan valor y firmeza.

Ha sido un proceso muy intenso, angustiante y doloroso pero también liberador. Les juro que cada palabra que están leyendo aquí nace de amor, purificación, fortaleza, aceptación y desprendimiento. Que escribir estas líneas es el acercamiento a mi paz interna, parte vital de mi evolución. Hoy ACEPTO MI HOMOSEXUALIDAD como un regalo que me da la vida. ¡Me siento bendecido de ser quien soy!-

is not just a thing of beauty, it is a reminder. The path we travel is hard not just because of the people who openly hate but those who, whether wittingly or unknowingly, disguise their homophobia as love. For me his words, though late, remind us that it is never too late to love ourselves and to let that love be strong enough to demand that others love us back as we are.

—-

all quotes come from Ricky Martin’s Coming Out story on his official website here. (You can read his whole story in his upcoming book.)

Homeless for Prom?

Queer as Folk/Showtime 2000

High School Senior Derrick Martin has been thrust into the public eye for daring to want to take his boyfriend to his Senior Prom in small town Macon Georgia. Like most high school students, Martin wanted to participate in the closing rituals of his secondary education with the person whom he loves. Every year 1000s of students across the country do the same thing without even thinking about it.

However, in the shadow of the now infamous Mississippi Prom cancellation, Martin thought he should ask whether or not he had the right to bring a same sex partner. Typing that question into the search engine of his computer began a public saga, first in his own county and then across the nation.

Miami Herald/Marice Cohn Band

As attention to his request gained momentum, Martin’s parents kicked him out of the house. While it is unclear whether or not they knew about their son’s sexuality prior, his parents went on record saying that they could not continue to have him in their house now that the town knew he was gay. Apparently the town of a few thousand is extremely conservative and several of the Macon’s business owners have gone on record saying they think Martin is going to hell. Others have actively lobbied the school claiming that it is unfair for Martin and his partner to attend prom while prayer is banned. On the upside, the most vehement homophobia seems to be coming from older adults indicating a generational shift despite the overall conservative milieu.

For Martin the situation has been both heartbreaking and galvanizing. While many in his town sit in judgment of him, people around the nation have expressed their support. There are websites and Prom expense donations pouring in. Martin never expected national attention but he also never thought he’d be alone. His parents kicking him out was unexpected, but worse for him, was the handful of closeted gay friends he has at school who have kept silent. Watching Martin become a lightening rod for adult homophobia has left most of them too scared to talk.

Despite these early lessons in oppression, Martin is lucky; While he can’t go home again, his best friend’s parents have taken him in.  According to the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce, 40% of homeless youth in North America are queer and homeless because their parents or primary care provider no longer wanted them in their homes once they knew. Many of them have no where to go and end up on the street. As youth, they have limited access to shelter and shelter based services and are more vulnerable in already over taxed adult drop in centers and places that like queer appropriate services.

Georgia, where Martin lives, is one of many large cities where homelessness amongst queer youth has reached epidemic proportions. At the same time, there are services available for queer youth in Atlanta, including:  The CHRIS (Creativity, Honor, Respect, Integrity, Safety) Kids Rainbow Program and the voucher program at Youth Pride. These are some of the only independent living programs in the Southeast region and as such are likely overtaxed. In other places, youth are not that lucky, there are no services or services are only funded after mainstream heterosexual communities become aware of the abuse youth suffer on the street.

Homofactus Press is shedding light on the connection between homelessness and queer identity amongst youth in an anthology entitled Kicked Out.  The anthology brings together both provider stories and statistics with the voices of current and former LGBTQ homeless youth. The stories include creative  (UPDATE: as in non-fiction written creatively END UPDATE) and regular non-fiction prose. The authors try to capture what it is like to be thrown away because of your gender or sexuality and often made into a statistic by journalists and providers alike.

chloe noble

I realize that it is prom season and that many same sex attracted teens are grappling with whether to pass or to risk everything. The decision and what it highlights about how the national conversation about desire, and the criminalization of queerness embedded within it, has created huge inequalities and potential for violence in the lives of our youth, is one we must have. Discussing the ways that school districts and parents police desire is a critical part of exposing the violence our children endure because of adults who don’t play well with others.

However, Martin’s story reminds us of another critical piece in the puzzle of oppression: how homophobia creates a huge exploitable population of homeless youth. It forces us to once again reframe the discourse of homelessness beyond that of choice or criminality. And it demands that we do more to support the growth and safety of youth in our educational system and in our homes. While people who supported prop 8 fretted over “homosexuality in the schools”, an issue was never on the table, none of them worried about what not having homosexuality in the schools would mean for the lives of LGBTQ youth. And while deep down they may not care, as we often say on the blog: oppression does not just oppress the targeted group, one needs only look at the straight kids who have committed suicide because of homophobic bullying or the relationships amongst larger community members that are destroyed over a handful of vehement conservative thinkers to know everyone suffers gay or straight. So, while I don’t want to distract from the conversations about Prom and making sure that these teens who have skyrocketed to national interest have good ones, I do think that Martin’s case provides us with the opportunity to think about and do more than help pay for his limo.

——–

• To draw attention to their stories, Homofactus has started a blog for the book that will be featuring each of the authors every day this month.
• You’ll note I do not have a picture of Martin on this post; I have serious concerns about the national circulation of his image in the climate we live in, and as you know, when I have these concerns or concerns about consent we do not publish images of youth

Link Luv Sunday

A lot went on in our world while I was sick and/or overworked (yes including all the late diss chapters I had to read during Spring Break, cue violins) so I thought some link love was in order to cover some of the issues I have not here at the blog and to honor some of the voices holding it down across the internet. Since it is still Women’s History Month and yours truly has failed so miserably in doing her own feminist spotlight posts, I have linked to several folks who did use their blogs to honor and highlight specific women throughout the month.

• Swandiver – Michelle Alexander: The New Jim Crow highlights a talk by Alexander about her new book and the civil rights inequities that remain in the U.S. through the loopholes provided in the prison-industrial-complex
• National Center for Transgender Equality – breaks down what the new Health Care Reform Bill means for trans communities trying to meet their health care needs
• Guerilla Mama – “The Buddha, The Dharma, and the Sangha” – a painfully poetic discussion about the intersections of race, class, gender, nation, love, and family through the eyes of a black immigrant who survives an attempted rape (trigger warning)
• Alexis – Happy Birthday Toni Cade Bambara – another informative and celebratory contribution from Alexis and her Black Feminist Mind Project
• Vivir Latino – “19 years without justice” – 19 year old hate crime against a Dominican youth still not solved, yet his mother keeps the pressure on
• Vegan About Town – Nacho Cheese Dip and Nacho Cheese Nachos because I was sick most of the week and unable to eat much, I got really enthralled by blogs about food (what the comic industry has referred to as food porn blogs b/c they make you drool) and I was particularly excited by how yummy Steph made this recipe sound since I am a picky eater & don’t eat anything with too much melted vegan cheese because of the melt quality (I like almond based cheeses for eating & soy based for melting but the latter only in small amounts)
• Asian American Lit Fans – much like Feminist Review, this livejournal site offers accessible reviews of new and old fiction by API Americans and should just be a must read in general for anyone who loves books
• Nezua – “Invisible: Thoughts on Immigration Rally in DC” – not only does Nezua look at the complexities of the reform in succinct text but he also has a powerful slideshow of photos from the event at the bottom of the post.
• Viva La Feministe – “The Fly Girls are Finally Golden” – learn about the civilian women who helped win world war II but got little back for their service
• The Green Belt Movement – “GBM Celebrates International Women’s Day” – truthfully I am just sending you to this blog to give you an example of what decolonized grassroots feminist environmentalism looks like.
• Claire @ Hyphen Magazines – “Women’s History Month Profiles” – spotlights on Asian American feminists and women activists
• Mark Anthony Neal  – “Women’s History Month Classic: Say My Name” – I happened to love this film and I teach it pretty regularly as a counterpoint to “the video ho” image of hip hop (of course I also like to trot out Tawny Kitaen for that purpose as well) so it was nice to see someone review this classic as part of women’s history month.
• Annaham “Invisible Illness and Disability Bingo” – this post is old, but I just got sent there by vegans of color blog, and I have to tell you that as a person with “hidden” disabilities, not only have I experienced everything on that list but, like Damali Ayo’s rent-a-negro cards, I wish I had a stack of these to pass out to co-workers and family members whenever they made light of what it is like to be differently-abled

Happy Reading!

Don’t Forget Tonight is Earth Hour

The world goes dark to raise awareness about consumption and dwindling resources tonight at 8:30 pm. Learn more here

Open Forum:

• How will you celebrate Earth Hour
• AND How are/will you carry a commitment to environmental activism beyond a single, shared moment?

Found Messages

I am working on this large research project on “local culture” and meaning with a group of seminar students, part of what we do is collect folk sayings, graffiti, bumper stickers, common use phrases, etc. in the community within and surrounding the uni as a way of re-constructing local identity. The project is truly fascinating and not as complicated as it might sound. The impact it has had on my own life is that I am constantly looking at little snippets of things all around me, fallen pieces of paper, scribblings on napkins, sayings on gum, etc. Today, while shut up in my house riding the theraflu haze I came across something in a pocket in the laundry that seemed like a fitting thing to share on the blog. Apparently, it is a manifesta about healthy living my gf picked up last time she went shopping for yoga clothes. Call me touchy-feely if you like, but what I like about this “found object” is that it talks about health and healing (and from an anthro standpoint it is also an example of “local culture” creation through linguistic cues being mobilized by a corporate entity; I know blah-blah-academese-blah-blah) at a time in which I think these things are needed. I prefer healing to tearing down, conversation to conflict, and healthy group dynamics to the circling of wagons. So I am sharing this found object with you as a culture building exercise reflecting my re/commitment to radical love in the blogosphere I made at the beginning of this year and a call to healing.

Below are all the sayings on the sheet. (Note – I am more than a little disconcerted by the children and orgasm analogy both from a child advocate perspective and probably a prudish Catholic one. For me, even though they are making a point about internal knowledge, I think a different metaphor would have been more appropriate and that I couldn’t post this without registering that to all of you. There are also some things that are specific to that “creation of local culture/identity” thing I was blathering on about that won’t fit for everyone but you could replace them to references to where you live)

The sayings:

• Drink FRESH water and as much water as you can. Water flushes unwanted toxins from your body and keeps your brain sharp.
• A daily hit of athletic-induced endorphins gives you the power to make better decisions, helps you be at peace with yourself, and offsets stress.
• Do one thing a day that scares you.
• Listen, listen, listen, and then ask strategic questions.
• Write down your short and long-term GOALS four times a year. Two personal, two business and two health goals for the next 1, 5 and 10 years. Goal setting triggers your subconscious computer.
• Life is full of setbacks. Success is determined by how you handle setbacks.
• Your outlook on life is a direct reflection of how much you like yourself.
• That which matters the most should never give way to that which matters the least.
• Stress is related to 99% of all illness.
• Jealousy works the opposite way you want it to.
• The world is changing at such a rapid rate that waiting to implement changes will leave you 2 steps behind. DO IT NOW, DO IT NOW, DO IT NOW!
• Friends are more important than money.
• Breathe deeply and appreciate the moment. Living in the moment could be the meaning of life.
• Take various vitamins. You never know what small mineral can eliminate the bottleneck to everlasting health.
• Don’t trust that an old age pension will be sufficient.
• Visualize your eventual demise. It can have an amazing effect on how you live for the moment.
• The conscious brain can only hold one thought at a time. Choose a positive thought.
• Live near the ocean and inhale the pure salt air that flows over the water, Vancouver will do nicely.
• Observe a plant before and after watering and relate these benefits to your body and brain.
• Practice yoga so you can remain active in physical sports as you age.
• Dance, sing, floss and travel.
• Children are the orgasm of life. Just like you did not know what an orgasm was before you had one, nature does not let you know how great children are until you have them.
• Successful people replace the words “wish”, “should” and “try” with “I will”.
• Creativity is maximized when you’re living in the moment.
• Nature wants us to be mediocre because we have a greater chance to survive and reproduce. Mediocre is as close to the bottom as it is to the top, and will give you a lousy life.
• lululemon athletica creates components for people to live longer, healthier and more fun lives. If we can produce products to keep people active and stress-free, we believe the world will become a much better place.
• Do not use cleaning chemicals on your kitchen counters. Someone will inevitably make a sandwich on your counter.
• SWEAT once a day to regenerate your skin.
• Communication is COMPLICATED. We are all raised in a different family with slightly different definitions of every word. An agreement is an agreement only if each party knows the conditions for satisfaction and a time is set for satisfaction to occur.
• What we do to the earth we do to ourselves.
• The pursuit of happiness is the source of all unhappiness.

Joy Leary Discusses the Impact of Racism Denial on N. America

I thought this might be a good companion piece to the list in the previous post as well. It is a section of Dr. Joy Leary’s discussion of her amazing book Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome. While the bulk of her work is on the impact of racism on communities that experience it and how to heal, this section of her talk is about the larger issue of racism in N. America. She discusses how denial and lies about racism keep N. America and the people living in it trapped in a cycle of abuse-recrimination-violence-and-pain. For everyone who has ever had the urge to say “there isn’t enough time in the day to deal with the oppressions that don’t impact me or matter as much to me” and everyone who has been the target of the denial and violence they engage in to hide from themselves what they are saying, this is an important talk to watch and reflect on; the whole talk is available on youtube.

Re-Post: Feminist Reading Tools for Recognizing and Dismantling Intersectional Oppressions

I am still really sick, so instead of original content, I am re-posting this post from 2008 in solidarity with Breeze Harper’s suggestion in the comments that all (as in you, me, and everyone) vegan activists might benefit from doing some reading and reflecting on whiteness and social movements.

peer women’s retreat/unattributed

This post was originally written in response to issues of whiteness around the feminist blogosphere that were fracturing the way women who support, and actively work for, women’s rights saw themselves and their engagement. The result of that conflict was that many of the radical woc who brought me to the internet no longer identify as feminist while the women whose privilege initiated the conflict remain the most oft-linked to by both academic and activist circles as examples of feminism on the net. The outcome, though disheartening, reminds us why it is so easy to avoid intersectionality and to claim that people “are too mean”  or “too invested in identity politics” rather than look at one’s own actions: structural oppression is designed to reward individuals engaged in privilege-evasiveness and/or oppression. This is why PHC says there is a Matrix of Domination with multiple levels that hold each other in place, so that it is never about individual actions in a vaccuum nor can we address larger issues without also engaging individuals (and what she calls symbolic oppression or what most Marxists call hegemonic and most Lit folks call signs and signifiers). Being engaged in creating a just world requires an ever expanding body of knowledge that challenges everyone at multiple points in their activism but it is the willingness to meet those challenges head on and with the same commitment to justice that brought one into activism in the first place that truly is the measure of social justice. Change is as simple as wearing a red t-shirt instead of a blue one, Justice means whether you wear a shirt or not, regardless of its color, you will be taken seriously and afforded an equal place in our society. For vegans that means animals and people together, not equality amongst peoples over animals; for intersectional vegans it also means equality for all people and all animals, not just some people and some or all animals. Which ever politik you subscribe to, the work is hard, and requires self-reflexion and the willingness to fail and to listen to get it right. In my mind, it also requires an immense amount of patience and faith and the willingness to “walk a mile with” another person and to know deep down that no matter what your politics, the wrongs you have endured, or the change work you’ve engaged in, you can be wrong or in the process of doing the right thing, you can go about it the wrong way.

For many activists this means knowing the layers and levels of whiteness and how they intersect with issues of gender, class, ability, sexuality, etc. For others it means healing from the war wounds of living lives in those intersections. The original list, re-posted below with one modification, was written to give or expand the language those of us who are marginalized have to name our marginalization and how it works, and to give those who often deny various forms of marginalization in order to avoid the “earthquake” that comes from knowing you benefit from an unjust system or you have engaged in it in some way, the ability to see and name their actions and understand how individual behaviors are encouraged and upheld by a system much larger than any one person’s intent. It was not meant to blame or shame but rather to give us common language with which to speak across the storm.

So here are the readings I suggested in May 2008, as I said, each relates to race because when I compiled the list racism and whiteness were the key issues causing people to stumble:

The List:

• Yamato’s “Something About the Subject Makes it Hard to Name,” Anzaldua & Moraga. This Bridge Called My Back. - this essay outlines types of racism including “unintentional” and intentional and breaks down how they work, why they are part of a system of oppression, and gives examples. For people struggling with “I didn’t mean it” or “I am a good person” issues this is a really great essay to think about intentionality. For people trying to talk to people with those issues, it is an important tool in helping them see the problems in their actions/denials.
• Anzaldua’s “Now Let Us Shift” Anzaldua & Keating. This Bridge We Call Home. – This essay talks about the path we all take in coming to consciousness. It is great because it shows the path is not linear nor does it stop at “enlightenment,” people can become enlightened and then get scared or experience a loss of privilege that often comes with fighting against oppression and go back to an earlier stage of consciousness or become enlightened about one thing but still need to work on others. It is a good piece for mapping out the fears and the process AND helping people to understand that making mistakes or finding lapses does not mean you have to throw in the towel and give up or that doing good work elsewhere does not mean they don’t exist. For anyone who has ever struggled, made a mistake, or failed, when confronting oppression this is a great piece.
• Collins “the matrix of domination”section from “Black Feminist Thought in a Transnational Context” in Black Feminist Thought. – This piece is the classic tome on how race, gender, and class intersect and is part of a larger chapter contextualizing black feminist thought from PHC’s perspective using both sociological and historical information. The matrix provide a key theory to understanding intersectionality but should really be read in the context of the entire chapter before being pulled out for its singular import so as to avoid the ways that many key terms and theories, particularly from feminists of color, are repeatedly taken out of context and watered down until they have lost all real, known, meaning. The section and chapter look specifically at black women’s experiences of oppression but the matrix is a key metaphor for understanding how oppressions work together at the state, local, and individual levels.
• Smith’s “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy” (available online and on this blog, tho I cannot find my link to it) - This piece is similar to Collins except that it takes the discussion out of the black experience and expands the levels of oppression up one to colonialism or the international level. Smith critically examines the meaning of “women of color” as essentially “not white” which erases our differences and the specificity of our racial oppression(s). She also discusses heterosexism and how it exists in both dominant and marginalized communities, including activist communities, as part of a larger system of domination and how it too must be addressed and dismantled on all sides in order to combat oppression.
• Bailey’s “Locating Traitorous Identities” various anthologies – This piece is really heady philosophy and may not be the most accessible of the bunch. However it does talk about privilege with regards to whiteness and heterosexuality. It expands on the idea of reclaiming “race traitor” as a good thing – ie being traitorous to white supremacy – and mapping out some other steps for white people to make the critical shift to ally.
• Frye’s “Oppression” (updated version- not the online one – where she tries to address the heterosexism in her first version) – its metaphor of the bird cage where oppressions intersect and reinforce like a cage so that moving one oppression does not make enough space for oppression(s) to be dismantled has always been effective in my classes. It is a good piece for people who continue to argue “there is so much to do in feminism, I can only focus on ________” or “gender-only can free all women.”
• Schutte “Cultural Alterity,” Naryan, et al. Decentering the Center. Another piece that might not be as accessible to all readers but does a great job of mapping out the kinds of disconnects that happen in cross-cultural communication between white women and women of color. It looks at all kinds of assumptions about intentions, intelligence, importance, etc. that get in the way of successful communication even when everyone thinks they have done their work on becoming aware of/ dismantling oppression. It is a great piece for thinking through what went wrong and how not to do it again.

(I outlined part of Schutte’s argument in the comment section on my post about class antagonism in veganism because the person banned from my blog was engaging in several of the things Schutte points out. Among them, was her insistence on calling me “non-vegan” because we disagree about the scope of vegan activism and inciting her readers to hate on me accordingly while referencing my partner, and subsequently my sexuality. While I have been told the heinously heteronormative and potentially homophobic act of calling up my partner and the offensive language use to redefine my blog were removed from a subsequent draft, no apology was offered nor was the “non-vegan” label and the offenses associated with it, including musing about “what type of person” I am, removed. It is one of the most classic examples of the kind of discourse Schutte deconstructs in her essay which includes:

1. assuming you know better than the person you are talking to about what they do or do not know
2. assuming that your experience is universal and therefore is the measuring stick for the truth value of anyone else’s experience
3. centering your own discussion in a conversation that is about other things and demanding that others re-center that conversation around you
4. attempting to force others to engage you when they have made it clear that they do not want to and expecting others to help you enforce their participation)

• (special mention) Eli Clare’s “Introduction” Exile and Pride. He works at the intersections of trans, disability, class, location, and sexuality in this book and has a really good piece deconstructing whiteness and the class and location of whiteness in the book itself that I think are important. I include the “intro” in this list however because of the metaphor of the mountain and how it talks about the process expected of people on the margin to reach the center. It helps to show that no matter how far removed or how close you are to the center that the system is designed to hold everything in place, so that if white women don’t confront racism or do so only when it is not about the racism of their immediate friends or themselves, or only if it does not interfere with the ways they benefit from supremacy, than they ultimately cheat themselves by thinking they can reach the top of the mountain by buying into oppression. (The metaphor is also a good way for making sense of what goes wrong for all marginalized groups who think they are making headway and then suddenly get thrown back down the trial.)

There is a more varied list of material in this vein in the Historical Reading list as well and anyone is welcome to post readings there they think are “must reads” for decolonizing the mind.

Unless otherwise indicated MATERIAL IS NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE.

Fibre! En La Mañana! Fever All Thru The Night!

Alas dear readers, I really am deathly ill right now, so we are on a blog break. The good news is, when I get back, maybe I’ll have spent the down time between theraflu enduced hazes watching queer movies so there will be tons of reviews to write here on the blog. (No promises.)

Musical Interlude

I do believe I am coming down with Spring Break is Over Gripa (as in, I am actually feeling sick but it is probably just yearning for more vacay manifesting physically as it does every year b/c while many students actually get a break in the Spring, most faculty work right through it) so I am sending you revolutionary music by way of Alicia Sanchez (if you are on twitter but not following her, get on it already):