New York City irony

The organizer of the African American Day Parade in Harlem (The Largest Black Parade is America) is Abe Snyder.

When they mentioned it at the community meeting (where I was the only white person out of a group of eight black people), I was the only one to display shock and dismay. They told me, "You must be new to the neighborhood."

Letter to the Editor of Time Magazine 9/20/2010

In response to the cover article, "How to Fix Our Schools" by Amanda Ripley. (The on-line version is abridged from the print version.)
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It seems that Ripley has missed the major debate in education since No Child Left Behind was passed in 2001. The research is showing that the accountability measures that she is heralding as saving the future of American education are not actually closing the achievement gap. Neither does she address the criticism of the unions concerning charter schools. The reason they do so well is because they don’t serve special-education students and English Language Learners-- populations that keep test scores down. They also keep kids in school for longer hours.

If we fire all the “bad” teachers, where are we going to find this reserve army of “good” ones? If we shut down all the schools, the one place where most of these students find stability in their lives, where are they going to go? A different over-crowded institution that has to start everything from scratch?

A massacre is not a massacre by Ghassan Hage

A massacre is not a massacre
Ghassan Hage, The Electronic Intifada, 3 June 2010

Occupation is not occupation (Anne Paq/ActiveStills)

I don't write poems but, in any case, poems are not poems.

Long ago, I was made to understand that Palestine was not Palestine;
I was also informed that Palestinians were not Palestinians;
They also explained to me that ethnic cleansing was not ethnic cleansing.
And when naive old me saw freedom fighters they patiently showed me that they were not freedom fighters, and that resistance was not resistance.
And when, stupidly, I noticed arrogance, oppression and humiliation they benevolently enlightened me so I can see that arrogance was not arrogance, oppression was not oppression, and humiliation was not humiliation.

I saw misery, racism, inhumanity and a concentration camp.
But they told me that they were experts in misery, racism, inhumanity and concentration camps and I have to take their word for it: this was not misery, racism, inhumanity and a concentration camp.
Over the years they've taught me so many things: invasion was not invasion, occupation was not occupation, colonialism was not colonialism and apartheid was not apartheid.

They opened my simple mind to even more complex truths that my poor brain could not on its own compute like: "having nuclear weapons" was not "having nuclear weapons," "not having weapons of mass destruction" was "having weapons of mass destruction."

And, democracy (in the Gaza Strip) was not democracy.
Having second class citizens (in Israel) was democracy.
So you'll excuse me if I am not surprised to learn today that there were more things that I thought were evident that are not: peace activists are not peace activists, piracy is not piracy, the massacre of unarmed people is not the massacre of unarmed people.

I have such a limited brain and my ignorance is unlimited.
And they're so fucking intelligent. Really.

Ghassan Hage is professor of anthropology and social theory at the University of Melbourne.

Chinese School vs. Black School vs. White School

African-American father to five-year-old daughter: You see? That's why I send you to a Chinese school. Because those Chinese kids know how to do math. You gotta know how to do math if you want to make something of yourself. If I sent you to a black school, you'd just turn into a crackhead. If I sent you to a white school, you'd turn into an asshole. But those Chinese kids, man, they know how to do shit.

--4 Train

From the blog Overheard in New York

A Sin And A Shame: Soul Voyeurism* And Harlem “Gospel Tours” [Racialigious]

Some quotes from a great article by Fiqah, originally published at Possum Stew
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. . .when the tourists watched the choir and the other attendees with that peculiar mixture of fascination, fear and envy that White people in spaces of color often seem to have.
 . . .

Here, an excerpt from an account by a  White tourist from London**  who went to a Harlem church specifically for the music:

I meet Tim Rawlins at the Memorial Baptist church choir practise. He’s rare proof of the fact that white men can sing gospel. He says I’ve got to surrender to the music – feel it – and forget I’m English.

That statement, which positively reeks of cultural fetishizing, gave me a headache. Forget you’re “English” (read: White and proper) and “surrender” (is it attacking you?) to the wild, untamed Black Black Blackity Blackness of the music. Hallelujah, let the Othering begin.

. . .
The unexamined sense of entitlement that accompanies the idea of White people being welcome in any space is the factor that makes these tours possible. (I’m fully convinced that if 100 casually-dressed and snap-happy Black Americans rolled up into a Lutheran church on a Sunday in Haarlem,  the ensuing outrage at their gall would cause an international incident…but I digress.)

Woman at Point Zero

Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi (London: Zed Books Ltd, 1975.)

“I developed a love of books, for with every book I learned something new.  . . But I preferred books written about rulers.  I read about a ruler whose female servants and concubines were as numerous as his army, and about another whose only interests in life were wine, women, and whipping his slaves. A third cared little for women, but enjoyed wars, killing, and torturing men. Another of these rulers loved food, money and hoarding riches without end. Still another was possessed with such an admiration for himself and his greatness that for him no one else in the land existed. There was also a ruler so obsessed with plots and conspiracies that he spent all his time distorting the facts of history and trying to fool his people.

            I discovered that all these rulers were men. What they had in common was an avaricious and distorted personality, a never-ending appetite for money, sex and unlimited power. They were men who sowed corruption on the earth, and plundered their peoples, men endowed with loud voices, a capacity for persuasion, for choosing sweet words and shooting poisoned arrows. Thus, the truth about them was revealed only after their death, and as a result I discovered that history tended to repeat itself with a foolish obstinacy.” (26-27)

“After I had spent three years in the company, I realized that as a prostitute I had been looked upon with more respect, and been valued more highly than all the female employees, myself included . . . I came to realize that a female employee is more afraid of losing her job than a prostitute is of losing her life. An employee is scared of losing her job and becoming a prostitute because she does not understand that the prostitute’s life is in fact better than hers. And so she pays the price of her illusory fears with her life, her health, her body, and her mind.  She pays the highest price for things of the lowest value. I now knew that all of us were prostitutes who sold themselves at varying prices, and that an expensive prostitute was better than a cheap one. I also knew that if I lost my job, all I would lose with it was the miserable salary, the contempt I could read every day in the eyes of the higher level executives when they looked a the lesser female officials, the humiliating pressure of male bodies on mine when I rode in the bus, and the long morning queue in front of a perpetually overflowing toilet.” (75-76)

“But in love I gave all: my capabilities, my efforts, my feelings, my deepest emotions. Like a saint, I gave everything I had without ever counting the cost. I wanted nothing, nothing at all, except perhaps one thing. To be saved through love from it all. To find myself again, to recover the self I had lost. To become a human being who was not looked upon with scorn, or despised, but respected, and cherished and made to feel whole.” (86)

“My virtue, like the virtue of all those who are poor, could never be considered a quality, or an asset, but rather looked upon as a kind of stupidity, or simple-mindedness, to be despised even more than depravity or vice.” (86)

“The time had come for me to shed the last grain of virtue, the last drop of sanctity in my blood. Now I was aware of the reality, of the truth. Now I knew what I wanted. Now there was no room for illusions. A successful prostitute was better than a misled saint. All women are victims of deception. Men impose deception on women and punish them for being deceived, force them down to the lowest level and punish them for falling so low, bind them in marriage and then chastise them with menial service for life, or insults, or blows.

Now I realized that the least deluded of all women was the prostitute. That marriage was the system built on the most cruel suffering for women.” (86-87)

I hope for nothing

I want for nothing

I fear nothing

I am free. (87)

“Now I had learnt that honour required large sums of money to protect it, but that large sums of money could not be obtained without losing one’s honour. An infernal circle whirling round and round, dragging me up and down with it.” (91)

“. . .the lowest paid body is that of a wife. All women are prostitutes of one kind or another. Because I was intelligent I preferred to be a free prostitute, rather than an enslaved wife. . . Everybody has a price, and every profession is paid a salary. The more respectable the profession, the higher the salary, and a person’s price goes up as he climbs the social ladder. One day, when I donated some money to a charitable association, the newspaper published pictures of me and sang my praises as the model of a citizen with a sense of civic responsibility. And so from then on, whenever I needed a dose of honour or fame, I had only to draw some money from the bank.” (91)

The Rescue Industry: Turning Prostitutes into Victims

On the opposing side are advocates of decriminalization, including unionized “sex workers” and other groups, who see a wide range of transactions taking place under the heading of prostitution. Captive trafficking victims—“modern-day slaves”—occupy one end of that spectrum. (In Calcutta, organized sex workers campaign against trafficking, identifying victims, especially minors, and turning them over to rehabilitation centers.) Some of these critics see a self-admiring narrative at work in the “rescue industry,” one that seeks to turn all prostitutes, but particularly migrants, into victims.

The Countertraffickers: Rescuing the victims of the global sex trade by William Finnegan in The New Yorker, May 5, 2008