Unfiltered Notes

A series of ruminations and reflections about the books, ideas, issues and people that compel me to pause and respond in writing. 

[nowyoukno]

Source for more facts follow NowYouKno

[scientificphilosopher]

Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.

Audre Lorde, ‘Sister Outsider’ (via scientificphilosopher)

[liberatingreality]

Be thankful for periods of agony, as the desire to transcend pain demands use of skills we would otherwise be unaware that we posses.

Paul John Moscatello (via liberatingreality)

[scientificphilosopher]

There appears to be a vast amount of confusion on this point, but I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be ‘accepted’ by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don’t wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet.

James Baldwin, ‘The Fire Next Time’ (via scientificphilosopher)

[keithboykin]

[unfilterednotes]

On Blackness & Ferguson & America

The manner in which McCulloch proceeded to dismiss the statements of black witnesses reminds me of the way in which the testimony of women in Islam is devalued categorically. 

In the same way that a woman's testimony in Islamic jurisprudence must be corroborated by numerous, preferably masculine, sources, so it is with Blacks in America. Black testimony in America is also categorically devalued and suspect. 

The subtext of the whole press conference was that only Black people in America are motivated by social media reports and by political expediency. Only Black people have knee jerk reactions. Only Black people provide testimony that is later contradicted. 

And on and on and on.

At times, it was as if McCulloch was emphasizing the difficulties his office faced in light of national scrutiny as a prelude to articulating an actual grievance against the country.The entire press conference had an "oh woe is me" tinge. 

McCuolloch was saying "please understand how your curiosity and concerns increased the difficulty of our jobs. Now that I have your full attention, I will hold the verdict hostage and force you to listen to my disappointment with your (the public and the media) behavior.

McCulloch went on a "I have a lot of shit to get off my chest" soliloquy. 

Despite McCulloch's numerous attempts to assert the integrity of the process, he failed to account for America's racialized existence.

Deep down there are some convictions all Americans hold to be unquestionably true. 

White Americans "know" that with few exceptions all Blacks are violent and criminally-oriented. They also "know" that all Blacks think all Whites are racist. 

Black Americans "know" that all Whites are racist and that it is only a matter of time before it reveals itself. They also "know" that all Whites think all Blacks are criminals. 

There is no such thing as an objective process. We do not weigh evidence or make calculations in a vacuum. If we did we would be computers not humans. 

A majority white jury will never be a 'jury of my peers'. The contempt with which White Americans treat Black lives, ideas and bodies ensures that when it comes to questions of guilt and innocence, valid and invalid testimony, credible and non-credible humans, the calculus will never favor Black Americans. 

It is almost impossible to find probable cause when we are murdered, and always readily available when we are accused of murder. 

The tragedy of Ferguson is not simply that another unarmed Black child was murdered. The full tragedy is what Black Americans know to be true; the full tragedy is the impetus for the anger, the fear and the tears.

The full tragedy of Ferguson is that the conditions that led to Brown's death remain unchanged. Long after we turn our attention to coverage of ISIS or North Korea, the legitimate state-sponsored acts of law enforcement extra-judicial murder of Black Americans will continue unabated, unchallenged and forever unaccountable. 

[unfilterednotes]

The Black Swan

Nicholas Taleb's principles for black-swan proofing your life and our society. 

[evocativesynthesis-blog]

Knowledge is for me that which must function as a protection of individual existence and as a comprehension of the exterior world. I think that’s it. Knowledge as a means of surviving by understanding.

Michel Foucault (via evocativesynthesis)

[rienfleche]

I find it frustrating when people imply that there is no way to analyze power because it’s ubiquitous, fluid, and purely relational. The idea that power is impossible to possess, anchor, and pinpoint can suggest that power relations are completely socially unintelligible and impossible to examine. However, even though there is no external view of a fixed locus of power, there is still the possibility of illuminating alignments of power through an examination of webs of power relations and patterns of effects. That how we might arrive at an analysis of, say, patriarchy, which isn’t reducible to the concentration of power into the hands of men, but rather is maintained though “mobile, polymorphous, and contingent techniques of power” that include multiple strategies, whether it’s the naturalization of women’s inferiority in scientific discourses or the day-to-day performance of gender in order to be perceived as an intelligible human subject. Even Foucault was very aware that something like “constellations” of power or “alliances” exist even in the absence of absolutist and fixed configurations of power. Confluences and bundles of relations of power are produced within disciplinary configurations of power. These constellations can accrue power and resemble classical “oppression,” as links, alliances, and alignments of power coalesce.

[Jackie Wang] (via rienfleche)

[theeconomist]

The Economist explains: Trouble at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount is flaring up again. We explain why the “City of Peace” is so volatile

[unfilterednotes]

One of the most valuable things about the Economist is that their content is so well researched. 

[bostonreview]

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

Thomas Jefferson on the U.S. Constitution (including the Second Amendment)

[pulitzercenter]

In Uttar Pradesh, India, a pregnant woman named ShyamKali makes a midnight ride to the hospital. Lacking any transport of her own, she calls for a bicycle rickshaw and climbs onto the wooden wagon. The driver pedals away into the night.

The ride is short, about 15 minutes, and so is the labor. After several hours, she is back in the rickshaw heading home with her fifth child, a girl she calls Anshika.

To readers in the western world, this would seem like a nightmarish delivery, an ordeal out of a previous century. But in the rural villages of Uttar Pradesh, this mother’s midnight ride was progress.

She went to a medical facility to give birth. She brought with her clean clothes to swaddle the baby. The newborn was swiftly and tenderly cleaned and immediately placed on the mother’s chest, where breastfeeding began. Traditionally in these parts, a baby born at home would be scrubbed and left alone unclothed, increasing the risk of hypothermia. And breastfeeding wouldn’t begin for at least several hours, perhaps not for a couple of days; the mother would discard the first milk, rich in nutrients and anti-bodies, believing it to be dirty.

These changes in behavior have been spurred by the efforts of an organization called the Community Empowerment Lab, which has been working to improve maternal and infant health care in Uttar Pradesh. In the past decade, tens of thousands of women have begun to adopt these practices, reducing newborn mortality rates by more than half.

But yet, as the first day of Anshika’s life showed, there was much more to do. When they returned to their humble brick and mud house, mother and daughter went into two weeks of confinement; they would be isolated in one of the two rooms in the house. Only the mother-in-law and a health worker would be allowed to enter. All ventilation holes were plugged by green plastic bags. Only the door was open, to an interior yard. Purification fires to ward off evil spirits were lit at the entrance to the house and beside the door to the confinement room. Smoke from the smoldering dung stung the eyes and nostrils and throat. The temperature neared 100 in the humid pre-monsoon days.

Read the rest of the story and view Pulitzer Center grantee Roger Thurow’s full project: 1,000 Days: To Save Women, Children and the World

[unfilterednotes]

An Appetite For Wonder

I am reading Richard Dawkins’ memoir An Appetite For Wonder. While I often enjoy memoirs and the almost voyeuristic look into the sanitized semi-accurate reflections of an individual upon his or her life, I must admit Dawkins’ memoir is thus far a disappointment. Indeed, it is only because I refuse to start a book and then abandon it that I am still actually reading it. I also signed up to hear him speak on this very book at the Miami Book Fair. The second half of the book is actually quite fantastic in a technical sense. I have at least three good reasons to finish the book. 

There is something about a book filled with the reflections of an English man who was born in Kenya who is rightly reflecting on the glorious life he has led that caused me severe discomfort.

Unfortunately, his story cannot be told or divorced from the backdrop of his illustrious family’s ability to capitalize on British imperialism in order to freely roam the planet.

As an East-African refugee, I couldn't help but read his reflections through the lens of colonization.

While many of you who read the memoir may gaze at the family photos based in Africa with a sense of a wonder, I was thinking:

“You did not have permission to be there. None of you did. You attended a private school in Kenya because of countless acts of violence and brutality."

What I understood to be amusing on an intellectual level fell flat when it hit my stomach. What I knew ought to be thought provoking would send me on a quest to line up the dates of his forefathers lives with the end of mine.

I couldn't help but see my grandfather’s story in the backdrop of his. I was reading about Dawkins’ life but I was thinking about my grandfather death. If my grandfather’s story were ever written, it would be a story pieced together from the perspective of those in the background in which the characters in Dawkins’ memoir are the foreground.

I understand that one need not identify with a text or an author to appreciate the work. It is clear to me that my inability to lose myself in this memoir (which according to me is the true test of a memoir) is a result of my personal features, history and nationality.

His memoir left me ambivalent, uncertain and with a renewed commitment to reread The Selfish Gene and figure out if I too belong to the class of individuals who mistake the entire organism as the “fundamental unit of natural selection.”

I love the shit out of his other work. I am an especially big fan of the ruthlessness with which he disposes of religious arguments. I will finish the damn memoir and then I will listen to one of the world’s foremost intellectuals reflect on his life in person. And I will be inspired and feel incredibly privileged and many of you will be jealous.

That is pretty damn glorious.

Recommendation: 

You should read the memoir. The first 168 pages you can skim. The chapter titled “Learning The Trade” is where you begin to get insight into the Richard Dawkins we think we know.

Final Grade:1st half: C+; 2nd half: A+

[unfilterednotes]

Dear Mr. Piers Morgan,

It is not your race that makes your article offensive.

Rather, it is your desire to obscure your race and gender in your writing in an attempt to speak from some objective realm. Note that this is a realm that implicitly suggests that by virtue of our race, we are incapable of objectively criticizing your work.

If we are limited by our race and gender, so too are your writings constrained by your race and gender. To claim otherwise is to hide behind the veil of white privilege.

White privilege allows you to propagate the illusion of the “reasonable minds must agree to X position” archetype. This was evident in the responses suggesting that the criticisms of your work stemmed solely from your race.

Your work cannot and should not be divorced from your race or your gender. Neither you nor your opinions were formed in a vacuum. You are a product of a history of colonization, slavery, imperialism and racism.

That matters. That was apparent in your original pieces and your subsequent responses.

To tackle issues that implicate race in your writings and believe that a statement “as a white man” is sufficient to acknowledge the ways in which race constrains your analysis was naive and irresponsible.

Your prefaces do not determine whether I will be offended or not. More importantly, pseudo-qualifying statements do not absolve you from your obligation as a journalist to address difficult social questions with more research and dare I say more elegant writing.

You are not merely a person speaking about what is or is not appropriate in the African American community.

You are a white man leveraging his entire arsenal of white privilege to dictate the terms of linguistic engagement in a disenfranchised community. A community that is under daily threats of structural and military violence.

Context matters.

We are not the only hyphenated ones.

Regards,

Black Folk