to finish the posting frenzy, another women's history month poem

loving the carnival. this entry was posted over at women's space:



The Other Woman

The ancient lines
Drawn
The ancient dust
Settles the storm
Arriving

On the eve of the revolution

Blood flows red
Into the gutter.
Sites of ancient women’s power
Buried
In the dirt
In the dust

I want this more
Each day I flounder
With the words left unsaid

I am not
As white as you
I am not
As rich as you

Still I bleed red
In darkness

While you shine
With your golden hair
And your beautiful words

And I hate you

But really, deep-down
You are everything
I wish to be

With your confidence
Your grace

I know
You will be a leader
Women will love you
Women will follow you

While I lie
Here in the background
With the other
Lost and buried
Women

Because my hair
Does not shine gold
My voice
Does not sing sweetly
You are everything
That I am not

And I hate you
Even though
I know I shouldn’t
Even though
I want to love you
Even though

Everything in you screams
‘I am a fucked thing
Just like you
I hate you too
Shut the fuck up shut the fuck up shutthefuckup

SHUT THE FUCK UP’

And everything in me
Screams back
Until
We can not hear each other
We can not hear ourselves

So

I ask you
To join me here
On the eve of the revolution

Round the kitchen table
In the garden
Round the tribal fire
In those ancient sacred sites

Believe that there is a
A place
Where women are free
To love ourselves
And each other

That place
Is in my heart
When I reach out a hand
And call you sister

That place is in you
When you reach back

–by Dani/allecto, who is a 26 year old radical feminist lesbian, a descendant of a First Nations people, an activist, vegetarian, child-care worker; a creative, passionate, alive, inspired woman. She believes that Sisterhood is the most powerful force in the Universe.

the women's history month blog carnival has got me going

it's happening (at least partly) over at what tami said. today's carnival post got me, so i thought i'd share it here. it's by christina springer:

rambles on rage

1.

i hope
the rage turns

into a cherry blossom, so
I can brew

wine from sunset ripened fruit

2.

obama, with great delicacy and care
i put my white liberal friends in the dark

drawer of hurt where i won' t see them
again for 15 years. maybe when you have

more than 152 pieces of passed legislation
to her 20, or mice nibble the experience

of your fluffy words
into a victory confetti.

i'll feel safe. see desperate
lives bouncing "Yes, we can!"

3.

little girl inside
screams
"fair! just

want every
simple thing
fair!" just

hear.

4.

why do faces that I love
hate my salvation?

doves of broken handlers
crack aspiration.

sugar smart smile, divine be
gentle and calm all of me.

rage and rage and rage
'til loved ones can not see

how oozing hapless happy
froth consumes identity.

5.

the equation for soul height +
vision size divided by spin control

seems weighted, specialized.
give me your equation for my destiny?

a damn shame

have you heard about this? an entire school district is on the verge of losing its accreditation? is anyone surprised that the district is "predominantly black"?

choice quotes-

"For the county's nearly 53,000 public school students, loss of accreditation would mean they would not be eligible for state scholarships or be accepted at many universities. They also would have difficulty transferring to other high schools."

"According to the report, Clayton County Public Schools' nine-member school board is so "dysfunctional" that it has had difficulty recruiting a superintendent, teachers and bus drivers. It accuses board members of nepotism, conflicts of interest, micromanagement, lax fiscal responsibility and failure to audit school attendance."

so nine people can take away 53,000 black students' chances at higher education, but we don't hear about it in the nightly news. we don't read about it on blogs. it's tucked away in the LA Times Education section and swept away in the midst of election frenzy. if this country were to do right, these would be front-page stories.

and geraldine ferraro refuses to be sorry for suggesting that barack obama is lucky to be a black man.

does anyone want to go start a quilombo with me? anyone?

"diversity training"- what's the point?

so part of my job involves training educators in the use of the curricula created by my org. i travel all over the five boroughs, visiting different afterschool programs that use our stuff. the trainings usually involve some combination of icebreakers, "identity" activities, a pedagogical mini-lesson, and an overview of the structure of the actual curriculum. we call our work "diversity" education, and because we deal with issues of identity, participants generally react to our work as "diversity training."

most of the time, these trainings are not hard. the icebreaker does in fact break the ice; participants have "moments of understanding" around the identity activities, thinking about ways in which they are privileged or not; everyone gets the pedagogy and the structure of the curriculum.

and then there are the other times, when things don't go so well.

how do i judge whether something is a success? to be honest? i only think a training is a success if i have what i feel is evidence of the participants having confronted their privilege.

"okay, so what?" you say. you're shrugging your shoulders right now, i know.

but the "so what" is that i think there's something to be unpacked there. like, why is it that i think forcing people to confront privilege is so necessary in the role that i play? and is that my job? is that my place, to go around asking people to recognize the privilege in their race or class or gender expression? is my need for the validation of their exploration about me or them?

i'm working on a lesson on race for a project right now, and it got me thinking. when we talk about identity, and try to shed a light on the structural nature of social identity, what is our goal? i know that consciousness is the first step towards acting for social change, but somehow i don't think that my job, as described by my boss, is to bring about social change in the lives of afterschool educators. i don't know that the two hours i spend with said educators is really even a viable place or time to undertake such a task. i don't know if i'm even really sufficiently trained to do that.

a few days ago i trained in brooklyn. the student population of the afterschool program is predominantly asian and eastern european. i, the black woman with a big afro, stood in front of a room of 6 white people (one a fairly recent immigrant from italy), and listened while they danced around the identity activity i placed in front of them. when i asked for reactions to the exercise, three of the six people stated that they were annoyed by the exercise, because "none of these things {race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, ability, first language, biological sex, the list goes on...} really matter. i'm just a person. if anything, i see myself as american."

two of the other people stated that it was interesting, because the only thing on there that they ever thought about was age. one, the italian immigrant, said first language was important to her, because she only recently became comfortable with english and is "really glad it is now her first language." this came after a few of her peers spoke about the fact that they never think about first language, because english is so easy! it just rolls off the tongue!

so i tried to unpack, to push. i really did. but no one wanted to go anywhere. anytime i started to talk about privilege, eyes started to wander and doodling commenced. it was really frustrating.

and that, i guess, is why i wonder if it's my place to struggle against all of this at all. if i want to keep my job, at least. because at the end of the day, if the evaluations aren't great, i hear about it. if people feel bullied, or bad about themselves, at the end of the time they spend with me, i haven't "done my job."

it makes me wonder about the role of diversity training, and the end goal. sometimes it seems that making people feel better about themselves while giving them a chance to feel better about the "strange" people around them, is the only real goal.

argh. this is so not my thing.

black.womyn.:conversations

really awesome documentary currently looking for screening spaces.

black lesbian women speaking out. check out the myspace page for lots of great clips.

what privilege do i have?

answer: a lot. before i even complete this "privilege meme" that has been circulating (and which i picked up from what tami said via racialicious, which originated at social class and quakers), i know that i will stepping forward quite a bit.

i am an african-american woman who was born to two "upwardly mobile" black professionals who themselves came from what would be considered the black upper crust in their towns of origin. not doctors and lawyers, mind you, but highly regarded people in their communities. my grandaddy on my mom's side was the first black mayor of his town (this is especially impressive because he was an ex-con). my grandaddy on my dad's side was the contractor that built much of grambling, louisana (go tigers!). i have privilege up the wazoo. my family had to work for it, harder and probably for longer than our white counterparts, but i have it.

what does this mean? i dunno, but it reminds me of the exercises i used to facilitate in college (PDAC, stand up!). go figure.

my "meme" below.

and yes, i'm a month late on this, but i don't care. i wanna!


Father went to college
Father finished college
Mother went to college
Mother finished college
Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
Were read children's books by a parent
Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
Went to a private high school
Went to summer camp
Had a private tutor before you turned 18
Family vacations involved staying at hotels
Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
There was original art in your house when you were a child
Had a phone in your room before you turned 18
You and your family lived in a single family house
Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
You had your own room as a child
Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
Had your own TV in your room in High School
Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
Went on a cruise with your family
Went on more than one cruise with your family
Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family


**
so i've had a chance to think about this a bit more, and what i think is most interesting about this privilege exercise is what is left out. for every relative i have this is an attorney, physician, or lawyer, i have at least one who works for UPS, is a high school or college dropout, or is sick with an illness that will probably kill them, even though it shouldn't. i don't want to go into a lot of "excuses" for the privileges i have, but i do think that this exercise, and others like it, do little to usefully complicate discussions of power and privilege. it was interesting to think about these markers of "class," i guess, but i'm not sure what it really tells me about the things i have access to that are important. as usual, what interests me more is where these things intersect with markers of other aspects of my identity. that checklist might take awhile to put together. anyone have any suggestions?