Absolute Discovery

unblinking attention to the ordinary

[absolute-discovery-blog]

Keeping Quiet

K and I have been wrestling with what it means to be honest with each other even when the honesty doesn't feel like it's coming at the right time, or if we worry it might be hurtful.  We know the consequences of choosing to let it sit...yes, Langston, it explodes.  But everyone does it.  My math teacher told me once in high school that I shouldn't take on two AP math courses my senior year because not everyone could be my brother.  He has no idea how much that upset me -- I never told him.  But I tell anyone, now, who will listen. It's why I went into education; it's how I understand some of the problems we have with girls in math; it's how a bad teacher can motivate you to go into teaching. And yet, even still, I've never reached out to him to say, "You hurt me."  But he did.

In college I lost my virginity to someone who didn't act like he cared about me when we were having sex.  He was aggressive, despite knowing that it was a new thing for me, and when I told him to stop because it hurt he said, "Come on, you can take it."  I don't think he remembers that. I don't think he understands how scarring it was to have taken that treatment and then be told that I was "too intense emotionally" for him.  We ran into each other a few summers ago waiting for a train and he was friendly. I ended up having a panic attack. He doesn't know that either.

Today I found out that I hurt someone at work.  I thought I'd been doing really well with that relationship, that she and I could talk about anything.  I had gone to her to be my thought partner.  She had told me earlier in the week that she was going to be departing, and I had been beside myself knowing it.  When I went to her to talk about who would take her position, she felt really hurt.  Her feelings are valid and reasonable--I should have had the sensitivity to anticipate it.  I was so excited, however, to work with her to make sure that her work at the school wasn't lost and it struck a wrong chord.  She did say something to me in the conversation, but I read her wrong, I thought we'd covered it, when she said, "You know this is a really weird conversation for me, right?" and I said, "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.  I was so upset at the thought of you leaving that I dove head first into thinking about what we could do for the school, and what we could do for me (which, reflecting on it, was rather selfish) so that the work could continue to be done. You're pretty impossible to replace." We kept chatting and it passed.  That was yesterday. Today, my boss came in to let me know --gently--that I'd stepped in itbut that it was a big deal and that I need to be more careful. I'm so glad he told me, and terrified to have not realized myself.  How often do we hurt others without meaning to? How often does it happen without ever realizing it happened? Is it better to know, or be left without the knowledge? I feel horrible, now, knowing.  I know I'm happier to have the ability to make it right, but what about the guy from college, or my math teacher from high school? Do they deserve to know, too? When is it a gift to be honest about words that hurt--and when is it a disservice?

[absolute-discovery-blog]

The unbearable weight of anger

I just wish someone would be angry sometimes so I didn’t have to be.

[absolute-discovery-blog]

Mia McKenzie, "4 Ways to Push Back Against Your Privilege"

"The truth is that acknowledging your privilege means a whole lot of nothing much if you don’t do anything to actively push back against it." Mia McKenzie, on point per usual and teaching me things.  Lots to think about here. Lots that would piss off my mother.  I loved how the facebook comments on R's wall after posting this article involved some white dude all up in arms about #3. That said, I'm wrestling with #4 (i know, i know, read the disclaimer) got some thoughts about.  I think she's right, you have different experiences of oppression based on how the world perceives you, but I also think that visual presentation isn't the only classifier in POC discriminatory policies.  The way your families are treated, the fact that your  name is often a flag for your ethnicity, regardless of physical presentation (just like "Sam" which is short for Samantha but used on a resume is going to experience different gender biases from Amanda), and the gradations of whiteness complicate this.  Visual discrimination doesn't exist on a binary, but along a spectrum, and as such should be pushed back against--but at the expense of marginalizing and rendering people invisible.  Representation is tricky, to be sure, and inherently reductive. It's exasperating to watch someone represent you who you feel doesn't or can't actually speak to your experience. Identity claims, however, should be, at the very least, a right that we push to have be in the hands of the individual identifying, not the audience.  To do otherwise seems to be giving into supremacy, to be relinquishing agency.

Then again, as a POC presenting, yet, half-white Asian American who is constantly thinking about a piece of art entitled, "I tan to look more ethnic," am I just being defensive? Am i refusing to relinquish my privilege? I know that I would never claim to experience the kinds of racism that blackness would cause, nor even asian ness, but I am "other" and that liminal space of otherness, and frustration about it, is not just my fee fees.  It's a pushback against erasure. And a questioning of categories--i think the whiter you are the less racism you experience, but it doesn't mean that you experience none, nor... I don't fucking know. I'm really confused and just want to start thinking about it. I'm oscillating between being mad at myself for being defensive and feeling a passionate need to defend against the rendering of people as invisible. Mostly, I'm excited to be thinking critically again about something new.

[absolute-discovery-blog]

Social Darwinism and #NotYourAdjunctSidekick

One of my students emailed me about #NotYourAdjunctSidekick. A group of students I have been working with this winter have taken to sarcastically saying to me “you don’t do enough” because I seem to be constantly juggling an inordinate number of tasks, putting off time for my personal life for the school, and don’t seem (given the time stamps of my emails) to be sleeping much. In her email, N wrote, “it seems to me that a lot of the points mentioned regarding this topic do not just relate solely to higher education, but to independent schools as well.” I’d go even further to say that the situation could be applied broadly to teachers everywhere.

So, I tweeted, “because working 80 hr weeks, week after week, should mean that I can pay of college loans without living on credit.” Which felt bold, and like cheating. I’m not an adjunct professor; I’m just a high school teacher. I haven’t earned the necessary credentials to have this complaint.

And then I thought about the heated debate my kids had in history today about social darwinism, a theory I thought we’d successfully done away with long ago. But so many of the kids believe it, like they buy the nonsense about meritocracy that college admissions continues to promote. We have done such a good job of convincing our children that people who work hard, and compete with ruthless abandon get places. They don’t like that this is how society works, but they feel resigned to function within this reality. It’s a dystopian future we’ve told them that they’re living in and can’t escape.

Yet, in my job, working hard and competing isn’t providing me with a better life and more opportunities. And I’d suspect in most teaching jobs, this is true. If you work hard and are good at your job, you’re not given more money, you’re given more work. The best teachers are also the teachers who advise all the clubs and coach sports and have extra help sessions and do hours and hours of invisible work. And yes, some of this comes with marginal amounts of extra pay, but no teacher is ever compensated for the fact that extracurriculars also means overtime. The teachers who can survive in this environment are the most capable, but they are not the teachers who get paid the most. In fact, the better teachers are those who get paid the least and work in conditions far worse than mine but can still be effective. Yet, society isn’t hoisting those teachers up as models of fitness. And frankly, the exhaustion required to do this job well, the financial hardship, and the personal sacrifice mean that I am less likely to procreate because I don’t have time to socialize and be good at my job.

The teachers who get paid the most are the teachers that have been teaching the longest. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in favor of merit pay or eradicating tenure until someone has a realistic system for evaluating teachers that takes into account generating curiosity, hope, ambition, love of learning, ability to make students feel safe, known, and challenged. But I do think that there is something wrong with a system that never pays younger talented teachers enough money, and only rarely pays older, talented teachers enough money. And I do think that there is something to be said for why we have bad teachers. Because in this environment, to survive, you have to do less, and be less, or you burn out. Of course we have shitty teachers, there’s no incentive to be good; the “fittest” are laughing at those of us breaking our backs to do good work, just like the “fittest” of the guided age were exploiting workers. Is this the kind of society we want to reproduce? Are these the character traits, values, and ambitions we want to pass on to future generations? If so, sterilize me. Because I must be mentally insane. And isn't that what the social darwinists wanted? To get rid of us weak folk, "for the future of humanity." Didn't someone famous have a similar idea? What's his name? Oh, yeah. Hitler.

[absolute-discovery-blog]

We are entitled to our anger in response to this oppression: our anger is a message to ourselves that we need to get active an change something in order to survive...[but] I think anger and activism mix about as well as drinking and driving.

Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw

[spinhxara]

[blua]

If you’re unemployed, it’s not because there isn’t any work.

Just look around: A housing shortage, crime, pollution; we need better schools and parks. Whatever our needs, they all require work. And as long as we have unsatisfied needs, there’s work to be done.

So ask yourself, what kind of world has work but no jobs? It’s a world where work is not related to satisfying our needs, a world where work is only related to satisfying the profit needs of business.

This country was not built by the huge corporations or government bureaucracies. It was built by people who work. And, it is working people who should control the work to be done. Yet, as long as employment is tied to somebody else’s profits, the work won’t get done.

[somestuffidkidkidk]

Was expecting classist bullshit, got the exact opposite

[gourmetpunk]

This is so ubelievably important and I hate that I have to keep re-explaining it to people.

[absolute-discovery-blog]

Exceptional White People

I spent a significant portion of this morning trying to find easy access to a copy of A Dialogue: James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni.  I'd read it a couple summers ago for a paper I was writing on Nikki Giovanni's many versions of "Ego Tripping." It's not a book, really, but the transcript of a conversation the two had for an episode of Soul! which showcases Nikki Giovanni's capacity as a social critic in a way that her poetry doesn't always.  (Her lack of appreciation in critical circles is an interesting conversation to be had another time.) Anyhow, I was looking for a quote, and found one in my notes, but don't think it's quite the one I was looking for: "I look at exceptional white people as exceptional and she [Margaret Walker?] wants to look at exceptional white people as the rule." NG

As #stopblamingwhitewomenweneedunity started trending in response to this article right about the time I'd begun participating in Suey Park's conversation through #blackpoweryellowperil / #blackpowerliberasian was disappointing and, for good reason, pissed a lot of people off.  I was one such person, for that matter.  I'd already been pissed off--I was one of those angry women of color that rejected Lily Allen's anthem because it seemed to me to be objectifying and critiquing black women (and sent a long, but somewhat generous email in defense of this position to a friend--who happens to be a white feminist); I was annoyed by discussions of whether or not Beyonce was feminist or not--to the point of dismissing the delight of one of my favorite activist students who was excited by the fact that her facebook friends from the Student Diversity Leadership Conference she'd attended were actually having that conversation.  (Aside: it makes me sad that that's enough to get us excited, that we're having a conversation.  I'm a little tired of low expectations, which sometimes makes it hard to get excited about "progress," which makes me seem ceaselessly negative, unable to see the good.) 

A friend of mine on Facebook noted that she felt sad for the white feminists who aren't abusing their privilege, who are standing in solidarity, who are also calling out our sisters who are supporting systems of oppression.  I feel sorry for them too.  And I don't want to perpetuate that cycle, and I know it's what makes my mother most upset when we talk about race.  She feels like we're blaming white people.  And I think that's the problem: we're not blaming white feminists -- we're holding them accountable.  If there were not specific, tangible evidence of white feminists (yes, that's who's doing it -- and it hurts more when your community hurts you than when outsiders do) actively reifying systemic oppression we wouldn't need to call them out.  To say that "white feminists" are doing something is not to say that ALL white feminists are engaging in this practice, but a generalization, meant to encourage white feminists to check themselves and make sure that they too aren't participating it.  The danger, I think, in giving space for the exceptional white person is that it allows everyone the option of believing that he or she is the exception, thereby removing their requisite self examination.  We must all, constantly, vigilantly, self-police.  It is not fun.  It does not feel good. Sometimes we emerge proud; sometimes we emerge ashamed.  But being defensive, seeking to avoid blame isn't permitting progress.  We fiercely hold onto our privileges, every single one of us, usually at the expense of others.  It takes active work not to.  If you think you can passively avoid this; you're wrong. Being a part of a population characterized in a general way never feels good.  Especially if you don't think the generalization characterizes you.  But the solution is not to remind everyone that there are exceptions, that you are one such exception; the necessary work is to feel empowered knowing that communities you belong to (by choice or no) have work to do, and look forward to helping the rest of your community participate in work you're already doing.  We're always going to have more work to do; resisting the idea that work needs to be done makes more work, creates more obstacles, is the kind of bullshit that anyone who holds racist views but refuses to believe that racism exists pulls.  Let's not be like that.  We're better than that. So much better than that.

[absolute-discovery-blog]

I have this conversation with my mother so often. Usually, she starts it by asking me what things she wants when she dies. For the last nine years she's been saying "I'm practically sixty." She turned sixty in October.

[absolute-discovery-blog]

Sonnet LXVI: I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You

I do not love you except because I love you; I go from loving to not loving you, From waiting to not waiting for you My heart moves from cold to fire. I love you only because it's you the one I love; I hate you deeply, and hating you Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you Is that I do not see you but love you blindly. Maybe January light will consume My heart with its cruel Ray, stealing my key to true calm. In this part of the story I am the one who Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you, Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood. Pablo Neruda

[absolute-discovery-blog]

New Year's Resolution

I will not act out of obligation, but out of choice. Even when only small choices are available to me I will take joy and pride in my actions, both big decisions and small.

[absolute-discovery-blog]

optimism, hope, and depression

I've been thinking a lot since I saw Junot Diaz speak at the NAIS POCC about hope. He said that you have to "hope against hope" and it reminded me of a column by Jessica Valenti in The Nation, where she wrote, "The truth is—despite stereotypes that paint feminists as forever negative—doing feminist work requires boundless optimism. It means believing that people have the ability to be better, that culture can change, and maybe even that people who hate can learn to love. It's exhausting." And then somewhere in the middle of breaking up, K and I discussed our different approaches to activism: his investment in small, but achievable progress, a pessimism of sorts and my despair over the lack of progress, the unbelievably long road ahead, my unwillingness to settle for anything less than the ideal. It makes me sad, the world we live in. Sometimes I sporadically cry about it. Like when I read a report about an advisee of mine leaving a special science program, wondering if more support for her - rather than more labor on her behalf - could have made the difference in her ability to succeed in the program. The faith I have in the potential for change makes me sad, but makes me want to live. I think it's the difference for me from the depression besot by feeling worthless while in college, not smart enough, not accomplished enough, not impressive, and the sadness and anger that I feel now, that keep me tormented and yet excited, that make me want to continue to "build beautiful things in our broken, but still magical world."

[absolute-discovery-blog]

Ifemelu watched them, so alike in their looks, and both unhappy people. But Kimberly’s unhappiness was inward, unacknowledged, shielded by her desire for things to be as they should, and also by hope: she believed in other people’s happiness because it meant that she, too, might one day have it. Laura’s unhappiness was different, spiky, he wished that everyone around her were unhappy because she had convinced herself that she always would be.

Chimanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah (166)

[absolute-discovery-blog]

Yeah, it's about race.

walking while black, talking while black, pissing while black, eating while black, breathing while black, crying while black, snoring while black, thinking while black, brushing my teeth while black, holding a wallet while black, eating skittles while black, playing double-dutch while black, being black while black, wearing a hoodie while black, holding a woman's hand while black, reaching into the glove compartment while black, not putting on my indicator while black, going through customs while black, watching someone look at my four year old son curiously while black, using lapd bullet shells to play hopscotch while black, touching the bullet holes in our walls while black, being told your not black enough while black, being told you're too black while black, loving being black while black, wanting to get the hell up out of here while black, realizing there's no place to be black while black, loving being black even more because of that while black, sitting on the rim of the pacific getting blacker while black, finally giving up on being accepted while black, which is blacker than all blacks while black, thinking about all the little boys who disappeared when we were children while black, and the little girls who disappeared too while black, and watching our mothers tremble, wondering which of us children would not come home that day while black. at seven, coming home to them even blacker because of that while black. and staying.

poem by Robin Coste Lewis

[absolute-discovery-blog]

Tightrope walking

I think I need to write about the sads, but I’m not really sure how. I think trying not to write about being depressed has meant that I haven’t been writing.  Is there a difference in writing away the sads and writing about the sads?  

I’m not sure.

***

I wish people wouldn’t ask me “what’s wrong?" because there’s nothing really wrong, and yet so many things are wrong.  The question compels me to come up with a list, which always is longer than I mean for it to be. Sometimes it’s personal ("I spent the weekend at a memorial service"). Sometimes it’s global, ("I want to empathize with Questlove, and I do, but I wonder if he considered what it feels like to be a woman in New York." ) This does two things: 1) gives legitimacy to a sadness that has no true origin 2) reminds me how many things there are to be sad about.

A said today that I had been quiet during his visit.  Mostly, I said, I’m tired.  But tired isn’t the right description.  I’m exhausted.  The idea of putting one foot in front of the other seems unbearable.  But, I’m doing it.  And have been doing it. And will keep doing it. For days, maybe even weeks, I have been fighting the desire to just stay in bed and hide from the world.  I think this is one of my longest stretches of time without a significant part of a day doing nothing but living with the sadness since high school.  The responsibilities are good—the classes to teach, the friends to see, the children to bake for—I can force myself to show up, which historically has helped me crawl out of the hole. And it’s been doing that, at least during the occupied moments. The unoccupied ones, though, have been a bit treacherous.  

I’m soldiering on, but with this sense of pending doom, like at any point I might just totally fall apart.  It feels like walking a tightrope.  Would a couple days off, of indulging the sadness, make me feel better?

[18mr]

[Photo: James Baldwin, with the text “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her."]

Happy 4th of July, fam!

[absolute-discovery-blog]

Happy belated birthday, America.

I wanted to say it on your actual birthday, but I was having trouble coming up with the right words. I was thinking about it, though, and have been. I hope this counts. I didn’t forget, I promise.

[absolute-discovery-blog]

What men want, America delivers

Confession: Blurred Lines has been stuck in my head for the last two days.  I can’t get it out.  And when I hear it, my head starts absently bopping to the beat.  The song is catchy.  It makes me want to dance, and when I feel my body moving, it feels a little like I’ve taken a big greasy bite of a Chick-fil-A sandwich.  I’m still not sure if that’s going to be something I’m ok with when K and I go South.  I think it will be, but I’m already starting to feel guilty in anticipation.  The personal is political, right?

But I guess that’s just it.  It’s the denial that creeps up when I want to ignore the political aspect of my choices.  I shouldn’t shop at Urban Outfitters, or any of their beautiful franchise stores because of their gay-bashing CEO and lack of respect for Native peoples.  It’s getting hard to watch movies that don’t pass the Bechdel test. And that’s a fucking lot of movies.  I saw a trailer for a new movie, and thought, “Wow, that looks suspenseful!" but only for a second before I caught my brain asking, “Are there were any women in the trailer… at all?"   I’m not even looking to see me in the media, I have realized that I must write myself into existence if that’s my goal, and I’m willing to wait for it, but it would be nice to just see a fucking woman every now and then.  Or even a man who isn’t a celebratory rapist.  If I could just want a little less, have a little less hope, think a little less, stop taking everything so seriously, lighten up…but "[i]t’s hard to be told to lighten up because if you lighten up any more, you’re going to float the fuck away. The problem is not that one of these things is happening, it’s that they are all happening, concurrently and constantly."

I think this article hit on the fatigue that I have been feeling in waves this year.  It’s a defeated feeling, like nothing can change, like nothing will change, like I’m fighting a hopeless battle.  Like maybe I should just lighten up, care less, give up.  I’m prone to this line of logic, of course. It’s a bad line of logic.

[absolute-discovery-blog]

I was so frustrated with our government for forgetting…and then I forgot.  What does it mean to be so caught up in so many unsolvable problems that I forget to speak out about a problem that seems to have such an obvious solution?