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By jamie, April 9, 2011 7:00 pm

Next year I am thinking about attending and academic conference in New Orleans. I have always wanted to go there, particularly to see the cemeteries and the architecture and to listen to the music. I spent a long time looking at two of the photographs in my reading today (I finished Part 3, one more to go) – one of a cemetery partially under water after Katrina, and other of stranded people waving up at helicopters, some holding U.S. flags, hoping to be rescued. I couldn’t avert my eyes – it was so sad to remember these images more than five years after that horrific tragedy. .

Jay-Z brings up a point that I thought of when I watched the media coverage of Katrina – there were so many shots of people waving, and you know they were photographed by the people being waved at, the journalists in media helicopters surveying the scene. He has a song lyric about it:

Wouldn’t you loot if you didn’t have the loot?/ and your baby needed food and you were stuck on the roof/ and a helicopter swooped down just to get a scoop/ Through his telescopic lens but he didn’t scoop you/ and the next five days, no help ensued/ They called you a refugee because you seek refuge/ and the commander-in-chief just flew by /Didn’t stop, I know he had a couple of seats/ Just rude…

I wondered it too – could those media helicopters have helped a few? Surely they had some safety equipment on board at least, something to help a little. And I wondered if any of those journalists went on to win awards for those photos – I think it would haunt me wondering if my prize was earned at the expense of a life – I would fear that the people in the photos didn’t get rescued by anyone, they just got their picture taken instead.

He talks about his personal feeling of responsibility, watching black people suffering and knowing that he had to help. He made a huge donation to the Red Cross, and wonders how much of the money actually went to the people he intended to help. He admits that he threw money at the situation but didn’t really do much, and admires those who actually got their hands dirty. This reminded me of Sean Penn – remember how he flew to New Orleans and tried to help people by boat? He was criticized and accused of seeking publicity, especially when his little boat took on water and nearly sank. Say what you will of him, he put himself out there – he tried to help. The people criticizing him were safe in their commentators’ chairs with hairspray in their hair and smug grins on their made up faces (or safely hiding behind their computers and sterile bylines) – they struck me as pretty pathetic, the people who laughed at him.

Jay-Z talks about charity, and how, in the Jewish tradition there is a type of giving that occurs anonymously. Then he mentions making a large contribution to a water project in Angola – he did not remain anonymous, and he traveled to Angola to see the project: “I was happy to know that whatever money I’d given was actually being put to work and not just paying a seven-figure salary for the head of the Red Cross.” The most recent unit in my sociology class was on religion – several churches are actively involved in disaster relief, and so we have options if we want to donate to relief efforts. The LDS church is often a first responder, and there is no paid clergy – every dollar of your contribution goes directly to the relief effort you request it to go to. Say what you will about organized religion, it’s nice to hear (and teach) about a major benefit that transcends faith and doctrine.

One more thing: Jay-Z says that “poverty is relative” and explains that, as a kid, he had no idea that he was poor. He reminded me of the discussion about this in Obama’s book. He says he learned that he was poor when his sixth grade teacher took his class on a field trip to her home – seeing her refrigerator with water dispenser and ice maker, her view and all of her other things make him realized that he was poor. Just like Obama’s relative, he talks about how this realization makes people obsess over achieving the U.S. version of happiness – money and things – even if they had been perfectly happy and content before they knew what they were missing.

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By jamie, April 8, 2011 5:36 am

Sometimes I just want to go home, the home I remember as a child – we spent summer and Christmases there, at my Reyna’s house, but to me it is home. My grandparents moved away from that house when I was a young adult, but I still dream of the red and black carpeting, the sunlight filtering in through the screen door, the breeze blowing into the window of the back bedroom on hot summer nights, the family all gathered to visit, sometimes taking up all available space in that small house. That home doesn’t even look the same any more, not even from the outside, that home only exists in my memory. I am sometimes saddened by the thought that I can never take my daughter there, or my husband – they will not know that home, or many of the people who visited. It’s not just place of course – I have often said that my Reyna is like oxygen to me – when I start to feel a little bit suffocated, all I have to do is visit with her for awhile and I can breathe again. I visit her several times a year, and thank God for giving me such a wonderful grandmother. When I see my parents too, and my sister and her little boy, I feel more grounded in the world, like I belong here a little bit more.

I finished Obama’s book. It was excellent, and I highly recommend it. Toward the end, he has a good cry at his father’s grave and talks about that longing for home, that connection with his roots. I don’t think everyone “gets” this feeling – I know some of you are probably saying – well, what about the home you have now? What about your husband? Your daughter? Of course they are home too, but they did not form me, except in the sense that they made me into a wife and a mother. They didn’t make me into a human being – that happened at my Reyna’s house, and before – before I was born into my family, the roots of me were being developed and shaped. The strength and assertiveness shared by the women in my family, developed even in times when women were not supposed to have those assets – they are my birthright. My race, my ethnicity, the shape of my nose and the color of my hair (I just got highlights and am feeling a bit conflicted about it) – all are woven from parts of my ancestors. How can I not think of them as home?

Another bit from this section of the book – while he was in Kenya, one of Obama’s relatives laments to him about the damage that Western values have caused the people of his father’s country. They see fast cars and lavish homes on their television screens and, for the first time in their lives, they realize that they are poor. They want some of that “American dream” regardless of where they live. They long for excess and they learn to hate their current situation, even if they had once been perfectly satisfied.

Respect for tradition weakened, for young people saw that elders had no real power. Beer, which once had been made of honey and which men drank only sparingly, now came in bottles, and many men became drunks. Many of us began to taste the white man’s life, and we decided that compared to him, our lives were poor.

This makes me sad. Lately I experience a negative visceral reaction when I hear the term “the American dream.” It is clear that this “dream” is not really available to everyone in this country, particularly the immigrants who currently risk their lives to get here in search of it. “Whoever dies with the most toys wins?” What’s funny or cute about that? It’s disgusting, really.

I was listening to the radio yesterday about the probability of a government shut down. A politician was predicting that some members of Congress will give up their paychecks if there is a shut down – how nice to have a choice in the matter. A friend of mine is wondering if she will have a job to go to on Monday because she is “nonessential staff.” Though active duty military will be paid – eventually – they will probably have to wait for their money. Lawmakers are telling us that we all need to “dig deep” and sacrifice, but we don’t really see them sacrificing. Rich people want their tax cuts and rich people are a very important part of our “American dream” ideology, so they will probably get to keep their tax cuts.

Anyway, it was a great book. Come on Obama, Mr. President, don’t blow this – you have come a long way since that day in Kenya, but your roots are the same as they were that day, and you still have the lessons you learned and wrote about – don’t waste your opportunity by playing politics. So many of us are counting on you.

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By jamie, March 26, 2011 11:43 pm

Last summer I had the opportunity to tour a golf course community in the Bahamas with Geek Boy’s parents. I have never played golf (unless mini-golf counts), but for the first time in my life I was able to see its appeal – the views were spectacular, and I could completely imagine at least walking that lovely course every day. It was also the most solid example of colonialism I have ever experienced: while the development has made some environmental “concessions” (using grass that can be maintained with sea water, not using fertilizer or pesticides, treating the sewage water for everyone on the island, etc.), there is a high gate dividing the property from the settlement (the town where the native Bahamians live) and no one is allowed to play golf there unless either own a home (extremely expensive) on the property or are guests of a homeowner. The only Bahamians we saw there were the workers (not the developer of course): one followed us around making sure my two year old daughter had enough juice and that our every need was provided for (we didn’t ask for anything), while another made our kiddo a huge peanut butter and jelly sandwich since nothing on the restaurant menu was age appropriate for her.

I was reminded of this day when I read about Barack Obama staying with his half-sister, Auma, during his first trip to Kenya (he took time off before starting Harvard Law to visit his father’s homeland) – he wanted to go on a safari and Auma tried to talk him out of it, noting that native residents could not afford to go on safari even though it was their land. I don’t care how often people argue that this kind of tourism is wonderful because it contributes to the local economy – it doesn’t feel right to me that natives of poor countries have to allow themselves to be exploited in this way in order to feed their families. The entire system is just messed up. (I read through page 366.)

Because this book is about race, Mr. Obama talks about how conflicted he feels knowing that many of his race must made do without the opportunities that he has had. He refers to it as “survivor’s guilt” – watching others of his race being poor and struggling when he got educated and “got out” of a lower social class situation. He also shares debates with his sister about the “racial caste system” that exists in poor communities in the U.S., in Kenya, and probably almost everywhere else – people of different races and ethnicities share the bottom of the barrel and discrimination is rampant between groups. No one wants to be at the bottom of the pecking order, so there is a great deal of in-fighting; this is a perfect situation for the wealthy, because they don’t have to worry about the different groups banning together to demand an improvement of their lot.

More on the “women’s prerogative” from the Cleapatra book – women often pay dearly when they change their minds, but this is not generally an adequate justification for remaining silent. One of Obama’s aunts struggled financially and couldn’t/wouldn’t keep a marriage because she didn’t want to be married to someone who turned out to be lazy or abusive. Women have so many reasons for swallowing down what is not best for them because they are afraid to lose. Sometimes it takes a very brave person to exercise that “woman’s prerogative.”

Here is just one quote from this section. When I read it I felt sick to my stomach because it describes exactly how we feel in this country:

I supposed it is not only the government’s fault,” he said after a while. “Even when things are done properly, we Kenyans don’t like to pay taxes. We don’t trust the idea of giving our money to someone. The poor man, he has good reason for this suspicion. But the big men who own the trucks that use the roads, they also refuse to pay their share. They would rather have their equipment break down all the time than give up some of their profits. This is how we like to think, you see, Somebody else’s problem.”
“Attitudes aren’t so different in America,” I told Francis.
“You are probably right,” he said, “But you see, a rich country like America can perhaps afford to be stupid.”

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By jamie, March 7, 2011 10:43 pm

My Reyna (my Grandma) feels a special fondness for all of the politicians she has met (she has been interested in politics probably since she learned how to read – it’s in our blood, I guess, through her father’s line). Bill Richardson, John Kerry, many local leaders – whether or not she likes them, she recognizes the connection made by shaking their hands or having stood a few feet away from them. I have already written about my fan-girl experience meeting Hillary Clinton, and I can attest to this as well – the world seems just a little bit smaller when you see them in person – regular people for sure, but connected to the world in a way that most of us have little opportunity or inclination to be on our own.

I finished the Chicago section of the book (through page 295 – for those keeping track that means we are on to Kenya for the remainder of the book). Mr. Obama is a neighborhood organizer in this section, and he describes an instance where he and his colleagues got to meet the mayor of Chicago – for Obama it was business, but the local residents were so excited that some acted a bit like giddy schoolkids meeting a rock star. It reminded me of the experiences I have had, the feeling of being part of History.

This section is sad – Mr. Obama tries his hand at organizing in the schools, and he also attempts to connect with religion and faith – something he had previous resisted, for several reasons. Churches have historically been useful in advocating for social change (not all of them, obviously), and Mr. Obamas meetings with local church leaders have increasingly involved him having to dodge questions about his own religious path. This section describes the downward trajectory in Chicago for poor black people and their families.

The following conversation occurs at a school for young children – kindergarten and a few other young grades – where most of children have very young mothers, some children themselves (age 14 or 15). Obama watches the kids walking through the halls, their faces innocent and trusting, as he is meeting with a school administrator:

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Dr. Collier said.
“They really are.”
“The change comes later. In about five years, although it seems like it’s coming sooner all the time.”
“What change is that?”
“When their eyes stop laughing. Their throats can still make the sound, but if you look at their eyes, you see they’ve shut off something inside.”

This section describes a suicide, kids shooting at each other while Obama and a colleague drop to their bellies on the grass nearby, kids becoming “children again” when they put the guns away after their target runs out of range. He sees the city getting worse, and he discusses it with a man who grew up in the poor part of Chicago, a man who later replaces Mr. Obama in his organizer post when Barack “gets out” and goes to Harvard Law School:

“I mean, things were tough when I was coming up, but there were limits. We’d get high, get into fights. But out in public, at home, if an adult saw you getting loud or wild, they would say something. And most of us would listen, you know what I’m saying?

Now, with the drugs, the guns- all that’s disappeared. Don’t take a whole lot of kids carrying a gun. Just one or two. Somebody says something to one of ‘em, and – pow! – kid wastes him. Folks hear stories like that, they just stop trying to talk to these young cats out here. We start generalizing about ‘em must like the white folds do. We see ‘em hanging out, we heard the other way. After a while, even the good kid starts realizing ain’t nobody our here gonna look out for him. So he figures he’s gonna have to look after himself. Bottom line, you got twelve-year-olds making their own damn rules…

I don’t know, Barack. Sometimes I’m afraid of ‘em. You got to be afraid of somebody who just doesn’t care. Don’t matter how young they are.”

This was difficult to read. I hate that we blame the victims – we don’t value kids who grow up in poverty, especially kids who are not white. We blame their parents, we blame their culture, we blame their lack of motivation. When they are small enough to “save,” like those kids Mr. Obama saw in the elementary school, we are busy being disgusted if their young mothers appear to have expensive manicures yet pay with food stamps in the grocery store. We are outraged if we think they are trying to “work the system.” We try to make sure they receive as few taxpayer funded resources as possible – because we all have equal chances to succeed in “America” – if they don’t succeed, it’s obviously their fault.

And once the entire system is a wreck, then it’s very hard to fix. At one time, the kids listened to the mamas. Now they have guns and even the mamas are afraid. We hate giving handouts, so we send these mamas to work in order for them to get government aid – extra points if they work more than one job – and then it’s all their fault if their young boys fall into trouble because there was no one at home after school, no decent after school programs, no decent school programs during school hours, no decent male role models. This is a cycle of course, because these boys go on to be absent fathers and another generation of mamas takes the blame for the disintegration of an entire community. Barack Obama articulates this far better than I ever can – like or hate his politics, his thoughts on race are worth the read.

This section ends with what appears to be Barack Obama’s first time attending services at Jeremiah Wright’s church. He describes the sermon, entitled, “The Audacity of Hope.” I found what is labeled as a transcript of this sermon, and read it – it is fantastic. Here’s the gist of it: even when life is falling apart, as it arguably is in poor neighborhoods, we can still have the audacity to hope for something better, and to thank God for blessings we haven’t even asked Him for.

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By jamie, January 4, 2011 7:04 pm

Meeting the parents – such an excitingly awkward experience. One particularly horrifying one for me included a home cooked meal and a major dose of Ignorant Parent. His mother served tacos I think, or it might have been burritos, and she apologized for not having proper “Mexican salsa” (they were served with ketchup instead). She expressed her disappointment that her son had taken French in high school instead of Spanish, “If he had only known that you were in his future, I’m sure he would have chosen to learn Spanish.” She wanted to know everything about my culture, and I think she would have been thrilled if I had responded by grabbing her son’s arm and breaking into an Authentic Latin Dance right next to the table. Instead, I had to endure her crestfallen face when I delivered the bad news that five years of classes had failed to make a Spanish speaker out of me, that not one of my family members lives or has ever lived in what is now Mexico, and that (oh the horror) we don’t even own a sombrero. (I know I have written about this already, but I couldn’t find it in a search of my blog – sorry for any redundancy).

Here is what Obama has to say about his experience with Ignorant White People (by the way, I finished section 1, through page 129):

Still, the feeling that something wasn’t quite right stayed with me, a warning that sounded whenever a white girl mentioned in the middle of conversation how much she liked Stevie Wonder; or when a woman in the supermarket asked me if I played basketball; or when the school principal told me I was cool. I did like Stevie Wonder, I did love basketball, and I tried my best to be cool at all times. So why did such comments always set me on edge? There was a trick there somewhere, although what the trick was, who was doing the tricking, and who was being tricked, eluded my conscious grasp.

I know I can’t presume to understand what it feels like to be a young black man being raised in a white world by white grandparents during a particularly volatile time in U.S. racial history. When he explains about trying to move back and forth between two worlds while secretly knowing that the one he lives in is not the one he belongs in, at least according to those who see him from the outside, obviously I cannot identify. But I do understand about sitting on the fence and not being allowed to fully join either side. Most of the Spanish-speaking kids in school did not see me as one of them (or they would tease me by speaking to me in Spanish anyway, assuming that I was trying to “be white” by pretending not to understand them. The Anglo kids included me, but I always felt different from them anyway – I was constantly surprised by things they would do or say; sometimes felt like I was “passing,” and I was ashamed by this. Now I am in Florida and people think I am Caucasian, and this bugs me to no end; it is a welcome relief going back home and being spoken to in Spanish by people in the grocery store – so my face hasn’t changed after all, the people here just don’t know how to recognize the more subtle features of my ethnicity.

Then I study racial inequality and social stratification, and I want so badly NOT to be part of the dominant culture. I am thankful for the value my mother has always placed on education, and that my husband has also valued education enough to encourage me to pursue advanced degrees instead of immediately entering the Florida job market upon my arrival here. I know that I am extremely blessed and incredibly lucky, and I don’t ever want to lose sight of the position other Latinos have in this country, because their blood is my blood, regardless of what language I speak.

More from Obama:

In fact, you couldn’t even be sure that everything you had assumed to be an expression of your black, unfettered self–the humor, the song, the behind-the-back pass–had been freely chosen by us. At best, these things were a refuge; at worst, a trap. Following this maddening logic, the only thing you could choose as your own was withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage, until being black meant only the knowledge of your own powerlessness, of your own defeat. And the final irony: Should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that, too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. N*****.

Some people still refer to the United States as a melting pot, and I don’t think they really understand what this implies: Immigrants are valued more if they assimilate, if they get “melted” into the dominant culture. Obama discusses the inner turmoil he endures while learning this. He talks about how minorities get swallowed up into “white culture” rather than the other way around. If a person of color attempts to fit in amidst the dominant “culture”, this usually means avoiding people who look like her/him, and pretending to be a colorless “individual” instead.

I have written a bit about my views on independence and extended family and have a few more things to say here. One hallmark of “white culture” (a very silly term, actually) is the value of independence. The more I think about it, the more I think the rest of us are manipulated into believing that our successes and failures are all our own (because we are independent, right?). In truth, we all stand on the shoulders of others, and, to me, it’s immoral to say otherwise. Our ancestors, living family members, mentors, educators, friends – when we look at a homeless person and say that “he did this to himself” is just as ridiculous as saying that someone like Bill Gates is extremely wealthy entirely because of his own merit. It’s easier, of course, to preach the gospel of “individuality” – then we don’t have to worry about our involvement in the misfortunes of others, but it’s also dishonest.

One more thing about this section: Remember when Bill Clinton said he “didn’t inhale?” Evidently Barack (Barry at the time) Obama was a little more successful at “inhaling” before he finally decided to get serious about his future and stop trying to escape his concerns about being a mixed-race individual. Reading this and knowing that is was written by the sitting U.S. President (long before he started running for major political office, of course), was kind of surreal. We have fallen into a pattern of elementary school-style “gotcha” when it comes to our politicians. We try to “dig up dirt” and see what we can “throw at them.” It’s ridiculous. Does this encourage would-be and current politicians to become sinless? Of course not – it DOES encourage them to hide any embarrassing fact about themselves, sometimes by any means necessary. We don’t value honesty and high moral standards in our politicians, only the appearance thereof. And if you do mess up young boy or girl, might as well just hang up any future political aspirations because forgiveness and fresh beginnings are NOT part of the “American way.”