sundries

[rm]

Last night we had a lovely dinner with friends of Patty's. Unfortunately, Patty now also has a terrible cold. Between that and being assailed by a mosquito last night, we're not as rested as we could be.

It also looks like much if not all of my upcoming corporate time in Europe may be resolved today, which is also good in terms of making plans and knowing what's going on.

Last night when I got out of the subway, Union Square was filled with sukkaths made by artists and there was a random band unrelated to that playing old time music. It was New York at its finest.

I know I'm supposed to be reading the Cyteen sequel right now, but Exciting Academic Film Text just arrived, so that's my subway reading first.

cleolinda is having a discussion about grief, mourning and character death at her journal. It is a bucket of spoilers.

Stories of the bacha posh, girls presented as boys in Afghanistan to increase a family's status and luck. Everyone knows they are girls presented as boys, but this is still better than having no boys at all. At puberty, their status reverts back to their female sex, and the change in social freedoms and expectations can be jarring.

yesthatjill is compiling a list of gluten-free products.

Offensive, but also mostly smart and very funny: stereotype-based maps of Europe from the perspective of different nations (and gay men). It mostly stays this side of taste (because it makes fun of everyone both the observer and the viewed) in each map. On the other hand, there were a few where I raised an eyebrow and said "you went there? Really?" Anyway, it is interesting.

Hey, watch out for the porny Twitter bug.

The return of the nutcracker. In this case, a drink in Harlem that's part of the underground economy. Article is both interesting and full of the New York Times being appalling in that way only the New York Times can be (sellers include "young and older women" -- er? how about "women"?)

The senate is having a vote on whether to discuss a bill that contains DADT repeal language. The outcome is unclear. The whole thing is depressing.

In reading this batch of letters in the New York Times I got thinking about how people get really freaked out by this idea of apologizing as a society or group for wrongs done. "I didn't own slaves, so why should I have to when I didn't do anything wrong?" or "I'm a guy, but I don't hate women, why should I have to deal with women mistrusting me?" Now, there's a lot of things at play in there, but aside from the obvious, one of them is about the nuance of words.

Collective apology is not the same thing as collective guilt is not the same thing as collective mandated self-hatred is not the same as individual expressing regret/remorse/apology for wrongs done by the society in which they live regardless of their level of personal complicity in them. And yet many of us, especially those of us in privileged positions tend to engage in the discussion in a way where we're obviously not seeing these distinctions. We talk a lot in these discussions about sitting down, shutting up and listening to what other people have to say; that's good stuff. Sitting down, shutting up and thinking about the nuances of words, however, can also be a big help.

Btw, when I post stuff like this it's because I've been thinking about my own impulses towards defensiveness and seeing the ways in which they don't make sense or aren't fair to other people or actively harm me as well.

Hey, can I ask you all to try to keep sizeism down in comments? It's an ongoing problem. Exercise won't make everyone thin; some skinny people just come that way; fat people aren't stupid; and a real woman isn't determined by her BMI or her genitalia. HAES, the evils of HFCS, dieting if that's your choice, eating better, our nation's increasingly sedentary lifestyle, beauty standards, etc. are, however, all welcome topics. But try to pause before you type it.

Comments

[kayleigh-jane.livejournal.com]

That map is awesome; we are either Sodom or some type of drug!

On collective apology; our crown-prince apologised for the Dutch people for their role in the slave trade. I think he was right to do so; we do still call that time our 'Golden Age', our time of wealth based on the blood and suffering of innocents. This should be, and has been, aknowledged by the apology. It should still be aknowledged; I may not carry the direct guilt, but I do profit in some way from the actions of my forebears. Thus, as their descendant, I do believe I carry some of the indirect guild.

[browneyedgirl65.livejournal.com]

See now, that's the interesting point. I used to be all, why do *I* have to apologize, as well (re slavery in the US, internment camps for the Japanese-Americans in California), until I realized that I DID benefit from these -- that the historical past has shaped a present in which I am privileged: white people being on average more wealthy and educated; owning more of the land in California than otherwise (a good deal of farming property was seized during the internments). I did nothing to cause the slavery/internment; obviously since I was never alive, but I benefit from it, here and now. History doesn't fade away and disappear, it peeks out in every crevice of the shape of the present.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

I think there's a difference also between long-past events and ongoing or recent ones, and whether the people involved are still alive. I find it a little more difficult to "apologize" for events which took place in this country not only before I was born, but before any of my white ancestors got here (the NA ancestry feels even less inclined to have white guilt as they don't have a lot of responsibility). I can deeply regret the actions of Americans who supported slavery or evicted NA tribes from their lands, but I feel a bit odd about *apologizing* for them when I am in no way responsible and my white forebears all got here in the twentieth century.

This is not to say that I am not living in a society which resulted from these events, or that I don't have white privilege. Just that it seems odd and almost grandstanding of me personally to attempt to apologize for history, and doesn't really speak of any responsibility for current actions.

There's also a vast difference between a personal apology from a person, and a national apology, which is more what I think we're talking about. Let's take Bill Clinton personally apologizing and making reparations to the Hmong refugees who had been our allies in the Vietnam war and who'd been promised help, but were left to rot in Laotian refugee camps for years instead of being granted visas or citizenship, and in some cases military pay and rank. That is very different from me personally apologizing to one of those refugees for their neglect by America. The latter may be a nice gesture on my part, but is not a *national* apology.

[browneyedgirl65.livejournal.com]

Of course there's a difference between these kind of apologies. But one of the reasons I think that an apology for events of the distant (or at least before-ones-birth) is still constructive is that it opens the way for a more honest dialog, when one group of people at least partially admit to and own the privilege they have. That dialog is more potentially fertile ground for working on deconstructing present day structures that benefit one group and not the other.

By way of example, the Vancouver Conference of 2010 recently issued an apology for the results of the 1880 Milan Conference, which was the start of an especially devastating anti-signing campaign against the deaf. The emotional impact of that was very strong for me, even though I was not born anywhere near that time. But the fallout from that conference is exactly why I am where I am, why I was educated the way I was, why I am neither hearing nor Deaf, why even though I am profoundly deaf I've only begun learning to sign in the past three years. So what happened in 1880 isn't some obscure thing in the past, it's something that affected me all my life. It doesn't matter that all the educators and adult figures in my life when growing up probably never even heard of the Milan Conference. It doesn't even matter that no one in my family ever dealt with a deaf child until me.

It doesn't matter that you probably never heard of this conference until now. Every time you listen to a podcast, watch an uncaptioned youtube video, talk with your doctor over the phone to set up an appointment, leave your phone number down for a contact (and can actually use it), react to PA announcements in airports, etc, you are reaping these benefits and making use of a huge structure that I cannot.

So yeah. It doesn't matter that none of my ancestors, for example, owned slaves. It doesn't matter that a good portion of them came over in the reconstruction era. It matters that right now, I can get an apartment easily because of the color of my skin, that I can walk around a grocery store or clothes store without being watched suspiciously by the employees, that I can expect to be stopped by the police for legitimate reasons and not because of profiling. These are the things that happen now, today, everyday, regardless of who was doing what and when prior to 1865.

In speaking candidly about the privilege I have here, I hope to inspire others to think about their privileges too. Everytime someone I've talked with goes out and starts asking hey, how come this isn't captioned, and hey, how come no one mans that TTY machine you advertise as being "available"... yeah..

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

I actually have heard of the Vancouver conference; being a wheelchair user, I follow some disabled rights stuff. :) (And I use a lot of CC technology; I have mild to moderate auditory-processing-disorder. I'm debating learning sign, although I am a little frustrated that ASL is so different from what's used in Europe, and might try to learn BrailleWriter or deafblind manual instead; or just text people next time I have an issue. Or I may be too dyslexic to learn either, which will suck, but I'm gonna try to learn at least phrasebook sign despite dyslexia and stupid hands.)

However, Vancouver is, like the President, an institution or its representative, not an individual. An institution has a historical lifespan beyond that of a single person, and bears conversely much greater responsibility.

I have been in the past in a semi-official position re: the US government, as an employee and as a child of US diplomats, and have thus been a representative of my country on a slightly larger than 'ordinary citizen' basis while overseas. On that level, I will apologize for government fuck-ups; while nothing like an official apology, it's a nice gesture to tell the Brit who is chewing me out for Bush Junior's idiocy that I am sorry and ashamed of our nation's actions, and that I and many of my fellow citizens were at the time working to change policy and get the idiot and his cronies out of office.


I am just an individual; other than my citizenship, I don't represent anything beyond myself (don't even have a job). My personally apologizing for global warming, even my contributions to it, will do absolutely squat for the polar bears (okay, it might have a tiny raising-awareness effect, but I think we're fairly well awareness-saturated on this one.) Me taking responsibility for my contribution to global warming may have slightly more effect. However, I believe that the more important tactic is to place pressure on institutions - government, corporate and so on - to take that responsibility as well. My personal lowered footprint is a drop in the bucket compared to that of an entire corporation.

Use that metaphor for racial (or other similar) inequality, and you may see why I would rather quietly go ab out my own life trying not to be a racist rather than make what feels to me like a rather grandstanding apology, and make efforts to repair present inequality by pressuring elected officials and institutions to actively seek equality.

It's probably just a difference in personal style of activism. (And may be because as a cultural Catholic, apologizing isn't nearly as important as actually doing penance or working to solve the problem.)

[kayleigh-jane.livejournal.com]

I see why you find it difficult to apologize for something neither you nor your personal ancestors were involved in; I don't even know if any of my ancestors were slave traders. Despite that, it's still something I benefit from. As a person, I can't apologize. As part of a nation, I can and should. Because the people it happened to also have descendants, who still feel the effects of the past in the present. So we apologize, as one people to another.

Responsibility for current actions is very important and should never be avoided. Sadly, it all too frequently is.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Adding in a bit more history. The Alien Land Law prohibited land ownership by non-citizens. The Japanese were not allowed to become naturalized citizens until 1952. Until 1936, a Nisei (American-born Japanese) woman who married an Issei (Japanese resident-alien) man lost her American citizenship. (This is a slightly simplified version.) California didn't get rid of miscegenation laws until 1948.

And, despite what some people try to claim now, getting rid of competition from the Japanese was a significant factor in the Internment.