Archive for the 'Class' Category

The Happy WASP Boy

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 30, 2006
in Class, Ethnicity, Favorite Posts, 2004-2006, Memories and Race
. 48 Comments

Okay, I lied.  Here’s one more post before I go off to a weekend of happy delirium, overeating, snowball fights, and reflective worship with two dozen fifteen year-olds.

So this post at Lucky White Girl led me to this post at Bitch Lab to this post at Listening for Change.  Topic: whiteness.  And at the last of these three blogs, I found this:

Yes, I know as well as the rest of us of the isolation we grew up with. White people don’t sleep with their children. They don’t play much and they don’t hug much. They don’t laugh much. And they spend most of the time trying to look good. We have beautiful cribs and curtains. We don’t have much connecting going on.

Barb at Lucky White Girl wrote:

So what can we -those of us who recognize the emptiness of typical North American white culture- do to sate that desire for a cultural heritage we can be proud of, for a culture we -as progressives- can identify with?

But here’s the thing I’ve realized in my life:  though there is much that is vacuous and materialistic about North American middle-class culture, that has damn all to do with skin color or ethnic heritage!  I grew up with a father who was a European war refugee and a mother who came from an "old" California family of German, English,and Scots-Irish ancestry.  I spent most of my time with my mother’s side of the family, and they formed my values and my world view. 

Yes, we’re WASPs.  If you want to stereotype one aspect of us, we’re a Brooks Brothers wearing, Bloody Mary drinking, Buick Roadmaster station-wagon driving, fraternity and sorority joining, tennis-playing, mayonnaise and meat loaf eating, Junior League cookbook owning, monogrammed thank-you note writing, Town and Country magazine reading, English horseback riding, debutante ball attending, Social Register listed, pastel polo-shirt or sweater set clad clan.  Without apologies.

(I’ve rebelled against my family in some ways, mostly having to do with fashion.  I am the first tattooed man in several centuries of family history.  I’d rather wear Diesel, Energie, and Paul Frank than Ralph Lauren, J. Peterman, or Izod Lacoste.  But I can still "do it up" WASP style; you should see me in my seersucker suit!  My other rebellion, of course, is talking about the family in public.)

Yes, in our family, babies don’t sleep in their parents’ beds.  Yes, kids move away to college when they turn 18.  Yes, when I greet most of my male cousins, we shake hands instead of hugging.   Yes, we don’t raise our voices at the table.  We chew with our mouths closed, keep our hands off the table, and don’t interrupt each other. 

But you know what?  We laugh.  A lot.  And even if we don’t live loud like something out of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", we adore each other.  Where on God’s green earth is it written that the expressive and emotive cultures of the Mediterranean or Latin worlds are healthier than we quieter, more restrained WASPs?  I adore my wife’s family in Colombia (we’ll visit them soon), and I am always happy to be among my friends who come from more "colorful" backgrounds.  (Mine is one of only half a dozen inter-ethnic marriages in the family.) But that doesn’t mean I’m ashamed of having grown up WASPy, of having been raised in a culture that valued understated elegance, self-restraint, self-reliance and a sturdy Protestant work ethic.

News flash, folks: Anglo-Saxon reticence is not a recipe for misery!  It’s not inherently oppressive or misery making, at least no more so than any other way of doing things.   No culture has a monopoly on dysfunction; no culture has a monopoly on healthy child-rearing practices.  My ancestors were fortunate, and some of them probably made their money in ways that were cruel and exploitative.  But the sins of the fathers are not automatically visited upon the sons and daughters!  I can regret what my ancestors may have done without rejecting all of their values, all of their contributions, all of the wonderful pieces of a very real culture they bequeathed to me.

Next month, I’m going to gather with forty-odd family members for Easter.  We’ll eat deviled eggs; we’ll play croquet on the lawn; we’ll wear pink and green and talk Cal football and the stock market and the war; we’ll watch the children hunt for shiny plastic orbs in the grass and we’ll catch up with each other.  There won’t be a lot of yelling. No loud music will be played.  There will certainly be no dancing. No one will get drunk and fall down.  We’ll all be in bed by 11:00PM and up not long after dawn.  We’ll be cheerful, courteous, and gentle.  We’ll have a wonderful time, all without raising our voices once.

At the end of the weekend, when I say goodbye to a few of my male family members, I’ll shake their hands warmly, pat them on the shoulder –  and no more. And they’ll know I love them and I’ll know they love me and we’ve never once said it, nor are we likely to start.  But don’t pity me — I’ll know that I’m treasured, and my family will know I treasure them.  Growing up WASP means that you learn that love is often understated, often silent, but no less perceptible and no less powerful as a result!  I’ve got a culture of which I am deeply proud, and a family whom I love with every fiber of my being. 

Shed no tears for this happy white boy.

UPDATE:  I’ve been away, but quickly going back through the comments I see some dangerous thread drift; I’ve deleted a few at my sole discretion.  This is not a forum for a discussion of race — it’s a post about WASPiness, not "white pride" or the history of race relations. I do promise a more thoughtful post on "whiteness"fairly soon.

White guilt, religious zeal, and nature-worshiping misanthropy: why I am confused about immigration policy

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 29, 2006
in Christianity, Class, Politics and Race
. 15 Comments

Everywhere I go this week, folks are talking about the great immigration debate.  My students, my colleagues, my friends — even strangers in Starbucks are animatedly weighing in on the recent demonstrations here in Los Angeles and the ongoing policy struggle in Washington.

I find that when I think about immigration, I have two equally powerful, emotional, visceral reactions.  Naturally, these reactions contradict each other.

Reaction one is rooted in my sense of myself as (on my mother’s side) a sixth-generation Californian.  All four of my maternal great-grandparents, and two of my great-great grandparents, were born in this state.  Not many folks can say that.  When my ancestors arrived here (for the Gold Rush, mostly), they found a state of perhaps a million people.  When my mother was growing up, California had seven million; in my childhood, California had twenty — and today, we have thirty-six million.

My childhood was divided between our house in Carmel and a family ranch in the hills northeast of San Jose.   For as long as I can remember, we’ve been making that two-hour drive between these two homes with some regularity.  And I’ve watched as field after field has been covered with new houses; I’ve watched the cattle and farms of my childhood (and I’m only 38!) disappear beneath "Redwood Estates" or "Glendalough Ranches" or "Belleview Manor" or whatever godawful pretentious name the developers have bestowed on their ticky-tacky tract homes.  (I grew up singing the "ticky-tacky boxes" song).  My mother and my grandmother bemoaned the loss of the rural, bucolic, and (I suppose) privileged life they had known, and I grew up bemoaning it with them.  In college, I studied the phenomenon of false nostalgia, and ruefully recognized myself as a first-rate practitioner thereof!

I’ve been a Sierra Club member for a long time.  If there’s one "religion" my family shares, it’s a commitment to preserving the environment.  Republicans and Democrats, Christians and Wiccans (I have three Wiccan cousins), we are all passionate "no-growth" types.   I was raised on the vaguely misanthropic nature-worshipping poetry of Robinson Jeffers, and as a child and an adult, some of my happiest times were and are in the mountains or on the beaches of my native state — alone!  I may be an extrovert, but this extrovert recharges himself in wildness.

So I look at the population growth, and my first reaction is "Dammit, we don’t need any more people! We need fewer Californians!"  I want to close the borders not only to immigrants from abroad, but from elsewhere in the United States.  When a drought comes again, as it will, where on earth will we get our water?  What will happen to our state parks as population pressures grow and grow?  What will happen to a way of life that even in my childhood I knew was vanishing?

So that’s reaction one.  I think those thoughts for a while, and then another voice kicks in: "Hugo", I tell myself, "you’re a snob and an elitist.  Your family got here first and stole more, and now you want to pull up the drawbridge.  Besides, affluent whites such as yourself consume more and waste more than most poor migrant families do; I’m fairly confident that Hugo (even with his conservation efforts) produces more garbage per annum than your average undocumented laborer. "

Of course, as I think those thoughts, my faith starts to kick in.  I ask myself the perennial question, "What Would Jesus Do?"  I recall Deuteronomy on welcoming strangers.  I think about the gospel of radical love that stretches beyond borders, and I end up overwhelmed with guilt for my initial xenophobia.  Instead, I cry "Throw open the borders! Make all God’s children welcome!  The Lord will provide (the water, the food, the freeways); we all have plenty, let’s share our abundance!" I launch into impassioned and self-satisfying rhetoric about the biblical imperative to love my neighbor (without checking his immigration status).  I get drunk on a satisfying cocktail of white guilt and religious zeal, and next thing you know, I want to chant "si se puede" and march in the streets, hire the next day laborer I see — and when he’s through, I want to overpay him, hug him, and invite his family for dinner.

I share these two reactions not to be self-deprecating but to be candid about the deeply emotional and confused nature of my own feelings about immigration.  Of course, I am capable of rising above both a reflexive nativism and a naive Christianity. I’m aware that saying "throw open the borders and welcome everyone, ’cause God will provide" is no more of a realistic solution than "build a really really big fence."   As a person of faith, I can’t hide from serious policy issues behind either my beliefs or my fears, even though it is tempting to do so. It’s clear that we do need a sensible border policy, and it’s also clear that we have to a better job of addressing the root causes of migration.   Building an economically healthy and truly democratic Latin America is the only way to cope with the problem long-term.

But charting a sensible middle-ground course is difficult.  What is key, clearly, is that those of us who have emotional reactions to this issue — and in Southern California, who doesn’t? — must be willing to consider intelligent, thoughtful compromises.  We must be honest with ourselves about our real fears, and be honest too about the long-term costs of the very solutions we propose.  And as we do this, we must be very, very kind to each other.

Monday notes

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 27, 2006
in Christianity, Class, Feminism and Sports
. 13 Comments

Noted here and there:

‘Twas a busy weekend.  Like so many others, I’m honoring the passing of Buck Owens.  I’ll admit, I didn’t grow up on him — I first started listening to Buck after he was referenced in a Dwight Yoakam song.  This makes me uncool, I know, but I did grow to love that "west coast" country sound of his.

I’m interested to know how many Americans successfully picked George Mason, UCLA, Florida, and LSU in their men’s final four. I did pick UCLA correctly, but the other three are stunners.  At this point, I’m predicting UCLA over Florida in the final, but wouldn’t be surprised if the Patriots beat the Tigers a week from tonight either.

I’m surprised by Oklahoma’s loss in the women’s tournament — Courtney Paris just seemed so unstoppably dominant to me.  I’m rooting for the Tennessee Vols now.  But please, sweet Jesus, not UConn again.

I’m grateful to Inside Higher Ed for linking to Friday’s post on student crushes.  It’s worth another 1000 visitors a day at least; if you came here from IHE, welcome!

Thanks to Feministe, I learned that this blog has been listed at About.com as one of the "Top Ten Blogs on Civil Liberties and Women’s Rights".  In addition to Feministe, Feministing, Alas, and The Happy Feminist were selected.  Mysteriously, Pandagon was not.  The list was put together by writer and activist Tom Head, who says such kind things about this blog that I am going to (as ever, immodestly) repeat them:

Male feminist bloggers want to be Hugo when they grow up. He has both an intuitive understanding of feminist values and an intuitive understanding of how to try to humbly live into those values as a heterosexual white man–dealing as much with the business of day-to-day life, and the day-to-day values and relationships that give it meaning, as he does with policy issues. And with rational humility, but without a hint of self-mortification, he makes it all look easy.

Matilde the chinchilla sends kisses to Tom.

And of course, the big story in Los Angeles wasn’t the Bruins beating Memphis. It was the massive demonstration for immigrant rights held on Saturday in downtown.  We weren’t there; I was on the El Prieto trail when the march began, and was at Pilates class when it ended.  (Then again, I only found out about it early Saturday morning before heading out for a run.)  I’ve posted about immigration before, and recommend this piece from Maia at Alas, A Blog.  She makes the old  point that if capital is going to be free (something NAFTA has accomplished) then labor too must be free.  If money can move effortlessly across borders, than human capital must be allowed to do the same.  Whatever standard you use, human capital and cash must be treated by the same set of rules. 

For different perspectives from two L.A. Christians whom I respect, read what Rudy and Christy have to say.

I’m going to quote what I wrote last year, because my feelings have not changed an iota:

"In general, we Christians are called to follow the laws of the secular state.  We are to render obedience to Caesar, save in those instances when Caesar’s imperatives conflict directly with God’s call to radical, biblical, universal justice.  Civil disobedience has a place, after all; I am convinced that Christians are called to be disobedient to the state when the state demands that we treat folks differently based upon their immigration status. 

But those of us who hire the undocumented must be very careful not to exploit them financially.  After all, giant corporations regularly hire "illegal aliens", not out of biblical compassion but out of a desire to save money by hiring vulnerable, non-union labor.   Having hired many, many day laborers over the years to help with everything from moving to landscaping to very minor construction, I’ve always made sure to pay wages that are well above the minimum.   (I’ve never hired anyone for under $20 an hour, frankly, and I’ve often paid more.  Indeed, I try to pay day laborers what I think I would pay someone whose name I got from the Yellow Pages, though that is often tough to gauge.) 

I know that many of the men I’ve hired are sending money home to Mexico, Central, and South America.   Our church has an ongoing, long-term mission project in a small Sinaloa town near the Pacific.  On my visits there, I’ve seen the tremendous good that the money sent home by those working in America has brought about.  (When I visited my fiancee’s family last year in rural northeastern Colombia, I saw the same enormous benefits that remittances from America had provided.)  When I hire a day laborer, and pay him well, I’m not merely enabling him to eat; I’m helping to support an entire community.  And as a Christian, I believe I am called to love a Latin American community every bit as much as one here in the United States.   Yes, my salary is paid by taxes — but villages in Mexico and Colombia survive on the money I pay to their sons and daughters here.  Is it not contradictory to the gospel to prefer one’s own people to those who live abroad? "

A long reflection on gentlemanliness

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 21, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Christianity, Class, Faith, Feminism, Men and Masculinity and Pacifism
. 55 Comments

I’m still reflecting on the aftermath of last week’s major blogosphere debate about feminism, civility,and commenting rules.  No, I’m not going to revisit that issue specifically.

Rather, I’m thinking about the number of folks who’ve taken me to task for my attachment to notions of courtesy and civility.  Last week, over in this thread at Feministe, I wrote:

To me, civility is not about ideology. It’s about tactics. I judge people less by what they believe, and more by the tools they employ to convey those beliefs. Or, to put it another way, I care less about the “ends” and more about the “means”.

And a whole bunch of folks took issue with that.  Not surprisingly, I was initially very defensive — which was a mistake.  I eventually bowed out of the entire thread.  But in reading the challenges to my position, especially from DarkDaughta (NWS), I’ve been forced to ask myself a basic question to which I already know the answer:

To what extent does my passionate attachment to being "nice" really reflect my faith, and to what extent is it a reflection of my privilege as a middle-class white man with tenure?

Years ago, my theological wanderings led me to the Mennonites.  I became an enthusiastic Anabaptist (heck, I’m always an enthusiastic something).  I loved the Anabaptist/Mennonite commitment to social justice and to non-violence.  In the aftermath of September 11, I found the radical witness of the peace churches to be particularly compelling.  But I found, later rather than sooner, that I was making a serious error:

I tend to confuse Jesus’ call to be a peacemaker with my family’s admonition to always be "nice". 

I was raised to be what my family called a "gentleman".  In my family, it meant a "gentle man", with gentle in the modern sense of polite and kind, not in the older sense of aristocratic birth.  (Though some folks in my family did, in my childhood, have some attachment to the idea that gentlemen were also listed in the Social Register and belonged to the Right Clubs.  I’m not in either the Social Register or the Bohemian Club, though both were important to me when I was much younger).  My grandmother always said "A gentleman makes everyone around him feel comfortable."  And for years and years, I’ve worked so hard to live up to that ideal!  And when I became a Christian, I thought that one of the things I had found in my relationship with Jesus was a new power to become even nicer, and make my family even prouder.

But as better Christians than I tend to discover early on, Jesus is not "nice."  As C.S. Lewis says of Aslan, his Christ-figure in the Narnia books, "He’s not a tame lion!"  Jesus was non-violent, it’s true — and peacemaking was at the center of His mission on earth.  But Jesus never compromises the truth in order to save people’s feelings.  He may have said "turn the other cheek", but he also overturns the money-changer’s tables in the temple.  That was very, very, impolite of Him.

Jesus models a new way of relating to the powers and principalities that be.  Unlike the Zealots, He will not endorse violence against other human beings.  But His non-violence is not passive, and it isn’t "nice".  He makes people uncomfortable over and over again; He is not a proper gentleman. A proper gentleman of the sort I aspired to be would have had lunch with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the Romans and the Zealots, and told them all that they were awfully nice people and that God loved them just the way they were, and couldn’t they all be just a bit more civil to each other? Pretty please?

I’ve realized something this week that I don’t like about myself.  I call myself a pro-feminist and a Christian.  But too often, when my ideology and my faith come into conflict with my desire to be a charming people-pleaser who "makes everyone feel comfortable", my childhood aspirations of gentlemanliness trump my political and spiritual convictions.  So I end up more attached to my blog as a place where everyone can get along than as a place where the intersection of faith, feminism, and sexual mores can be thoughtfully — and honestly — explored. 

If I’m serious about my Christian faith, I will, to paraphrase Desmond Tutu, genuflect before the image of Christ that I see in all living things.  I will love God’s creatures as I love myself.  But I must find a way to be a bit more Christ-like, and that means I must be better about confronting evil rather than trying to accommodate it.  My pacifist principles mean that I must never hit those whose views are hateful.  But pacifism does not ask me to charm them, particularly when my own motives for being charming are less about changing the hearts and minds of those with whom I am in debate and more about cultivating a satisfying image of myself as perennially pleasant, irenic, and gentlemanly.

One spiritual advisor of mine always says, "Hugo, if you’re not pissing somebody off you’re not doing your work."  I hate it when he says that.  But I know he’s right.  If I’m going to walk with Jesus as I claim to want to do, if I’m going to be an effective advocate for pro-feminist principles, I have to be willing to let go of my childlike desire to be likable and inoffensive. I need to see that my very ability to remain aloof from the struggle is a consequence of my privilege rather than my commitment to Christ. 

And while I don’t need to start bopping people on the head (or even wielding a whip like my Lord in the temple), I could be of a hell of a lot more service if I let go of my incredibly strong infatuation with civility, courtliness, and being thought a "heckuva nice guy."

A long post on tradition, virginity, success, feminism, and a nonsensical double bind

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 10, 2006
in Class, Ethnicity, Pasadena City College, Sexuality and Teaching
. 69 Comments

Yesterday in my women’s history class, we began making our way through Joan Brumberg’s The Body Project.  I’ve been using the book for years and years, and it’s a huge hit with my students each semester.

It is Brumberg who first drew my attention to statistics about menarche, marriage, and the loss of virginity.  She points out that a century ago, girls menstruated for the first time at an average age of 16 and got married at an average age of around 21.  Today, girls menstruate at an average age of just under 12 and get married for the first time at just over 25.

(A quick note about statistics.  The problem with teaching statistics — especially with something like menarche — is that very, very few folks end up being "average".  Almost every girl seems to have a sense of herself as being "early" or "late"  — a Goldilocks effect, I suppose!)

Here’s where it gets interesting.  A century ago, the time between the onset of puberty and marriage was but five years; today it’s close to fifteen. If a contemporary young woman is trying to "wait" until marriage to lose her virginity, she is waiting — in a very real sense — three times as long as women did in her great-great grandmother’s era!   She’s got three times the frustration of coping with unexpressed sexual feelings and longings, three times as long to struggle to live up to a cultural and religious standard of purity.  Forget trying to live up to the standards of one’s ancestors; today’s young women who remain committed to virginity are trying to accomplish something that has, from a demographic and physiological standpoint, never been achieved before.

My class is 75% non-white, and of those, most are first-generation Americans.   (Latinas and Asians make up two-thirds of the young women in the course; given the demographics of the area, many of the remainder are first-generation Armenians whose families have arrived from Iran, Lebanon, or the former Soviet Union.)  Yesterday, I asked them the following questions:

1.  How many of you have parents who want you to be virgins when you marry?

2.  How many of you have parents who want you to go to college and get a degree before you get married?

3.  How many of those same parents also want you to be skilled at cooking and cleaning in order to attract a husband?

After half the class had raised their hands to all three questions, I asked them a follow-up:

"Based on what you’ve read in Brumberg, and based on what you’ve experienced in your family, how does it feel to be asked to do something no one in your family has ever been asked to do before?"

The answers came pouring out!  Many of these young women are the first in their families to go to college; they’ve often been raised by immigrant parents with a tremendous faith in education.  Most of these families have embraced at least one aspect of feminism: the notion that women have a right to education, and perhaps an obligation to become economically self-sufficient.  (Most of my students have been warned by at least one older adult to "get an education so you won’t have to rely on a man.")  But even as they’ve been encouraged to do what women in the past were not able to do (go to school and earn at least a bachelor’s degree, if not something higher), these young women are still being given a message about sexuality that is as traditional as the one that their grandmothers received in little villages in Michoacan and Martuni and Mindanao and Mae Hong Son.  And to top it off, their bodies (and the concomitant emergence of sexual desire) are developing earlier!

Over and over again, students say things like "Wow, do you know my mother?"  Everyone laughs. It’s not that they think that I’m personally so insightful, it’s that they’ve never realized just how absurd — and historically unique — the bind is into which they have been placed.  Their ambitious yet culture-bound parents are extolling a crushing set of contradictory ideals; they demand daughters who can be domestically proficient, financially independent, professionally autonomous, yet traditionally demure and asexual until marriage!  No wonder so many of these young women appear so damned tired!

Some of my students make it clear (explicitly or obliquely) that they are rejecting their parents’ values.  Some have rebelled more successfully than others; the guilt in the faces and voices of some is painfully evident.  Others are still making heroic attempts to live up to all of the hopes and dreams and values of their parents and their culture. Some have internalized these values to the point that they can claim them as their own, but most — when made aware of their unique historical status as the first generation to face this particularly brutal constellation of pressures — get appropriately ticked off.

In so many traditionally-minded families, there is still an unfortunately explicit connection between virginity and success.  In the semi-mythical old days that the abuelas and the po-pos talk about, a girl who had lost her virginity before marriage would lose her opportunity to make a good marriage  — and that could mean a life of struggle and poverty.  In the modern equation, the fear is of single motherhood.   Having children outside of marriage while still young and uneducated is the contemporary stigma, one that all too often guarantees long-term financial hardship.   In the old days, virginity might attract a good husband; in the modern age, these girls are raised to believe, abstinence is the surest guarantee that they’ll be able to finish college and become self-supporting without being burdened by a child.

During these discussions, some of my white middle-class students (especially those from secular backgrounds) sit aghast.  Raised by affluent baby-boomer parents who took them to Planned Parenthood when they were 16, the stories they hear from their classmates of color bewilder and horrify them.  My privileged ones have never had to equate abstinence with success; their parents have never asked them to spend more than a decade as a physically sexual being without any outlet for their God-given desires. These young women express sympathy; some make the unfortunate mistake of issuing derogatory remarks about how appalling these "backwards" cultures are in which their classmates have had the misfortune to be raised.  (I try and nip that sort of thing in the bud.) 

After years and years of these discussions in my immensely diverse community college women’s studies classes, I’ve become convinced that we’re dealing with a vital feminist issue here.  My younger — and not so young — sisters are trying live up to conflicting and contradictory imperatives that ask them to have a foot in two completely different worlds.    As one of my students, a 20 year-old from an Armenian immigrant family, put it a semester or two ago: "My family dreams of me as their brilliant, virginal, medical doctor daughter — who drives her own Mercedes, makes amazing baklava, has a perfect figure and has never kissed a man until she meets her husband."

If I were teaching at Wellesley or Vassar, that young woman might not be speaking for the parents of over half of of her classmates.  But here at Pasadena City College, she is — and as a result, the feminist curriculum has to be tailored to speak to her and those like her.  Before they can become articulate activists for a global feminist agenda, these young women need to find the voice to speak out against the cruel and nonsensical double binds in which they have been placed.  They need teachers who will encourage them to demand the right to be full and complete human beings.  They need to be encouraged to offer each other support, to build feminist community, to help each other escape the crushing and contradictory burdens that weigh upon their minds and bodies.  The culture tells them they need to be Superwomen; in a feminist classroom, they can learn to say "No" to the pressure and say "Yes" or even "Hell, yes!" to their deepest and most basic desires.

Is an almost middle-aged heterosexual Anglo man from Carmel by-the-Sea the right person to lead these discussions?   Who knows?  I may not be able to empathize with the majority of my students, but that doesn’t mean I can’t share some simple statistics, ask some simple — and provocative — questions, and then facilitate the ensuing firestorm of discussion.    And from that discussion, I can only hope what all teachers hope — that my students will find the inspiration and the tools to begin to make real changes in their lives.

Note:  There are some obvious similiarities to the experiences of young conservative Christian women of any race who are also trying to manage both education and delayed marriage on one hand and traditional ideas about purity on the other.  This post at Thursday PM is very powerful; a young Christian woman asks exactly the right question:

What if denying healthy sexuality is just as harmful to the psyche and self image as engaging in unhealthy sexual activity?

Another post, that one.

Further notes on Crash, car accidents, and race

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 6, 2006
in Aggression and violence, Class, Ethnicity, Movies and Race
. 4 Comments

I’m planning to pull myself together in the next two hours and make it to school.  One nice thing about being home sick — I get to watch the Wigan-Manchester United match live on Fox Sports World; Wigan is up a goal and I’m very pleased.  They’ve become my new darlings in the Premiership.

But I can keep one eye on the soccer and one on the blog, all the while pumping in the broth and the tea.  I just downloaded Dolly Parton’s "Travelin’ Thru" (which missed out on the Academy Award for best song); it’s free right now (today only) on Itunes.

I’d like to follow up, briefly, on my remarks below in response to "Crash" winning the best picture Oscar.   As much as I enjoyed certain aspects of the well-acted, well-written film, I felt it presented a distorted vision of the Los Angeles I know. 

I am a bit of an oddity — raised on the Central Coast and in the Bay Area, I’m passionately attached to Los Angeles.  Though I think often about retiring to the little town on the coast where I was raised, I’m very happy living in this metropolis.   I’ve been blessed to do a lot of traveling, and I enjoy seeing new places, but I’m rarely happier than when I look out the window as a long international flight drops back into L.A. at night, and I see the sparkling lights of my home sprawling as far as the eye can see.  I feel fundamentally at home here, and not merely in certain neighborhoods.

Los Angeles is a city of freeways, as everyone knows.  In the early 1990s when I was in grad school, some friends and I made a commitment to spend our weekends traveling the county only using surface streets.  We drove from Westwood to Watts to Winnetka, Lincoln Heights to Larchmont to Lawndale, Venice to Vernon to Van Nuys, Santa Monica to San Marino to San Pedro — all without hitting a freeway.  And we didn’t just drive; part of playing the "surface street game" meant going to restaurants and cafes and shops in all the neighborhoods we visited.  We were a multi-racial group ourselves; my first wife (to whom I was married at the time) was half-Chinese, half-Filipino.  With her and my other friends, I learned to eat lumpia and menudo; challah and carnitas and catfish; I ate grits and injera and came to love it all.

Our trips were daytime trips, mind you.  We didn’t take foolish risks, but at the same time, we tried our best not to let prejudices and fears hold us back from new experiences.  For example, I got my hair buzzed in an African-American barbershop on Crenshaw Boulevard; some folks ignored me, others engaged me in friendly banter.  I didn’t feel like I was "slumming" (a derogatory term often applied to middle-class whites who venture into the ‘hoods); I felt like I was trying — humbly and respectfully — to learn, to taste, to know something new and different.

And yes, I had a car accident — the central subtext of "Crash".  I had bought my first car not long after I moved to Los Angeles, a used 1983 Honda Accord.  One bright summer day in 1989, I was transitioning from the 101 to the southbound 110 when a big rig rear-ended a little Nissan a few cars in front of me.  We all slammed on our brakes, but my Honda didn’t stop until I’d rear-ended the Mercedes sedan in front of me.  Ours were the only four vehicles involved; no one was hurt.  Though it was more than sixteen years ago, I remember the other drivers vividly: the big rig was driven by a black man; the Nissan he hit was driven by a Latina; the Mercedes was driven by an elderly Chinese couple who spoke limited English.  We all exchanged insurance information on the side of the road, and as we did so, I began to cry.  I know it was childish, but I was so upset I had done so much damage to my "new" car (the Mercedes I hit had only a scratch, while my Honda was, if not totalled, much more heavily damaged).  The Chinese man patted my arm and assured me it would be okay, while his wife smiled at me wanly.  The CHP officer — Latino — saw that my license still listed "Carmel" as my home address, and by way of comfort, told me he’d grown up in the Salinas area and couldn’t wait to move home to our native Monterey County.

No one yelled.  No one got upset. (Well, I did, but those were tears of self-pity, not rage).  There were no racial epithets, either.  And it never occurred to me that there was anything odd about the civility of our experience that hot morning on the Harbor Freeway.  I’ve had two fender-benders since (one my fault, one not); both involved drivers of other ethnic groups.   And in neither of those instances were harsh words exchanged about our respective backgrounds!

I am quite confident that my experience has not been all that unusual.  (This is not to deny the reality of racism, a reality to which I confess I am often blind.  I know damned well that I can play the "surface street game" with relative impunity because I am white.  I can drive up and down South 167th street more easily than a black man can drive up and down Charleville Avenue in Beverly Hills.  One of us is a heck of lot more likely to be pulled over than the other!)  There are millions of folks in this county in interracial relationships like mine, who have successfully (if not effortlessly) blended our families and our kitchens and our workplaces and our bedrooms.  And in reference to the film’s opening conceit, we sure as hell don’t need to crash into each other just to feel some human contact!  But when we do crash — by accident, thanks — most of us manage to resolve the problem without resorting to ugly caricatures.

I won’t say I’ve been "everywhere", but I’ve done a fair amount of travelin’ in my day, across this state, the country, and the globe.  And with the possible exception of Cape Town, I can’t think of a place I’ve been to where racial harmony amidst tremendous diversity is so evident as it is in my beloved adopted home of greater Los Angeles.  When I think of how "Crash" may have only reinforced the stereotypes of L.A. that outsiders have, I’m angry and grieved.

I’m also mildly grieved by a late Man U goal that has robbed Wigan.  I think I’m ready to teach my night class!

Home sick, and an Oscar disappointment

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 6, 2006
in Class, Ethnicity, Movies, Politics and Race
. 9 Comments

Yesterday morning, both my wife and I woke up with food poisoning.  Hers was mild, mine fairly severe.  It knocked me flat, and though I feel better this morning, am not in shape to teach just yet.

I am going to campus later today to hold office hours and teach my evening class.  I hate cancelling classes without warning.  I know that plenty of students rejoice when they see the little blue or green "class cancelled" notices posted on the classroom door, but I still feel bad that so many make the trip to the college for nothing.  In  the event that students in my 12 noon or 1:35PM classes are reading this — you folks are off today.  Tonight and tomorrow will be as normal.

I was so out of it that I was forced to sleep through most of the Oscars, which was a real disappointment.  I was right about the screenplay, actress, and director awards, but deeply disappointed that "Crash" won best picture.   A film with a few moving and melodramatic scenes, "Crash" left me — and lots of other Southern Californians — saying "This is not a Los Angeles I recognize."  I don’t live in splendid Pasadena isolation, either.  I’ve lived in the LA area for seventeen years, in nine different zip codes (from Culver City to Altadena, Santa Monica to Van Nuys) and four different area codes.  I’m in a happy inter-ethnic marriage that doesn’t simmer and bubble with racial tension, and I teach at a majority-minority college.  I have never once had a racial confrontation in Los Angeles– not even in those explosive days in April 1992.   I "bought" Brokeback Mountain; I "bought" Good Night and Good Luck — hell, I bought every second of A History of Violence; Crash didn’t resonate for me at all, despite some impressive individual performances. 

Kenneth Turan’s devastating piece in this morning’s Times captures my feelings perfectly:

I do not for one minute question the sincerity and integrity of the people who made "Crash," and I do not question their commitment to wanting a more equal society. But I do question the film they’ve made. It may be true, as producer Cathy Schulman said in accepting the Oscar for best picture, that this was "one of the most breathtaking and stunning maverick years in American history," but "Crash" is not an example of that.

I don’t care how much trouble "Crash" had getting financing or getting people on board, the reality of this film, the reason it won the best picture Oscar, is that it is, at its core, a standard Hollywood movie, as manipulative and unrealistic as the day is long. And something more.

For "Crash’s" biggest asset is its ability to give people a carload of those standard Hollywood satisfactions but make them think they are seeing something groundbreaking and daring. It is, in some ways, a feel-good film about racism, a film you could see and feel like a better person, a film that could make you believe that you had done your moral duty and examined your soul when in fact you were just getting your buttons pushed and your preconceptions reconfirmed.

So for people who were discomfited by "Brokeback Mountain" but wanted to be able to look themselves in the mirror and feel like they were good, productive liberals, "Crash" provided the perfect safe harbor. They could vote for it in good conscience, vote for it and feel they had made a progressive move, vote for it and not feel that there was any stain on their liberal credentials for shunning what "Brokeback" had to offer. And that’s exactly what they did.

Hugo’s “white boy teaching outfit”

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 2, 2006
in Class, Clothing and Fashion, Ethnicity, Men and Masculinity and Race
. 34 Comments

I’m close to two colleagues of mine, one male and one female; one Latino and one African-American.  I’ve been teaching today in a mustard color Banana Republic t-shirt and blue jeans, and as I was walking back to the office from class just now, I passed these two colleagues in the hall.  As we exchanged wishes for a good weekend, one said to the other "There goes Hugo in one of his ‘white boy teaching outfits.’" 

The other laughed, and I joined in — but now I’m a bit bewildered as to what they meant.  (Several students overheard, by the way.)  I do tend to prefer a casual style (albeit a tight-fitting one), but I’m not at all sure what that has to do with race.  Is it some sort of veiled reference to white male privilege, where a white guy can feel comfortable wearing anything while a professor of color needs more formal attire?   Given that my dress style is often one more commonly associated with gay men, was there a homophobic slur in there as well?

Am I just over-thinking this?  Should I not wear mustard?

Any thoughts?

Pro-feminist responses to the “Queen for a Year” problem

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 11, 2006
in Class, Clothing and Fashion, Feminism, Men and Masculinity, Men's Movement, Modesty, Pasadena City College, Porn, Sexual ethics and transformation, Sexuality and War
. 50 Comments

Annika sent me a link to this NPR interview with Kayla Williams, author of "Love My Rifle More than You", about serving as a woman in the army during the current Iraq conflict.  As part of the interview, there’s a lengthy excerpt from the book in which Williams describes the "Queen for a Year" phenomenon:

A woman at war: you’re automatically a desirable commodity, and a scarce one at that. We call it "Queen for a Year." Even the unattractive girls start to act stuck-up. It’s impossible not to notice.

"Queen for a Year." You won’t find the phrase in the dictionary or any compilation of military terms. But say it among soldiers, and they’ll know immediately what you mean. That’s what we’ve called American women at war since nurses traveled to Vietnam in the sixties.

There’s also this "deployment scale" for hotness. Let me explain. On a scale of ten, say she’s a five. You know — average looks, maybe a little mousy, nothing special. But okay. Not a girl who gets second glances in civilian life. But in the Army, while we’re deployed? Easily an eight. One hot babe. On average every girl probably gets three extra points on a ten-point scale. Useful. After you’re in-country for a few months, all the girls begin to look good — or at least better. It changes — how should I say this? — the dynamics of being deployed.

Because there are relatively few women (compared to men) deployed in Iraq, these few can experience a significant rise in attention and status.  Resisting the urge to make use of that enhanced status was difficult for Williams, and impossible for others:

You could get things easier, and you could get out of things easier. For a girl there were lots of little things you could do to make your load while deployed a whole lot lighter. You could use your femaleness to great advantage. You could do less work, get more assistance, and receive more special favors. Getting supplies? Working on the trucks? It could be a cinch — if you wanted it to be. It didn’t take much. A little went a long way. Some of us worked it to the bone. Who says the life of the Army girl has to be cruel?

Lots of girls succumbed to temptation. The younger girls were the most susceptible. Many thrived and fed on the male attention they were getting for the first time in their lives.

I did my personal best to resist. So did my friends and the girls I respected. (That’s why I respected them.) But many girls became full-fledged Queens for a Year. We saw it. And the guys talked.

From a feminist standpoint, this is just a re-framing of the old question of whether or not women can ever be justified in using sexual desirability in order to gain professional or personal advancement. It’s all too easy to condemn those women who, as Williams describes, feed "on the male attention they were getting for the first time in their lives."  It’s too simplistic to insist to young women that they ought never use their sexuality, no matter what the potential rewards.

But as the excerpt makes clear, many young women feel profoundly dis-empowered in the traditionally male-dominated setting of the military.  Before she’s even opened her mouth or performed a single task, it’s likely that a young female soldier has already been judged and dismissed by many of her male peers who may remain deeply suspicious of women’s fitness for army service.  Even outside of the military, we live in a world where young women — particularly from the sort of economic background from which most enlisted women hail — are not taken seriously.

It’s axiomatic that the fewer educational and professional opportunities a young woman has, the more valuable her sexuality becomes as a marketable commodity.  (This is why, for the most part, most female sex workers come from working-class rather than affluent backgrounds.  One enduring fantasy in male-centered pornography is of "coeds" and "sorority sluts" — but the sad truth is that most of the young women who play those roles on screen will never get a chance to be in a sorority or experience the full richness of the undergraduate life.)   It’s also nearly as axiomatic that young women will be pulled in opposite directions on the subject of whether they ought to make use of that sexual desirability. 

Many middle-class feminists, and many irate men’s rights activists, find common ground in decrying young women’s use of sex in order to try and gain some small degree of power.  Of course, feminists and MRAs have different reasons for disliking the phenomenon!  Feminists are worried that by using their sexuality for career advancement (or merely the small perks that Williams describes), young women reinforce destructive stereotypes about female sexuality and power.  They are also concerned, and rightly so, that using sexuality tends to create rifts between individual women, particularly in male-dominated settings (like the army) where feminist solidarity could prove so invaluable.  On the other hand, MRAs are angry because they feel that men are being manipulated and "used" by "scheming women"; they are frustrated, I suspect, both by their own inability to gain access to women and by their own vulnerability to flirtation and arousal.  They become enraged by what they desire but generally cannot have.

I’ve pointed out before that there’s a consistent socio-economic element to young women’s dress here at the community college.  Generally speaking, the young women most likely to dress for school as if they are going to a nightclub come from working-class backgrounds. Those whose life experiences have made them uncertain about the likelihood of success through purely academic means (or who lack professional female role models) tend to be the ones most likely to want to "sexualize" the classroom.  Of course, countless women from disadvantaged backgrounds come to college and aren’t interesting in displaying their sexuality.  But there’s no question that a place like my own Pasadena City College is more likely to see female students "dressing to impress" than a more affluent four-year institution!

So, what’s the pro-feminist response?  Ultimately, we will only end the "queen for a year" problem by doing a much better job of making it clear to young women from all backgrounds that they do have other tools at their disposal besides their sexuality.  We have to continue to be aggressive about promoting women into positions of authority, and providing still more role models who can exemplify professional success achieved through hard work and intellectual ability rather than flirtation. 

Above all, men in positions of authority — superior officers, teachers, employers — have to hold themselves accountable for how they respond to sexually desirable subordinates.  Without shaming young women who do attempt to use their sexuality for advancement or perks, we must go out of our way to make it clear that we will give them our attention and mentoring irrespective of their appearance.   Every time we give extra attention or "perks" to a pretty student, or a flirtatious private, or an attractive intern, we do damage to her, to our institution, and to other women.  Yet every time we withdraw our attention from a woman merely because she is attractive, fearing our own response or the judgment of others, we also do damage.  The key to ending the entire problem is conditioning adult men to see beyond the surface appearance of the women around them. And once we’ve looked beneath the surface, we then have to have the courage to mentor fearlessly.  That’s not easy work, but it’s at the heart of the contemporary pro-feminist task.

A note on immigration and women

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 10, 2006
in Class, Ethnicity, Family, Links, Politics and Race
. 2 Comments

Good article this morning in the New York Times: More and More, Women Risk All to Enter the United States.

Some women cross simply to keep their families together and join their husbands after long separations, a situation that has grown more pronounced since the Border Patrol agency began stepping up enforcement 10 years ago. With the border more secure in California and Texas, many people are now being funneled into the rugged territory of Arizona - an effort that virtually requires the help of an expensive coyote to cross successfully.

Yet a growing number of single women are coming not to join husbands, but to find jobs, send money home and escape a bleak future in Mexico. They come to find work in the booming underground economy, through a vast network of friends and relatives already employed here as maids, cooks, kitchen helpers, factory workers and baby sitters. In these jobs, they can earn double or triple their Mexican salaries.

"It remains a story about family reunification, but the proportion of women coming to the U.S. who are not married and working full time has gone up substantially," Professor Donato said. "So we see the single migrant woman motivated by economic reasons coming to the United States that we saw very little of 30 years ago."

It will be interesting to see how — and if — this changes the face of immigration policy.  In urban Los Angeles, we tend to think of undocumented workers as being overwhelmingly male — because it is exclusively male faces we see gathered around lumber yards and construction sites, soliciting work.  But those images clearly don’t tell the whole story.

I’ve had about a dozen students in recent years tell me that they were undocumented.  All but one was female; all but three were from Mexico (the others were from the Philippines, Armenia, and Guatemala.)  The key trick for them is getting financial aid.  Though undocumented students in California, Texas, and other states are eligible for lower "in-state" tuition, that doesn’t solve all financial problems.  In-state tuition, as well as books and housing, can be prohibitively expensive.  There are very few resources for undocumented students, but this MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund) site (in PDF format) has an excellent list of private scholarships for those without papers.

More on teaching and trying to do a better job

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 9, 2006
in Class, Race, Teaching and Vanity
. 8 Comments

In the comments below my previous post about grading disparities and race, La Lubu asks:

…what do you do, as a teacher, to reach out to students from disadvantaged/noncollegiate/struggling backgrounds? How do you communicate to them what it takes to get an "A" in your course, and is this being understood? I hope that doesn’t sound too presumptous, but some teachers simply assume that everyone "knows" what "A" work looks like—and hell, that can vary from teacher to teacher, anyway. Do you encourage students who come from struggling backgrounds to meet with you, discuss their work, and come up with solutions to possible problems that they are having with their assignments? In other words, do you make it clear to your students that you are an ally in their education, not an adversary?

Those are challenging questions.

Sometimes, I think of the job of a teacher as being analogous to that of a football coach.  And as many folks know, conventional wisdom divides good coaches into two categories: great strategists and great inspirers.  The former are often not particularly charismatic, but they have an extraordinary gift for designing the right play.  They are meticulous about planning, and they know the strengths and the weaknesses of their player personnel intimately.  On the other hand, the great inspirers are often not as strong on strategy — but they rely on their motivational skills.  They are skilled at using emotion to drive their athletes.

At the risk of hubris, I know I’m a good inspirer.  But I’m not nearly as good a teacher as I ought to be.  For years and years, I’ve worked on two key aspects of my profession: lecturing and one-on-one mentoring.  I think I’m fairly proficient at both.  I don’t use notes, and can — on command — deliver what I believe to be a compelling and interesting narrative lecture on the AIDS crisis, Bismarck’s alliance system, or the fall of the Roman Republic. I’ve had years and years of practice in the classroom, and years of drama classes before I ever came to the college.  My student evaluations may offer many criticisms, but "boring" and "inarticulate" aren’t two of them.

But I’ve still got so much to do when it comes to helping students, particularly those who are struggling with college work, to be more successful. I know how to give motivational speeches — I’m less clear on how to provide specific tools to help kids fulfill their goals.  Oh, I’ve been to literally dozens of workshops on learning styles, teaching English Language Learners, and so forth.   Though I often make fun of folks who get degrees in education degrees ("Lord, save us from the Ed.Ds"), I admit that some of that derision is misplaced.  Despite the heavy jargon of their professional journals, a lot of the ed people have devoted their lives to studying how students learn — something that I haven’t done.  Perhaps it’s time to give some of their ideas another try.  My bookshelf groans with teaching manuals I haven’t read in years.  (This widely-read classic is my favorite, and I admit it has helped.)

I love teaching and interacting with students.  But while I think I’m doing a good job on the motivational side of the ledger, I suppose I could be doing still more to help my underperforming students do better work.  I always stress that I’m available in office hours, but my experience has been that the students who tend to utilize office hours the most are the "best and the brightest".  They’ve already figured out that coming to talk to their profs is a good idea on many levels, and they are quick to ask questions as to how they can improve.  I’m eager to work with those who visit me, but in that sense I’m once again like the football coach, devoting the bulk of my time to working with the "first string" while spending less time with the back-ups and the bench-warmers.

I suppose I could, ala Luke 14:23, "compel them to come in".  I once tried to make visiting me in office hours mandatory for everyone — but with 280-320 students per semester spread over 7 classes, that proved impractical.  I’m thinking about getting folks to meet with me in groups of 3-4 once or twice a semester, but experience suggests that it will be the students who need help least who will be the first to seek it out, and the most likely to participate enthusiastically when they do come to office hours.

I daydream, often, of how much better a teacher I could be if I had a smaller teaching load.  If I had only three classes a semester, and no research load, I could meet individually with each student to talk about their strengths, weaknesses, fears, and expectations.   This is the great frustration of teaching, a frustration I know is shared by others in this profession.  Most of us, no matter how good we are, are keenly aware of the myriad ways in which we could be better, of the various ways we could do more — if we had fewer students, if we had more time, if we had more energy.  The wise teachers learn to accept that they won’t be able to rescue — or inspire — everyone.  But they don’t let the knowledge of certain failure in so many cases lead to despair or apathy.

I met three new classes today, and I was giddy with excitement.  I’m still so blessed and privileged to do what I do.  I know I’m pretty damn good at my craft, and yet I’m keenly aware I could be still better, still more approachable, still kinder, still more creative, still more committed to the emotional and intellectual growth of the people whom I teach.

A dilemma, and a request for input

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 9, 2006
in Class, Ethnicity, Race and Teaching
. 23 Comments

Well, here’s an ethical dilemma with which I’d like some help.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been quietly keeping track of the ethnic and gender breakdown of my students and the grades they receive.  I do this informally, mind you, and up until now I’ve kept the results entirely to myself.

But I’ve noticed some trends, trends that may speak to my teaching style and unconscious prejudices as well as to the varied levels of preparedness of my students.  But it’s such an explosive issue, that I am not sure I should put my own data out there.  I’m not worried for my job — I have tenure, and proving a bias case against me would be near impossible.  I’ve got data to back up all my grading decisions.  But there’s no question that while I consciously bend over backwards to grade fairly, some groups are more likely to receive As than others.

I’m aware that class and social background often has a racial or ethnic dimension.  I’m aware of the suggestion, widely discussed in recent months, that young men of all races are often less well-prepared for college work.  And my own grading patterns seem to back that up.  I’ve discussed my grading trends with other faculty members, who report similar results.  This helps me realize that if it is bias on my part (which I don’t think it is), I’m hardly alone — at least three of my colleagues report similar results from their students.

Here’s my question:

Given that I have students who read this blog, is it a bad idea to disclose the data?   While I think there’s some potential for fruitful discussion on this issue, especially when it comes to thinking up solutions, I’m worried about the impact on my current and future students.  I want each person who enters my class to be certain that he or she will be graded solely on his or her work, not on sex or race.  (And of course, I have A, B, C, and F students from every background — I am talking broad generalities rather than hard and fast rules.)  Is it possible that I could do real harm — emotional or legal — by mentioning that certain groups are statistically more likely to earn As?

I’d like to hear some thoughts, and I’ll talk about it with some colleagues before I go forward with a post about my findings.  Right now, I’m leaning against putting the statistics out there, but I’m not firmly decided yet.  Polite input is appreciated.

Monday night at the concert hall

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 13, 2005
in Animal Rights, Class, Music and Politics
. 12 Comments

Another busy morning with several things to be done. I doubt I’ll have much time for a serious post today.

We went with some friends to see Emmylou Harris last night at the Disney Concert Hall.  She was magnificent, as always (this is the third time I’ve seen her play live.)   As with the last time I saw her, she made explicit reference to her work on behalf of PETA and the Humane Society, and asked that her audience remember the animal victims of Katrina at Christmas.  I clapped enthusiastically when she said this, and heard the young woman behind me mutter, "Oh come on and sing already."  I resisted the urge to turn around and fix her with a baleful stare.

I’m fortunate, I suppose, in that for the most part, I share the politics of my favorite artists.  The music I love most is folk/alt country/Americana; my musical idols range from Pete Seeger to Steve Earle to Dolly Parton and Emmylou.  And though "pop" country has a reputation for flag-waving jingoism (think Toby Keith), the bluegrass/alt. country world is fairly consistent in its left-wing politics.  It’s nice to both admire an artist’s music and his or her political stances, but it isn’t essential.  I loved Merle Haggard, even if "Okie from Muskogee" was an appallingly reactionary song!

I thought a lot about Tookie Williams and his victims last night as I sat and listened to Emmylou.   Since we were in downtown L.A. fairly late in the evening, I thought about the rumours I’d heard about gang violence and retaliation in the event that Tookie was actually executed. I was acutely aware of the comfort of my seat, and the expense of the ticket, and the heaviness in my belly from the  pre-concert meal at a trendy restaurant.  It’s been a long time since I’ve had a really visceral attack of "middle-class white guilt", but somehow, I felt it very strongly last night. 

The solution to that feeling, I’ve come to believe, is not to sit and wallow in it, but get up and do stuff.  And when I look at how much time my wife and I give in volunteering, and I look at the fact that we give a genuine tithe, I’m comforted that we are sharing our good fortune.  But I also know I can do still more, and finding ways to do that will be one of my main goals for 2006.

In any event, Emmylou was magnificent.  I sang "Boulder to Birmingham" all the way home last night, interspersing the lyrics with stream-of-consciousness prayers for those in harm’s way (especially in Iraq) and for those whose motives and actions I struggle to understand (like death penalty advocates and those who wear fur.)

A note about friendship, privilege, Glenn

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 1, 2005
in Class, Family and Politics
. 214 Comments

The comments below this morning’s posts have drifted on to my remark that despite our significant differences, I very much like men’s rights/father’s rights advocate Glenn Sacks.  I’ve been on his radio show twice (click here and here).  More recently, he and I have discussed working together.  Sasafrass, in a comment below the morning post, expressed bewilderment that Glenn and I could be good friends in the face of his rhetoric and his views.

I was raised to get along with everybody.  I come from a family where conservative Republicans and Communists were expected to share the Thanksgiving dinner table.  (This is not an exaggeration.  My great-uncle was the late political philosopher Stanley Moore, who was fired from Reed College for being a Communist in the dark days of the 1950s.  A true gentleman and a fine Golden Bear, he was a huge influence on my life until his death in 1997.  I can remember seeing him laughing and playing in the swimming pool with the same sort of folks who thought he — and every other Red –deserved to be fired, or worse.)  My grandmother and grandfather cancelled out each other’s vote in every election of their married life; he was a staunch liberal Democrat, she a moderate conservative Republican.  I’m told that in 1948, when Truman nipped Dewey in that famous upset, that there were a few brief tense moments around their Piedmont home as my grandfather rejoiced, but for the most part, they enjoyed their often serious disagreements.

I grew up hearing stories about my uncle Stanley’s time in the Party.  I grew up with cousins who had become born-again Reformed Calvinists of the strict TULIP variety.  I grew up listening to impassioned arguments over nuclear war, abortion, the death penalty, and the virtues and defects of socialism.   We were all — every one of us — encouraged to hold strong views and argue for them.  But we were also told that our views, no matter deeply held, were just that — views, and that we should always be able to distinguish between disagreeing and being disagreeable.  During summers growing up on my family’s ranch, I learned first hand that people I loved and respected, who taught me to ride and played with me in the pool, often held very different opinions than my mother and father.  And I learned from my parents that it’s not only possible, but indeed necessary to love and be in close relationship with those whose beliefs about justice, God, economics, and the meaning of life are radically different from one’s own.  One could call someone’s ideas "insane and naive" in one breath, and in the next breath tell them, with absolute sincerity, "I love you, could you please pass the salt?"

It wasn’t until I was in high school, and first dabbling in political activism, that I ran into people who didn’t think it possible to be friends and lovers across ideological lines.  I met people who had ended relationships and stopped speaking to cousins because of fallings-out over Ronald Reagan, abortion rights, or membership in the Sierra Club.  I was saddened and unnerved, because it drove home to me that my childhood understanding of politics, friendship, and family was not universally shared.

When I took my first women’s studies courses, I began to wonder if my family’s attitude towards politics wasn’t based on privilege.  Maybe we could afford to compartmentalize our politics easily because the issues discussed were rarely matters of life and death to folks like us in places like Carmel and Piedmont and the rolling hills northeast of San Jose.  (But though they might not have been life or death, they weren’t inconsequential; my uncle Stanley’s firing from Reed had driven that point home!)  When I was at Cal, I had very few good male friends, but a couple of those I did have were conservative members of very conservative fraternities.  When I mentioned these guys in a study session one day, one of my classmates from a women’s studies course suggested that I was only "playing" at being a feminist, because a real feminist wouldn’t be friends with men whose views on women were so reactionary.  I protested to her that one could like people in spite of their views on any subject, and she said, "Yeah, Hugo, that’s because their views don’t really affect you."

I’ve often wondered if my insistence on civility (a standard that I too often fail to meet) isn’t a function of the fact that to a certain extent, none of the issues I blog about are life and death for me.  I wonder too if my family’s relative prosperity and insularity weren’t critical factors in allowing us such a tolerant ethos.    Perhaps so, but that is not the same thing as saying that real activists can’t be real friends with their very real opponents.  My reading of Scripture tells me that Jesus calls all of us to love our enemies, and perhaps even to befriend and break bread with those with whom we disagree.

Are there any limits to this?  Could I be friends with a white supremacist?  I haven’t had the chance to find out.  I certainly would not allow an acquaintance or colleague with such views to express them unchallenged.  But is it always true that objectionable views thoroughly saturate a person to the extent that they become unpleasant to be around?  I’m not at all sure. 

Bottom line:  I’ve come down hard on my friend Glenn before.  I’ll do so again.  But does the fact that he’s a troglodyte with profoundly objectionable views on men and women mean that he can’t also be a helluva guy?  I’ll buy him lunch anytime, and we’ll have a good laugh together before returning to the fray.

Hurrah for Antonio

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 18, 2005
in Class, Feminism, People and Politics
. 2 Comments

The first post of the day is simply a quick rejoicing in the election of Antonio Villaraigosa as the new mayor of Los Angeles.  Even living in Pasadena, I think of myself as, in some sense, an Angeleno, and I follow the "big city’s" politics closely.   I’ve been a fan of his for many years, since he first (as a junior state assemblyman) pushed a bill through the legislature guaranteeing the rights of mothers to breastfeed in public.  (His oldest daughter was a student in my women’s history class at the time, and she made darned sure we all knew about her father’s passionate pro-feminism).  I’ve also been enchanted by his name, a blend of his given surname (Villar) and his wife’s (Raigosa).  It’s a rare man, particularly from the mean streets of East Los Angeles, who would have the courage to create a new name with his spouse. 

Above all, Antonio Villaraigosa has a reputation as a devoted supporter of both public and private-sector organized labor, and that bodes well for the future of the working and middle classes in Los Angeles.