My Gemini is
showing. I am of two minds. I like people. I dislike people. I wish there were
more people around. I wish there weren’t any people around. Some days I can’t
even summon self-empathy because I’m a person!
I’ve always watched
people and been fascinated by them, even as a child hiding under the table due
to shyness but curious to hear what the adults talked about. It’s the
imperfections that fascinate me the most. They are also what frustrate me the
most. Let me wander a bit as I weave around this ambivalence.
Our imperfections
make us unique. Our diversity
makes us interesting. But sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever be able to live in
harmony, side by side. Our differences are small, but they hold much more
weight than our commonality. They cause disconnects, miscommunications, fear,
hatred, oppression, and violence. Yet many people won’t acknowledge this. They
want to believe that racism, sexism, classicism, and homophobia don’t exist.
They want to blame the victims for the situations they find themselves in and
cast them as complainers.
Watch this short
video, Stopped and Frisked for being aF**cking Mutt, about the NYPD Stop and Frisk initiative in New York City.
87% of all stops involve a person of color. 9 out of 10 stops result in the suspect being released, but
listen to the treatment they endure for just being out in the neighborhood.
Learn about the pressure police are under to engage in this initiative. Racial
profiling is alive and well in America.
I’m even weary of repeating
myself on this topic, over and over. It feels like no one is listening.
Ronald and I often
talk about how we identify as a family. Like my daughter Mackenzie, who just
got her license changed over from New York State to a North Carolina license,
we’ve had to choose whether we identify as black or white.
“I’m other,” she
told the DMV official. “Can’t I choose interracial?”
“No, you’ll have
to choose between black or white. My granddaughter will have to make that
choice, too,” he said, as if that would make the choice to deny part of one’s
ethnic identity easier.
“I choose black,”
she told him. “It’s how I’m viewed by society anyway. My mom won’t be happy.”
I’m not happy, not
because the choice seems like a slap in the face, but rather because she had to
choose. Why can’t we, in this supposed post-racial society, identify as
interracial? See my post Checking theOther Box.
We’ll be choosing
a president soon. Early voting begins in NC on Thursday. I will proudly make my
choice for President Obama and Walter Dalton for governor of NC. People died
believing in and fighting for the inalienable right of all Americans to vote. I
won’t diminish their lives and their struggle through apathy.
Maybe some people
believe I support President Obama because I identify closely with black Americans. That
is not true. What is true is that I can see beyond the color of his skin and
see that his policies and philosophies are in alignment with my vision of
America where all Americans experience equality, access, and opportunity; where
we all live and play on a level playing field; where our diversity is our
strength instead of our weakness; and where everyone is proud to be an American.
I understand there are people who don’t share this vision, but isn’t that a
part of our diversity? Why feel hatred over it? I don’t.
Here’s another
video I recommend you watch. Called SacrificeTotal Gift of Self, this video is pro-life and presents anti-contraception arguments. It is
a weird mix of religion (the Old Testament) and pseudo-science. Be prepared to
be in total awe. Women, beware. You may find yourself suffering the vapors and wondering
where women’s rights, choice, and equality went.
No wonder I feel so ambivalent lately.
There is a trend
on television that intrigues me. It is a celebration of rural white poverty and
culture. Turn to TLC, CMT, Animal Planet or the History Channel, and you’ll see
what I mean. Here is a list of shows that are now popular:
What I find
interesting is that there are two opposing draws that create the audience for
these shows. Some viewers watch for the pure exploitation aspect. They make fun
of the cultural aspects and the people in the show. Some viewers watch the
shows because they believe these shows celebrate what true Americanism is.
I’m disappointed by
both approaches. America is diverse. There are subcultures all over the place,
and none are more American than others. Together, these subcultures contribute aspects
of American mainstream culture and Americanism. We are unique in the world due
to our diversity.
No subculture
should be subjected to voyeurism and exploitation or held up as the epitome of
what being American is. A show that respectfully explores a subculture is fine.
How else do we learn about one another? But give equal time to all the subcultures
that exist in America, and do it non-judgmentally.
I watch a few of
these shows. I admit it is like watching a train wreck. They are hard to turn
off. Here Comes Honey Boo Boo had a
particularly evocative effect on me when I tuned in one evening.
Here is this
precocious, chubby, blonde, seven-year-old white girl living in abject poverty and
filth, who eats “sketti” made with catsup and melted butter served over pasta,
and who participates in child beauty pageants. Her dad works six days a week in
the chalk mines, her mother is foul-mouthed yet loving, and her seventeen-year-old sister
just had a baby who was born with the hereditary defect of an extra thumb.
The show is just
wrong on so many levels. I felt extreme guilt for watching the few episodes that
evening, as if I were peeking in someone’s windows. But I couldn’t turn the
channel. I was mesmerized. Yet I feel such compassion for this family who got
paid two thirds less than other reality show families per episode. Is it an
effort to gain their fifteen minutes of fame or an effort to improve their
condition and the lives of their children? What a horrible situation to find oneself in and yet it is
repeated in show after show and in more and worse ways than the show before.
All the shows
about weddings were brought to my attention this weekend at an event called TheWedding Dress Project. This project is the dreamchild of my daughter Cara, who
envisions deconstructing gender stereotypes through the deconstruction of
wedding dresses, prom dresses, and tuxedos. Groups and individuals take apart
these symbols of traditional gender roles and remake them into other items in order "to deconstruct and re-imagine the societal factors that perpetuate violence in the home and the emotional trauma that results."
A speaker at the
event, Dr. Jenn Brandt, Director of Gender Studies at High Point University,
gave a short presentation on the business of weddings and what the average wedding costs these days.
I am guilty of
watching some of the reality wedding shows, including Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta and My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.
These shows are exploitative and voyeuristic, too. In Say Yes to the Dress women are reduced
to tears searching for the perfect wedding dress while their entourage of
family and friends criticizes their choices. My Big Fat Gypsy
Wedding highlights the lives of Irish Travelers rather than Romani Gypsies
as the title seems to indicate. After lavish weddings, these sometimes fifteen
or sixteen-year-old girls are relegated to a life of drudgery, keeping up their
homes and waiting hand and foot on their husbands. Many of these women never graduate high school. Most of the brides only meet
their husbands briefly before the wedding.
I find it odd that
I watch these shows about weddings when my own wedding took place at the Public
Safety Building (that housed the county jail back then as well as the county
courtrooms) after traffic court one Saturday morning. Here is a photo of us, taken in our
wedding clothes just a few weeks after we got married in 1983. Not terribly fancy duds nor a lavish event, but our marriage is nearly thirty years strong.
These shows
emphasize the wedding event and downplay the marriage. A societal shift, no doubt, a la Kim
Kardshian, toward extravagance and the growing ephemeral status of marriage.
I am as
disappointed in myself as I am in others. I wonder, as I struggle with my
ambivalence about people, how Honey Boo Boo and the parade of characters that
march across our television screens have affected all of us. Let me include politicians in that group of characters. There have been some awful negative campaign ads in my home state of NC, a swing state. Are they
diversions that deflect us from thinking too deeply about the real problems
such as racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia that we face in America? Maybe, but I can't be certain in this Gemini frame of mind.
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