Polkadotted Stripes

Don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, "You're too arrogant! And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God.  -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Instant Vintage: Pres. Barred from CBC Dinner, Admin. Cries Foul

Last Saturday, President Obama was barred from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Annual Phoenix Awards Dinner, and the administration is pulling out the race card.  Although President Obama had been scheduled to address the audience, the crowd was instead serenaded by the likes of Michael McDonald and Hall and Oates.  Now, those close to the Commander-in-Chief are claiming that he was not denied entrance because of his racial background.  "This is one of the more racist acts in recent memory," one White House spokesperson said during a Monday morning press conference.  "There's no doubt in my mind that he was denied entry to the event because he is half-white."

Today in Post-Race History: Semantic Antics

(Oh, BHO.  You're so funny!)

I will (try to) be brief: I hate this joke.

Then again, when's the last time you heard me say that I liked what this cat has to say about race?

Why? Put simply, it's dismissive.

Another Word on Bootstraps

On the day the Senate Judiciary Committee considers her nomination:

I didn't watch much of the Sotomayor hearings. I found them boring, and frankly, in some weird way they reminded me of my oral exams. And who wants recall that trauma on a weekday afternoon--especially when one is supposed to be writing a dissertation and not watching C-SPAN? Anyway, I caught part of Senator Jon Kyl's discussion with Sotomayor. I believe this was the first round of questioning on July 14. At some point Kyl, as expected, turns to Sotomayor's speeches and her "wise Latina" remark. He's concerned because he thinks judging has (always been) and should (continue to) be neutral, and that Sotomayor might use her sassy Latina-ness to make decisions. Sotomayor says something to the effect of "I didn't really mean it that way. I was just trying to encourage people who aren't white, straight, male, privileged, etc." Of course, I paraphrase. But Kyl likes her response. So he says:

And if I could just interrupt you right now [but, of course]: to me that's the key. It's good because it shows these young people that you're talking to that with a little hard work, it doesn't matter where you came from, you can make it. And that's why you hope to see them on the bench. I totally appreciate that.

I don't know about you--and by you I mean the one person who might read this--I cringe any time I hear a white dude talking to a person of color about working hard and making it. I've written about Sotomayor and bootstraps before, but I just need to reiterate. Kyl's assertion that the recipe for success in this country is "a little hard work" plays right into this Ben Franklin, et. el.-inspired notion that that's how people get ahead in life. How American. But that kind of thinking obscures biases and institutional barriers that folks, who probably don't look anything like Jon Kyl, have to contend with every day. It assumes, for instance, that a little hard work can override an educational system in shambles, garner one a decent SAT score, and admission into college. It assumes that poor circumstances are the result of poor effort. It supposes that a little hard work can outdo racism or sexism or any other -ism that reinforces white supremacy. Believing this kind of stuff doesn't leave one time to critically examine the cohort of folks sitting in front of Sotomayor asking her questions. It sounds nice, but it evades what's really going on.

But I get it. This is something we all really want to believe. We want to think that we determine our success--or failure. We want to feel that if we just buckle down and grind it out, good things will come. That's comforting. It's nice to think that we got the job, into grad school, the promotion, or have money because of our deeds; that we deserve it. We want to identify with Sotomayor's story, because it makes us forget and not have to contend with the folks before her who didn't make it, and the folks after who won't. Those whose hard work never really seem to be enough. We don't want the disconcerting thought(s) that even if we follow the(ir) rules, and play the game with diligence that success can be elusive to some and an arbitrary stroke of luck to others. Thinking like that can be a real bummer. But what's the alternative? Believing George Bush worked his way into the White House?

And what drooling over Sotomayor's bootstraps and Obama's Horatio Alger remixes speeches about folks working hard, going to college, getting jobs, owning homes gets us is a pleasant case of amnesia. No one wants to remember that in capitalism, someone always has to lose, and when you couple that with a system dedicated to disenfranchising people of color, most of the losers will have melanin. That's the part that they want you to forget: that it's a competition, and that not everyone can make it, not even with a little hard work.

The other day, I read an article about Obama's highly touted campaign speech on race. Adam Mansbach writes, "The essence of white privilege is not knowing you have it; white people in America are bicyclists riding with the wind at their backs, never realizing that they owe part of their speed ­­– whatever speed that is – to forces beyond their control. By no means does this guarantee success. But few whites are conditioned to contemplate how much worse off they might be if they had to grapple with factors like police profiling and housing discrimination, in addition to the other travails of being [a white] American[.]" Jon Kyl appreciates the rhetoric of hard work because it provides him with the energy to just keep peddling without having to stop and think about the wind helping him along, or how that same wind challenges the efforts of other bikers--you know, the ones who have bikes. He keeps taking that blue pill--because he can afford health care.

I think I just needed to say all of this aloud, to remind myself (and maybe others), because getting excited about seeing the "first [insert a non-white, male, and privileged identity here] person to [something a bunch of white guys have done before] may lull us into forgetting to keep our eyes on the ball. (Remember November?) It's really easy call to Sotomayor an exception to the rule without thinking about how she symbolically reinforces them. And sometimes it's really difficult to discern whether or not the tellers believe their story.

Or maybe I overdosed on red pills.

That is all.

(Timberland) Boot Straps

Dear Gayle,

I'm sure you've heard by now, but just in case you haven't, Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice David Souter. Understandably, women and people of color, especially Latinos, are rejoicing about the pick. This moment is historic. And though I doubt it, I hope her previous judicial record and her time as a Justice are as liberal as choosing her as a replacement seems.

Since the nomination, I've nearly drowned in the deluge of up-by-the-bootstraps/American Dream rhetoric Sotomayor's biography has inspired. Here's a sample or three:

from the Washington Post:

There is much to admire in the achievements of Sonia Sotomayor [...] Born to Puerto Rican parents and raised in a housing project in the Bronx, Judge Sotomayor went on to excel at Princeton and earn a law degree from Yale.

from the New York Daily News:

The audience was transfixed, many in tears themselves, at a story that was at once classically American and one of a kind* - her mother's determined role in launching her daughter on an improbable journey from a South Bronx housing project to nomination as the nation's first Latina Supreme Court justice.

Sotomayor's father was a factory worker with a third-grade education who didn't speak English. He died when Sotomayor was 9, and her mother worked six days a week as a nurse to provide for her two children.

Sotomayor grew up in the Bronxdale Houses, a sprawling, 26-building low-income project of seven-story apartment buildings in Soundview just north of the Bruckner Expressway.

"Sonia's mom bought the only set of encyclopedias in the neighborhood," Obama said. "[She] sent her children to a Catholic school called Cardinal Spellman, out of the belief that with a good education, here in America, all things are possible.

from the New York Times:

It’s impossible* not to be moved by Judge Sotomayor’s story — born in the Bronx to Puerto Rican parents and brought up in a city housing project. She was found to have diabetes as a child, and her father, a factory worker, died when she was 9, leaving her mother, a nurse, to raise her and her brother. Judge Sotomayor attended Princeton, from which she graduated summa cum laude, and Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the law review.

and from the President:

Sonia's father was a factory worker with a third-grade education who didn't speak English.

But like Sonia's mother, he had a willingness to work hard, a strong sense of family, and a belief in the American dream.

When Sonia was 9, her father passed away, and her mother worked six days a week as a nurse to provide for Sonia and her brother -- who's also here today, is a doctor, and a terrific success in his own right -- but Sonia's mom bought the only set of encyclopedias in the neighborhood, sent her children to a Catholic school called Cardinal Spellman, out of the belief that with a good education here in America all things are possible.*

With the support of family, friends and teachers, Sonia earned scholarships to Princeton, where she graduated at the top of her class, and Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal, stepping onto the path that led her here today.

Along the way, she's faced down barriers, overcome the odds, and lived out the American dream that brought her parents here so long ago.

*emphasis added

Touching, right? Yes, absolutely. But this, Gayle, is an example of what I will call the POC (People of Color) Candy Cocktail (until I come up with a better name). Though it is inspiring, the subsequent hustling of Sotomayor's story as "compelling" is really about making a person of color palatable, digestable, understandable, and acceptable to white people--sort of like when my mom dips Nala's medicine in peanut butter. Compelling is nothing but code.

Many Americans like to believe in the American myths of hard work and the equal playing field. So much so that you would think that they had actually read Horatio Alger or Ben Franklin's autobiography. Sotomayor's story fits nicely within that discourse. The unfortunate death of Sotomayor's father (justifiable, and "non-black" father absenteeism), her mother working two jobs to support her and her brother, studying grammar books over the summer to catch up to her Princeton classmates--all that fits nicely into that narrative.

What it also does is imply that every other person of color who doesn't "make it" is a lazy whiner. What it does is hide the fact that housing projects in the 1950s and 60s were different from the ones (still) around now. (I did a quick search. Bronxdale Homes is in Soundview. Sotomayor notwithstanding, every other notable citizen is in the music business. Amadou Diallo was shot in the neighborhood. What does that tell you?) What it really does is obscure the structural barriers that somehow had nothing to do with the fact that every other resident worth noting in a Wiki entry is a rapper. Can you imagine KRS-One, another South Bronx native and only 11 years Sotomayor's junior, as a Supreme Court Justice?

Folks want to continue to believe that racism works merely on an individual, personal level. That it's about drinking from colored water fountains (now that's an idea for blipsters), being called wetback, and famous white people pulling their eyelids back and taking pictures. And spinning Sotomayor's tale in this way works right into the mythos. What's more, it allows folks to silently agree that POC have to work hard to get shit the straight white male (should) just naturally possess--things like material wealth, seats on a court (and courtside seats), and intelligence. Perhaps memory fails, but I don't recall Chief Justice Robert's story being served to me like that.

Perhaps this is all part of game. The POC Candy Cocktail: A beverage so tasty The Man doesn't even know what he's sipping, and by the time he figures it out we already have the keys to the car and he's too drunk to do anything about it. Only time will tell. I guess I'm just tired. I'm not sure I've the stamina to continue tricking people into respecting me. Besides, I fear we've been tugging on our frayed bootstraps for so long they're going to break soon. Again, only time will tell.

love,
me.