Category Archive

I thought I would start up on posting links here - I don’t remember why I stopped - maybe because it seems like a cop-out-post. Still, with the primary elections in the air and my increased commitment to educating myself about politics and that ever-so-talked-about-real-world, I thought I would share some articles that I find worth reading. The titles speak for themselves today:

“After College Ends, So Does Activism” by Adam Doster

“Why Clinton Trumps Obama and Will Continue to Trump Him” by Earl Ofari Hutchinson

“Interview with Chris Rabb: Founder of Afro-Netizen.com” from Mother Jones

A note - I still haven’t developed a full opinion on who I am supporting from the Democratic candidates, though I’m pretty sure my heart is with Obama. When I figure it out for sure, I’ll do one of two things: write about it, or tell everyone to mind their own business.

It’s 2007 and I’m an adult that is not only exploring the possibilities of public policy, but is also continuing to ask myself what it means to be a progressive and socially-conscious individual; so it’s no surprise that I’ve spent the summer slowly trying to peek my head into the world of politics. By this I mean, keeping up with debates, reading publications such as Mother Jones, and wikipedia-ing as much as I can about free trade and straw polls, school vouchers and civil unions. Educating myself about politics, as it turns out, is tricky. I tried watching the news on television and couldn’t seem to do it - my brain spends so much time teasing out the imperialist and Euro-centric agenda of broadcasts that I can’t seem to concentrate on names and events. I started listening to podcasts - that was helpful, because now I have access to BBC broadcasts and NPR broadcasts whenever I want, for free. And I’m still developing a bookmarked folder of politics publications.

When Bush was elected in 2004 for a second term, I was still an underclassman in college. I teared up and hibernated for the weekend at the thought of the POTUS remaining the same, and therefore, U.S. foreign policy and agendas staying the same. Now as the next election rolls around, I find myself wanting to really look at the media coverage and debates surrounding the candidates - probably because there have only been two families in office for the majority of my life. That scares me.

Over the summer, I’ve been working as a research assistant and have had the chance to read a substantial amount of feminist theory and literary theory related to American Studies. This is a field I was never particularly interested in - but after 10 weeks of reading hundreds of essays and writing hundreds of abstracts, I’ve realized more than a few interesting things.

The thing I want to share here is this: While I have tried to acknowledge my citizenship privilege in my day to day life (these privileges include being able to travel abroad without complications, applying for scholarships and financial aid, etc.), I still have an us-vs.-them mentality when it comes to the decisions made by Congress, the House of Representatives and Mr. POTUS himself. In college, there are always general comments made about the government: “Look what they’re doing, they’ve started this war, they’ve continued the war, they’re trying to ’save’ oppressed people abroad, they’re not helping public education” and on and on. When do I begin to really own up to the reality that as a citizen, and as someone born and raised in the United States, I’m carrying the burden of my country’s actions and decisions on my shoulders as well.

When we talk about institutional vs. individual racism, we learn to rethink the mentality of “Oh, I’m not racist. Other people are racist” - we learn instead, to think about whiteness and white privilege and about what it means to be benefiting from an institution that helps certain people over others.

There is a parallel here and it is the fact that it’s easy to get caught up in claiming that as a progressive liberal, as a Democrat, as someone who didn’t vote for the individuals who are appointed to govern the nation, that there is no blood on our hands. It’s easy to just feel sorry or guilty about it and then move on - because we can move on, because we can put everything on conservatives or the GOP (My reference to political parties should not suggest that our beliefs also fall along a similar binary - I merely mentioned the Dem. Party and GOP because they are labels that often get used in the us-vs.-them debate).

I guess what I’m saying is that for those of us who are not already, for those of us who are U.S. citizens and have citizenship privilege, we are responsible and all need to continue engaging ourselves in issues of national and local and foreign policy; we need to read feminist and antiracist materials that look critically at nationalism and imperialism and colonialism and globalization and the War on Terror; we need to get past feeling sorry and guilty and, as Audre Lorde urges so well, do our work.

I might try to rewrite this post soon - these are thoughts that have been swimming around me since 2001 and it’s the first time I’ve tried to ‘pen’ them down.

Just a short post to end this long day.

I spent the entire evening working on a presentation for transnational feminist theory - it’s the introduction to Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures, written by Alexander and Mohanty. I spent more than six hours working on the presentation and still feel that overwhelming since of inadequacy that often accompanies me in the midst of this privileged education. It was difficult to get past the irony of reading about how feminist theory in the United States continues to be Western and Euro centric and how feminist praxis and activism is a key part of feminism, but is often left out of feminist scholarship - for my feminist theory class (a class located, in case we didn’t know, in a small town in California).
Theory is so difficult for me to understand, and not simply because of the vocabulary - it’s difficult because it is so resistant to including emotion and experience as a valid source - a source that I would argue is strongly tied to the identity of many women of color. What does that mean for women of color theorists? Can there be any? Should there be any? The idea of writing theory makes me cringe a little, I’ll admit. The audience is limited and it’s difficult for me to see the possibility of bridging the gap between feminist theory and feminist application. I know it happens, but tracing the path seems impossible.
I guess my question is, what does feminist theory enable me to do as a feminist and activist(-in-the-making) and most importantly, as a woman of color? I wonder if Mohanty considers herself a theorist - I bet she considers herself a writer with the privilege of an education who understands the prioritizing of praxis over theory and knows that “feminist theory” still has a normalized connotation of white, Western, urban, straight, and upper middle class. It’s why we have to keep adding “transnational” to the beginning of the phrase in order for it to even begin to include women of color as theorists and writers instead of marginalized tokens.

On a completely unrelated note, I’m getting quite attached to peppermint tea.

Anyone that knows me well knows how much it meant for me to read this in Sonja D. Curry-Johnson’s “Weaving an Identity Tapestry”:

“In college, conflicts did not lessen, but rather grew, both around me and within me. Here I had to decide what meant more to me, the attention and admiration of men, or my integrity as an independent woman. Unfortunately, there were times when my willingness to find and keep a boyfriend outweighed my desire to live my life honestly as my own person. During these times, I often placed the needs of the relationship over my own. It took a few years and a few broken relationships for me to reassess the importance of romantic love and to realize that there was no fantasy that was worth my denying any part of my identity. I decided not to become involved with a man unless I was sure he was the type of person that would not only accept my feminist ideals but also support my execution of them in my personal and professional lives. That type of man, in my mind, was a rare bird indeed. No sooner had I resigned myself to a life without romance, that I met such a bird and, in perhaps the least-debated decision of my life, married him.”

ahh female South Asian philanthropists…