Rationed Health Care Will Kill Me

Dear Reader, let us just wade right in here. Recently you may have heard a term new to most: rationed health care (RHC). What is it? It is the medical community's response to running out of doctors, equipment, or even human organs. It is fascism and bigotry that most USians can either ignore or give their tacit approval. I know that the title above may seem to be overly ripe click bait, but the truth is more murky than your local lab coat may be willing to admit.

Nissi, a black pittie, looking sadly at the camera. 

Here in the early spring of 2020, the spread of a novel corona virus is infecting people with Covid19. While less ambitious than the Black Plague, it is currently associated with a 2-5% fatality rate, with that rate increasing dramatically for those that have managed to kick around on this dirtball longer than most, those making the best of life with other conditions like diabetes, cancer, or other chronic conditions. The best data on US standards prior to Covid19 can be found in the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, a non binding document adopted state by state (sometimes with changes.)

The argument goes that first come first serve is UNFAIR in a medical crisis. I watched a nurse, in real time, talk as though saying that some jaggoff with young kids is more deserving of medical supplies and effort than a grandma with a poor pancreas. His youth and status as someone that could mash their meat against someone else's meat enough to make yet more meat makes him more worthy of LIFE ITSELF. Is that how you want your Granny to leave this Earth?  Do you think that would be fair to her and her family?

This problem is not a surprise. We knew we had too few ventilators, too few beds, too few caregivers. The Obama Administration knew, and told this clown car known as the Trump Administration. The WHO knew, Bill Gates knew, all credible sources that looked at the problem knew. They knew that we would need to ration care during a health emergency like this one and our powers that be DO NOTHING. DID NOTHING. And as soon as the public looks away, they will go right back to it unless something changes. 

At the center of this disaster is negligence at both the corporate and governmental level. Profit making hospitals have to ration their money into the features of a hospital that can generate profit. That profit comes from you, the patient, the taxpayer and goes to the very top of their corporate chain. It does not go to new buildings to provide more health care to the less privileged making them also under-served. It does not go to buying equipment that may only get used in an emergency. And the US government allowed it.

I am not knocking an individual person here. Nor do I have a chance in this fight - if infected, I am likely to die at home long before I would give consent to be taken to a hospital in this pandemic. My crippled immune system would make me more likely to get sick from the germs in an ER, and the stress would cause a flare that would go unattended by most staff even in the best of times. Even if I were to go to an ER for something else, Covid19, germs, worn out & stressed staff not able to pay attention to special needs cases, and my body's stress response means I would die of one or the other. So I have made the decision to stay home, to die at home if it comes to that: surrounded by those that can care for me, that care about me, in however much peace and comfort we can muster. 

Individuals run from the responsibility of their own decisions by hiding as a cog in a machine, just a representative for a corporation they barely understand, let along control. Modern doctors do not stand up for the poor like they should. As of yesterday, apparently this country realized that black and brown folk are 70% of Covid19 deaths. This is the result of a chain of inequity of which the hospitals were the last link of the chain. THIS IS ALSO THE RESULT OF RATIONED CARE. You can disagree with my earlier statement about bigotry in RHC, but the truth is in thousands of dead black and brown bodies.

There is no fairness in a plague. There is no fairness in a hospital where infection floats from room to room on garb that has not been changed or  sterilized. There is no fairness in death. None. First come first served has the benefit of being something that we do see as fair in other circumstances. It also has the benefit of rewarding those that took action early. We can do better. We can make sure that we need to ration less the next time, and the time after that. 

You are welcome to do your own research, (find out how much your own life is worth, you may be surprised.) I did before I ranted above. Much love to health care workers in general and ALL those workers that make sure we can live though this: from green grocers to ER nurses to delivery drivers to electricians. You are seen, needed, and awesome. 

Living with Black People

Here you can see your average white, liberal lady blogger:

Patient C in a dress her family called "retro hippie" with dog, Lucky.

Or you can see PatientC, me: white lady, disabled mom, loyal wife and girl friend, #Resist Bitch, Proud mom of Girls that with her belong to the #LGBT/#QUILTBAG community, poor Randian leech, sometimes obese but usually just a few pounds "overweight," Buddhist and ULC minister, neuroatypical rabble rouser and oversharing blogger. 

One thing (among many) that you cannot see is this: I live with black people. 

To my surprise, the data backed up my observation that not many people live with people that do not look like them. In the US, even outside of racist housing policies from corporate to governmental, people tend to self segregate not just along class but racial lines. There is so much material out there on redlining, racist home loans, government segregation, the Northern migration and then later, smaller repatriation. Go look, academics and commentators have formed whole careers saying things about this and you should know about this in the US if you live here, or see if it happened where you live if you live elsewhere.

What I want to focus on here is that my white family of weirdos is even more weird because we chose to live among different folks. 90% of our neighbors are African American. This makes a lot of the people in our lives black. It means that policy meant to affect black citizens probably changes our lives too - in a secondary if not a primary way. If there is a fire nearby, or a shooting, or a tree falls in our area, we stand outside and work with black people to see if help is needed or comment helplessly if that all we can do.

Within site of our house, we have one neighbor that is a white guy. He is a disabled vet with a Latina wife. Minion One sometimes house sits for them, which changed their life. They participate in the local feral cat program & never felt like they could vacation for more than a weekend and now, if they can scrape together the cash, they can go visit her relatives and not worry about home or the kitties. 

On the opposite corner to ours is a Vietnamese lady that was cool for a decade and a half but now has some beef about the breed of my dog. One of the same breed knocked her down once and once she realized I had the same breed of dog she stopped talking to me. But it is the kind of beef you get anywhere from anyone, nothing special about the fact that she comes from where she comes from and I am so white as to appear translucent. 

The neighbors just south of us are a black couple with a couple of grown children from previous marriages. In the summer of blood here, a few summers ago, they lost a grown son to a gas station shooting - he was just there, gassing up his car. We got to know each other after that - their opinion on white people (I later found out) was profoundly changed because I checked in on them each day for that terrible first week, and off and on thereafter. But I only found out because they had family/friends parked around the block, including around our corner yard. When I asked about it, I was devastated: he was another guy that thought it was funny that I played Halo. Another black guy, something incidental to our conversation, but race mattered in how the case was reported and treated. 

Now we lean on each other as needed. Hell, my dog Nissi came from a litter sired by their dog - the husband helped pick and nurture her specifically for me. He was under the opinion that I needed a dog for company as the Minions grow up and I am out in the yard alone with some frequency. So now I have a wonderful nanny dog that loves everyone but from her pit bull looks folks assume she only wants to eat their face and I am never hassled by strangers anymore. I take Nissi over to play with her dad and sister at least once a week, like neighbors might do.

Our mailman is Nigerian, he loves our dogs and chats. He is terrific at his job so we leave a card with a small token of appreciation in the mailbox at the end of the year. Not a big deal, really. 

I can keep going. I can re-agonize about the black kid under a white sheet that summer. He was only there because a cop thought he was suspicious or a suspect or something. He was unarmed, doing nothing illegal or unusual, just walking down the neighborhood street. When the Minions were younger he was one of the kids that got cold water bottles from me when they were running around playing like kids do. 

Some of those kids have grown, left, and now some are coming back. My guys get asked about that white lady with the cold water and if she is still here. It warms my heart to be remembered like that! I did not consider, however, that I was also the first white lady they ever talked to outside of school or other regimented experience. I was just looking after the kids like their moms.

Or I could rant about how we chose this for ourselves and the Minions. It was vitally important to me that the kids attend class with people that did not all look like them. Turned out, sometimes they were the only white faces in their class. I stand by that decision. Now the Minions are at a loss when they hear about how white and black people in the US sometimes see each other. They bristle when they hear about racism or racist practices. They are trained to get out in front when there is trouble because they are so much likely to fare better when interacting with authority. They have seen the school to prison pipeline. They have seen what I call the abstinence to poverty parenting pipeline.

We try to be good neighbors, like folks do. Every time a new family moves in, we introduce ourselves, if appropriate, as the crazy crackers on the corner. We affirm that we have lived in this place for over 15 years. Our neighbors ask about race and political issues more since the last election than ever before. I field these questions like when neighborhood girls used to ask me about white people hair - with patience and dignity. I tell the Minions to remember that even just to ask is to risk, so when they get asked race questions to do the same with the knowledge that the tenor of their response may determine if the folks asking ever try to do so again. 

What is the point here, then? To affirm that some of us do live what we believe, as much as we can, and raise our kids/Minions to do the same. To remind folks that our neighbors are not their neighbors, but at the same time are their neighbors. Once the racial tension settles, and folks know we are not, in fact, the villains in a Spike Lee joint, we were accepted as good neighbors. We had to get past our fictive kinship with other white people to show that we are decent folks. Although we did not deserve that distrust, we understood and accepted that we would have to be better folks to be thought of as good folks. We endeavor to do this every time we get new neighbors.

This is why I react with rage when black mothers grieve over the pointless loss of another black child. This is why when a mentally ill man was shot by a cop at a corner church here I was livid: the family had to raise money for a headstone while that cop was honored in event after event. Apparently shooting a crazy person is something that they honor. But to me these are people - kids and neighbors, not a dehumanized demographic.

This is part of why I get called a "race traitor" and shit when needless black death permeates the culture again for a few moments: I am not set to default white sympathy. My "we" is my family, friends, and neighbors... my "we" is not just white folks.

And yeah, I sometimes bristle when white do gooder liberals are accused of carelessness and callousness. I get it, and I never criticize the folks with that beef: I see it too, and the few holdouts like me and mine never outweigh legit beef over the movement as a whole. There is so much left to do, and current US culture is in full reverse mode regressing on everything from shrinking the franchise to struggling to re-stigmatize LGBT folks. 

Why post this? Not to excuse any past, present, or future race faux paux, hurt, or damage I may have caused nor to flaunt my meager efforts. I post this just as a way of pointing to a spot and saying "I am here." Maybe it will mean something to someone that needs to know that in this mess of a country and time there are still people out there doing what they can to do things differently. 

Ally Maintenance and Upkeep

There is a really provocative graphic going around about allies lately.  (I am not sure of a source to link, but it was a solid series of tweets about being a QUILTBAG ally. If you have the source, please let me know so I can credit and link, thanks!) It got me thinking about allies and ally-ship. Let me share my brain drippings with you!

I think that allies are part of the community like suburbs are part of the city. They are in the same vague area (say, disability rights) but their experiences are markedly different (by, you know, not actually being disabled) and usually less intense. They both take shit for thinking that disabled folks are full and complete people rather than drains on the system that should have been set on ice flows. One is having their own humanity questioned; while the other is just being told they are wrong, even if it is about something they deeply believe.

I do think that allies of any community should have a safe space... to themselves. They should not intrude on a core community, and most certainly not feel entitled to the core safe spaces, or the time and energy of members of the core community. They should not place themselves above or superior to their core group. But they do have needs that they can support each other to handle. Those needs are not the same as the core folks anyway. Someone being called a racial slur is experiencing something much different than I experience when called a race traitor. We may both need a hand and support, but of vastly different types. Which means that intruding on an oppressed group's safe space is not only a jerk-ass move, but would not give an actual ally what they may need, anyhow.

For anyone reading this with a raised eyebrow or proto-side-eye, I understand. Who the fuck am I, anyway?This is only based on my personal observations as a racial justice ally, an immigration/DREAM ally, an ally to the other folks in LGbt, for starters. Also, I see it a member of the QUILTBAG community, the disability community, a woman, a person of low fixed income et al... I have intersections, and I bet you do too! 

Sometimes it needs to be said that being oppressed and/or being an ally of an oppressed group does not make one exempt from being an asshole. Let me emphasize that real quick: statuses of privilege or lack of it are not indications of being a good person or a bad person. Which is why I mention sincerity. Have it, get it, or get the fuck out of the way. I have been called out when I was wrong and accepted it with what grace I could muster. I have also had someone use oppressed status to power insults and social maneuvers, which I took... with less grace. If you are a minority dealing with an asshole, my advice is to walk away and make your group aware so the asshole blowback is minimized (ewww!). If you are an ally dealing with an asshole that also happens to be oppressed, go somewhere else. Do your research instead and do not assume that the whole group is made of assholes. 

In oppressed communities we bristle at the idea of allies needing support from us. It is not our responsibility, true. I think that they can, and should, support each other. It should be acknowledged that allies can and do have needs and sometimes require social support to avoid burnout and continue the work, share resources, commiserate. Frequently allies do look to the core community for where to go and what to do, which is sometimes simple attention seeking behavior, but it can be a sincere request, too. If someone seems sincere when asking, say, how to get ally fellowship from my militantly bisexual self, I point them at PFLAG or something similar, or in other instances give them good terms to use to Google to get them started if I have the energy to do so for them.

So let us approach each other with mutual respect and care.  I am not claiming a special insight here - most folks have an oppression and in some other way benefit from the oppression of others (even if we would rather not). We each have to decide what to do here ourselves, and respect that right even if we disagree. I will not sacrifice my own peace of mind or self care to lead someone that is ostensibly supporting me, nor should I or anyone else be expected to do so. If I can, I will. Allies are people, people trying to do right even though they could go through life not giving a damn. If I suspect sincerity, I will always at least point them in the right direction. There is not a group I belong to that could not use another good ally. 

Have something to add? Read my comment policy and then start typing if you can respect it and me.

Dear Madiba

Dear Madiba,

You did not know me, Nelson Mandela, but I knew you. In the small white Indiana town I grew up in, there was little talk of racial equality. My mother spoke of it, and brought books and movies into our tiny home that supported such causes. Even with everything that happened to us and between us, that is one of the few things for which I thank her.

But I remember you. South Africa's campaign for equality somehow made it into my life, and my heart wrapped itself around you and your cause in a way I had never felt before. I was a young teen, and I had just been introduced to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's here. What was going on in South Africa to blacks and allies chilled my young bones. But there you were, resilient, an advocate for peaceful resistance after using violence. 

You lived! Although you were jailed when I first heard your name, you were alive! Here in the US, our most successful advocates for equality and peace were laid low by the tyranny of white supremacy - it's lackeys using death as their political tool. Violence, prison, slavery, TB: none of it had taken your life or your principles.

In four short years you went from 46664 to Mr. President, ushering in not just a new country, but a new era. You and your movement showed us that peace could be made under any circumstances. It took incredible fortitude and forgiveness, but equality and peace could be born in the shadow of an apartheid nation. You did not do it alone, to be sure, but your strength and serenity were the midwife for this incredible birth.

Even in all your greatness, and your Presidency, and your Nobel Peace Prize, there was more. You remained human, even as we tried to deify you. 

Your quest for peace and justice reached far beyond South Africa. Even in a town that had only recently stopped allowing Klan rallies at the courthouse, your presence reached even there and touched kids like me. For that I could never give adequate thanks, but I do thank you. You and your country was the first cause for many advocates and activists. You lit our hearts and moved our hands and for many of us, even as our causes changed, never stopped.

Thank you, Madiba, may you know whatever peace you dreamed would be waiting for you.

Peace and love,

PatientC

"Solidarity Is For White Women"

This post assumes that you have a least seen some mention of #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen and skips some 101 ideas. I am not much of an online presence, but I want to do something useful, something purposeful,  contribute something good. I will talk a little about my own opinions, but that is not my focus. What follows are pointers to some really good work you may not have seen: work by folks involved, works by women of color, works that give background. 

If you have found or produced something I should link here, please let me know below. My spoons are limited, and there is a lot of stuff out there about this. If you are here, reading me, then you probably already know that it can be rough for women on the internet.

The key person you should know about in all of this is brownfemipower. This was not her first rodeo, as it were, and her fortitude and class is amazing. Flavia Tamara is another writer I have admired from afar, when she was writing (wrote? Not sure what is up at TB) for Tiger Beatdown. BlackAmazon is on Twitter and so is Jamilah Lemieux, writers I have seen and respected but was not following 'til recently.

Speaking of terrific women, go to this great article from the Guardian, written by Mikki Kendal, that sums up a lot of what was going on around this hashtag. #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen is her doing, and I congratulate her for it and thank her for the hard work of dealing with the fallout. You can also see her in this interview, where she mentions the erasure of intersectional activists that are disabled, "lower" class/poor, non-Western... you get the idea.

Jamie Nesbitt Gordon wrote about this for Salon. This Week In Blackness talks about it here. Angry Black Lady had already rightfully and righteously gone to town on the sexist. This is another good piece (I have met and like the authoress). Also left out were feminist disability folks, feminist QUILTBAG folks, poor feminists... you get the picture. Gradient Lair has a terrific piece up that highlights the voices of of the people harmed in all of this. 

Student Activism has a whole lot on Schwyzer, but I will just point out one article  It has enough links that also have links to give you a good rundown on the man's career of upsetting folks. AJ's The Stream has a solid piece up.

The HG meltdown is captured on a "Men's Rights" page, but you can Google the pdf if you want to do so. I make it a general policy to not link to MRA sites. No, I have no idea why MRAs would even care, except maybe to celebrate the pain of women, particularly feminists. These guys are the mustache-twirling villains of the equal rights set. 

Feministing attempted to apologize and explain their position here and in a less triggery way here. Both of those links have long comment sections, (and in this rare case on the Internet) I believe you should read the comments. The efforts met with mixed results. There is some doubt as to whether this was motivated by honesty or capitalism. In the places I have linked, you will see opinions vary. I am giving credibility the women that were right about everything in the first place. 

If we are going to take feminism and make sure that it is for everyone, then we are going to have to look at white power in feminism. Yes, I include me in that we. That societal power is given to every white, yes - that is undeniable. HG could not have gotten away with any of this had he not been male, straight, and most of all: white. During his career numerous women of color called out his bad behavior only to be ignored and or discredited and further marginalized. They were right, but they were silenced.

One of the best things I have read about intersectionality in real life: My Feminism Will Be Intersectional or It Will Be Bullshit. 

Note: not every link is an endorsement. Some may contain good information, but be otherwise problematic. Be careful out there.

EDIT: spelling fix at post.

This Knapsack Here

The other day I was trying to be supportive in a chat room discussion about the issues that many black and brown women regarding feminism in general, particularly first and second wave feminism. It was a great talk and it seemed to me that folks were able to express discontent freely and talk about how intersectional feminism was still not enough of a force to reach them, let alone include them.

I really wanted to talk about how the disabled were right there too, in line for forced sterilization in the beginning. And later. And still now.

I wanted to talk about how bisexual and lesbian and trans and queer women have struggled for recognition in the women's rights moment, too. How we were institutionalize and lobotomized in this country (US). 

I wanted to reach across the room and connect on how poor women are still struggling to get recognized in an era where they are still ignored and pathologized. Where the poor get lost in the shuffle.

It is hard to say that you are supporting someone's right to express themselves without interrupting them. So I stayed quiet, offered reference points as to which wave of feminism could be fairly characterized as doing what (human footnote machine!), and otherwise reading and learning and feeling what other people were writing. They hit a lot of the problems I have with the feminist label, too. Maybe I did the right thing, maybe not - and there is not always someone that will tell you. I did not have one this time, and I do not expect anyone to take on that job, but I appreciate it when someone does.

For all my sympathy, for all my intersectional connections to issues inside of the movement, I have a distinction: I am white. I am a whiter shade of pale. I am Whitey McWhiteson. That whiteness shields me, even with the shield seems pretty pathetic. As a white disabled woman, I am at an advantage over an Asian American disabled woman. As a white bisexual, I am at an advantage over a Hispanic (Latina) American bisexual woman. That is my knapsack, even if it is sometimes pretty useless feeling, it is always in effect.

I would not fault the folks that would never have that conversation in front of a white woman proclaiming feminist tendencies. There are some disability issues that I do not share with the TAB unless they are family and need to know. There are some bi experiences that are pretty exclusively understood by other bi folks. Poverty is a very specific way to try to live, and those that have never struggled with money seen to have a very hard time even understanding the basics, given the rare occasion that they seem to try to understand at all.

I did not feel left out of the conversation. I felt honored to be there. With all of feminism's problems, I was honored to see it, glad to offer what little I could and otherwise bear witness with no let or hindrance. 

(The links are kind of disjointed, and I am unhappy with them and just stopped using most of them. I am just going to leave my thoughts here and let them stand as they are.)

Get Out and Vote!

I do not need to tell you that I am adamant about getting out the vote. Even if I do not agree with how you will vote, I think you should get out there and exercise your Constitutional right and obligation to vote.

Check out your state's voting rules and regulations at your Secretary of State's web page. Indiana voters can go here.  Here is some more Indiana information.

You can find information about voting with disabilities there, and you can find more voting with disability information here.

Know your polling place, and know your ID rules.

Are the rights of LGBT citizens on your ballot? Find out!

Check out Actually... if you need more motivation to vote. Here are some motivational voting posters that kick ass.

Here is the Planned Parenthood voting guide. Here is the ACLU's guide. Bold Progressives/MoveOn put together a guide too. You can find your polling place here.

If you have trouble voting, then immediately contact Election Protection, either via their web page or by calling their number: 1.866.OUR.VOTE. The ACLU Voter Protection Hotline is: 877.523.2792.

Remember that people have fought and died so that you can cast a ballot: DO IT! I am in a flare, but I had my husband bundle me up so I got to my polling place, which will likely still be only barely was actually handicapped accessible, and cast my damn ballot, you can too!

Gimpy Gamer: The First Three

So I nearly jumped for joy when I read this: Halo 4 Creators Introduce Lifetime Ban for Sexism. Wow, that is a hell of a step in the right direction! As a lady gamer raising girl gamers, this is such welcome news that I cannot even tell you. Here is the Gamespot article.

One of the problems with bans like this is that in order to make it work, often other paying gamers have to remove themselves from the game in order to file a report/complaint about a gamer ruining everyone's good time with sexism, racism, homophobia, or their social ill of choice. 

It is an unfair expectation of someone paying to use a service to have to take some of that paid time to essentially work for the service instead. But this is the world we live in now. Since it is silly to expect any service like Playstation or XBox Live to be able to monitor every gamer in every game at every moment of every day, we have to do our part.

I want to see a movement where those of us paying to use a service like XBox Live vow to do our part. I want us to promise that we will take the first fifteen minutes of online game time to report it when trolls are being trolls. Or, say, your first three Matchmaking games of a night - promise that you will do your part and allow your games to be interrupted while you report someone making sexist rape "jokes" in your Matchmaking. Or promise to report the first three trolls of your night.

Once your three games, three trolls, or first fifteen minutes are done, then you can sit back and enjoy your flow, unless someone is so bad, so inhuman to their fellow players that you simply have to report them no matter how good your gaming flow has been up to that point.

Gaming flow is important to gamers: once you settle in, set the real world behind you and get your head in the space of your game of choice, you want to stay there if you can. That is reasonable. I argue that if you have some homophobic bigot ranting and raving through your Big Team Battle, then your flow has already been interrupted, and taking a moment to report the troll can help keep that particular troll from messing with not only your flow, but the flow of everyone else that plays too!

So please stand with me in taking The First Three pledge. Let us make multiplayer a better place for everyone, and show that we actually care about the community we play and live in! I know that after the election is over, I will be as immersed as I can be in Halo 4, both campaign and then maybe even matchmaking with strangers (usually I only play with folks I know). I will take the First Three pledge!

How To Be Black

Yeah, I know: what the hell is a white crippled lady in the Midwest writing about how to be black? Well, I was encouraged (you know who you are!) to apply for the street team for the upcoming release of How to Be Black, or #HtBB, and I wanted to be a part of it. It looked pretty special. So I applied and let them decide. 


And it is.


Note: I have always said that I would tell you if I got a product or service for free either through other methods or specifically for review here. I did get an e-copy and later a physical book for being on the street team. Just so you know: I am likely to be more strict on a product I receive this way. And I still loved this book. So take that as you will.


How To Be Black is the brain child of Baratunde Thurston, you can find his other information here. One of the first stories he will tell you in HtBB is how he got his name, what it means in general and what it means to him. Baratunde is a master story teller whether it is as an editor at The Onion, getting political at Jack and Jill, or his various media appearances (including multiple appearances on Blacking It Up - shout out!). I only needed to listen to his voice and his manner of storytelling to know I would sit there as long as he kept talking.


The title is joking in one way - reading it cannot make you black; but it seems to me that in another it is very serious - it does delve into how Baratunde has approached his blackness through the years, how he was taught what it meant by family members and through educational institutions. My crippled white lady ass was just as pale when I finished as when I started; but I felt my empathy stretch and grow with ease during humorous tales, and with heartache through the more touching ones.


I have told you that this fibro/lupus cocktail with trimmings leaves me bereft of higher cognitive function at times. Lately I have bounced from flare to flare to finally settling into the one currently fucking with me. But right now I have a rare mid-flare cognitive window that I am going to take advantage of to write this and hopefully several other pieces to tide us through at least some of the duration. 


I am (now, post the suck onset of my illnesses) usually only able to read sort pieces without some sort of mimetic hook - another part of the mind to hang the process on in my head. Practically this means my best reading is done when I have some other memory of the subject or author. I could read a Halo or Mass Effect novel, but not a Gears of War book. I can read Rachel Maddow or Melissa Harris-Perry, but not Piers Morgan (Dom Lemon, maybe). I spent some time on the web, specifically YouTube, to become familiar enough to be able to retain this work.


Even though I live far away from NYC, I was familiar with Baratunde Thurston. I first found him doing YouTube video hopping looking for humor about race in America (if you care about race in America, sometimes you need humor to keep you from the abyss of despair). My enjoyment and respect deepened when he was on my favorite podcast, Blacking It Up. He is suave and erudite, but able to make connections with people that are neither - a skill most do not bother to learn, not even most entertainers.


So I had high expectations for HtBB, and not a single one of them was disappointed. I was, of course, entertained. I was, at times, surprised at the personal depths he was able and willing to plumb with and for us. His stories were engaging enough to be a gripping tale. But he did not settle for just tales from his own life, he also gives us his Black Panel, which he consults throughout the tome. The panel includes the following:

• Cheryl Contee, the Jill to his Jack of Jack and Jill Politics.
• damali ayo, the satirical genius behind Rent-A-Negro, among many other of her projects.
• Jacquetta Szathmari, another comedy mastermind and New Yorker.
• Elon James White, again a comedian, again in New York, but singular in the wit and the people he brings to his brand of social justice through a much needed comedy lens.
• W. Kamau Bell, a comedian for which I have a Google alert. If The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About an Hour comes to my town I am going come hell or high water.
• Derrick Ashong, a musician (see Soulfege) and transplant from Qatar to New Jersey.
• Christian Lander, the comedy wellspring from which sprang Stuff White People Like and the only white person on the panel. You will have to read the book to find out why and how that works!

The book does not need a panel for filler, which is good because he uses the panel for content, and it is a rare treat to see several different opinions about some of the tender topics raised in the book. 

I have been looking for that perfect pull quote, but no single one would really do justice to the whole thing. The book is poignant, real, funny and also just a damn good read. The overall tone is conversational and accessible. 

Reading How to Be Black did not make me black, but I think I am a better person for it. I reached out to understand someone else's story, and he trusted all of us with it. I recommend buying maybe even two copies of this book, because you will probably have a friend you will rec it to before you are done.

Wait! I found a good quote!

"If you don't buy this book, you're a racist." - Baratunde Thurston

I wonder if my neighbors will judge me if I get the #HtBB hoodie...


Edit: 11:40am 4/6/12 Grammar

SmartAss Recommended Reading (Part Two)

Hello, again, Gentle Reader. When writing Recommended Reading, I realized that the post had become far too long and unwieldy for one entry. So I broke it off midstream and decided to make it a series of posts – which will also allow me to share sites as I find them.

All previous caveats about linkage stated in Part One still apply.

Ill Doctrine (hip hop only occasionally touches me, but) Jay Smooth is wonderful: candid, smart, and painfully genuine at times.

Tricycle – I am leaning towards Buddhism right now, but there is a large amount of work that is good general advice for living on Tricycle, no matter what your calling. And please, do not worry - while I may talk about my own learning or development, I would never push any religion on you, Dear Reader - just as I would not want one pushed on me.

While FWD/Feminists with Disabilities is no longer posting new content, there is a lot of good stuff to be found there, and I cannot recommend their archives highly enough.

The Border House and The Hathor Legacy make great geek reading, and there is always Geek Feminism. These are some of the smartest sites out there.

G4 has a lot of great stuff, particularly Sessler’s Soapbox and the MMO Report (although I do not play MMOs at the moment). I also enjoy their round-table show, Feedback. I will not recommend many truly commercial web sites, but these efforts are worth spending time on, in my opinion.

On the news front, here are the web pages for my favorite commentary shows: The Maddow Blog, and The Last Word. Of course, I occasionally check in at Mediaite for news gossip. And now we catch Countdown on CurrentTV. 

Leave your own great reads, or your own great writings in the comments section!

Ally Anxiety

So, Tuesday, I am did my usual thing… I listened to the Blacking It Up pod cast (and you should, too – it is amazing!). Apparently, bridges had been built over the weekend by Jack and Jill’s Cheryl Contee and Elon James White at RightOnline, because we had one of our first trolls. Ms. Contee’s and Mr. White’s adventure is documented here: “INCOGNEGRO:  UNDERCOVER AS A BLACK CONSERVATIVE AT RIGHT ONLINE DURING NETROOTS NATION PART 1." It is a must read! While I already read Jack and Jill Politics, I keep checking the site for the next part…

The pod cast was full of the anticipated and appreciated awesome. Then the troll showed up. What followed caused, for me, a severe case of ally anxiety.

During the pod cast, there is a chat window underneath where the listeners can chat amongst ourselves, respond to the show, ask questions, snark – whatever happens to be going on. Sometimes we wander way off topic, sometimes the show and the chat room work in beautiful harmony. When I started listening to @BlackingItUp and BCCO’s other shows, I just listened for a week or two, because I am a visitor, an ally – and I did not want to come on too strong, too fast, too pushy, too “white liberal on the internet.”

This day, a new person came into the chat. New people are fun and enthusiastically welcomed. This person was not fun. One by one, this person (I presumed he, there was the tell tale reek of mansplaining) started raising racial flags. Whites are racially oppressed, standardized testing is not racially biased, I am colorblind – why aren’t you, I should not get searched at the airport, racial minorities are racists because they complain about race relations, but everyone is racist like me. You know ‘em and hate ‘em: they are the classic tropes of the racist. He would raise one flag, wade into his rightly earned flak, wait for a few moments, and then raise another one. I would not be surprised to find that “oneshotoneki11” (my approximation) is at least a semi-pro troll.

Here is where the ally anxiety comes in: what do you do? I wanted to be out in front, and stomp this asshole into the ground; to stop the badness, to vent the frustration of not being able to confront so many people’s racism, and personally to show that I am not with him or his ilk. But I am working on being an ally; one of the first rules is DO NOT MAKE IT ABOUT YOU IF IT IS NOT ABOUT YOU. So I reeled myself in, spoke my peace once in a while but mostly either stayed out of the way while others let him have it, supported the excellent arguments being made against him and his toxic memetic stew, and expressed dismay that he would violate the hospitality offered him as a new guest.

I know that my case of ally anxiety was nothing, nothing compared to what the black listeners were going through while this was happening. I know that what was going on in my heart, my head, and my gut is miniscule in the grand scope of things. My feelings, my reactions – those are not a big deal to anyone but me. I write this to air it out, to solicit the opinions and experience of others, and to give anyone that wants it an insight into what went on in my head (or heads like mine?) during this. I was angry, I was sad, I was sick. We discovered that four (if I remember correctly) white members of the audience had stayed on this guy, which was also cool. I think that we, the audience, feel a little closer to one another, because of what this asshole brought out a united sense of solidarity in us.

Plucked popinjays like this troll make me ashamed of my skin. I wanted to apologize for his inanity, and I did – but that does not make any sense. No more sense than the bizarre “blaming” that minority groups sometimes face over one individual behaving badly. 

I found out that I was not obviously white, which is kind of neat.Often white racial justice allies are problematic in and of themselves. They refuse to recognize their own internal racism, how all the little assumptions, good, bad, and "neutral" add up to a racism that is insidious, because it can hide.

Racists often do not even know that they are racists, let alone doing evil. You cannot convince someone (though any means) to stop doing something they believe they are not doing in the first place. 

The top of the kyriarchy knows that their days are numbered and that their power is slipping – which, I think, is why they are always scrambling, always grabbing, and always further consolidating their power. With the election of a President that neither looks like them nor shares their history or values, they are now in a full on panic. “Take their country back,” indeed – just as the rest of us may start to think it may actually be our country, too.

Blog note: The various Pod Casts are archived and available on the Brooklyn Comedy Company’s web page. You can also find the shows on ITunes and YouTube – remember to take a moment to rate and comment, they deserve the love.

Shout out to the chat room – sorry about the trash.

SmartAss Recommended Reading (Part One)

When I was writing this post, I talked about some of the web sites I visit. I thought it would be good to share with you some more of the folks that I let into my brain pan whenever I have adequate ability to absorb information (sometimes solid, sometimes that ability can elude me). Here, in no particular order, are more works I enjoy, find edifying, or within find fellowship – you may want to seek them out too!

Warning: the below links contain rational thought and a penchant for social justice. You will be exposed to people of all genders, many races, and many schools of thought if you click on the below links.

Gratuitous warning for all SmartAss Recommended Reading: including a link below does not mean I endorse every piece on each web site. You know that, but I wanted to spell it out. I know that some blogs have done some questionable things – some have risen above, learned and grown; some, maybe not so much. That is what it means to be a whole person – to learn and grow and be better. But even then, I read the things that strike me as right-minded and take the few mistakes as object lessons.

Womanist Musings
Shakesville
Tiger Beatdown
This Ain’t Living
Red Vinyl Shoes
Yes Means Yes
Wheelchair Dancer
Flip Flopping Joy
Geek Feminism
The Angry Black Woman
Disability Voices

And of course, SexGenderBody, with a fantastic blogroll I am happy to join.

I enjoy a lot of reading, when my brain will let me.

Leave your own great reads or your own great writings in the comments section!

SmartAss Commentary: Liberal Crip Goes to the Gun Show

The Indy 1500 has a terrible web page – there is very little you can do there but find out the dates of upcoming shows, sign up for a mailing list and $1 off $10 admission, and see some photos of previous shows. However, it is a decent show as far as I can tell. I had a decent time there. I want to talk about my own gun history, some of the social issues at the gun show, and the accessibility for people with disabilities.

I should probably spell a few things out here before we get started. I am a Second Amendment liberal. I believe in both state protection via police and sheriff departments and self defense. I find the arguments about the intent of the Second Amendment to be more semantic than practical. When the Bill of Rights was created, the gun was simply a tool of survival in early American culture, as in many others. Small, unfunded local defense militias depended on each member to have their own arms. They did, both for hunting and defense. So I find that if a person has a solid answer to the separation of militia and culture – that answer may well be their opinion on the matter rather than a historical fact.

I grew up around gun folks. My mom’s first husband (my adoptive dad or ADad*), her father and several of her brothers all served in the military. The first gun stories I heard were from ADad as he explained the AK scar he acquired in Vietnam. He was shot in the shoulder by a [enemy combatant – I will not use the word he used] and he returned fire, killing the man. My mother was very anti-gun. My grandfather and multiple uncles were enlisted military men. My husband was a military kid, and very comfortable with guns. My boyfriend grew up in a rural social network that was also very easy with firearms – his father was a police officer and is now a correctional officer.

I am intimidated by guns. I am also proficient in their use. I am not a pleasure shooter – you know, the folks that can relax by going to the range for an hour. I cannot get away from their purpose. When aiming at a target, all that is on my mind is why I would be doing this for real – to end the life of another living being. The moral weight and sadness of that is always on my mind if a gun is around. There is no pleasure for me in being able to put six forty-four caliber bullets in a three inch diameter circle.  I can, and do, shoot very well. I hope to never actually need to do so. I do have fun with AirSoft weapons, though – they shoot soft BB-type ammunition powered by gas or springs or batteries.

Now that you know some of my gun history, time for the gun show! (Do I kiss my wimpy biceps here? Probably not…)

Admission was $10, you received a $1 off coupon if you were on their mailing list. Security appeared heavy, but was actually very light. Police were all over the place, as security and patrons. Loaded weapons were not permitted, although we were simply asked if we had any. D had a pistol that needed the sights repaired, and he was directed by the ticket takers to a booth where his pistol was strategically fitted with plastic zip strips to prevent it from being useable. If a patron was found to be carrying a firearm without this treatment, the penalty was immediate ejection from the premises.

Recording devices were not allowed. Although that made writing this piece much more difficult, I followed the rule. Honestly, other than catching someone in the act and ejecting them, there seemed to be no other way of enforcing that rule in this day and age of cell phone cameras, PDAs, and micro cameras.

The building itself (a part of the Indiana State Fairgrounds) was perfectly accessible. Accessibility issues included florescent lights, no scent policy, lots of random noise (no, no gunfire, except on the soundtracks of some videos being shown), and no quiet areas. While some of the table-made aisles are more narrow than others they are still passable in my manual wheelchair… except when some jerk vendor decided they need to set out yet more product, and pushed out over the ends of their tables, or shoved their long gun cases 6-12 inches out into the walk way, or put up spinning displays that eat half of the available aisle space. Arg! 

TL;DR: the building and the planning covered some accessibility basics, but some of the vendors were terrible about it!

There were several areas where one could buy snacks and drinks. Two were permanent booths, and one was more of an open café - larger with displays and seating.

Not every person at the gun show is straight off of People of WalMart. Most folks are dressed in casual middle class or rural attire. The clear majority of attendants were white males. Attendants that appeared to be African American or women were not the majority, but were numerous enough to not be surprising - which may surprise some of you. Obviously disabled folks like me were numerous in chairs or scooters, and there were a comforting amount of cane-users.  A lot of families were in attendance. The vendors were overwhelmingly male, around middle-aged and white.

I have never been to a gun show that did not have some vendors peddling hate. I have spent entire gun shows feeling like I would get shot if I talked about my politics. I was really surprised at the small amount of hate on sale at this gun show. While one pro Nazi booth is too many, there was only one at the show. I saw maybe three booths with small collections of Nazi memorabilia. I sat and stared at the Nazi booth for a while, dumbfounded. This booth was shoved into a corner where it was easily avoided, we almost missed it. They had mouse pads, t-shirts, bumper stickers, jewelry and accessories.

There was a lot less First Nations appropriation than I expected from my previous experience. The generalized, white washed “Native American Aesthetic” is very popular among the survivalist, hunter, preparedness, and gun cultures. There was one booth that was using a dream catcher motif to raise money for disabled children to enjoy outdoor sports and experiences, I think.

Of course, there was a Tea Party presence, but far less than I had feared. One vendor had walls of vitriolic bumper stickers accusing President Obama of just about every thing you can imagine. Someone had passed around flyers I saw at several booths with showed a picture of the President and the First Lady saying “I’m with stupid.” There was one booth selling anti-UN pins, copies of the national and state constitutions with wild interpretations of them. I have copies of them, and may write about those booklets specifically at some point.

 

You have not really thought this stance through, have you?

(Picture description:  a small, round lapel pin or button showing the blue UN emblem, surrounded with a red circle and divided by a red line from upper right to lower left. The intended message is clearly "NO UN.")

As a liberal, all the hate, appropriation and ignorance made me feel threatened, angry, sad, and deeply uncomfortable. Parts of it were like walking back into the Bush administration, were disagreement was equated with treason and only violent, blind patriotism was an acceptable response to any slight at all. But it was much, much better than my previous experiences at gun shows. I do not think that some improvement is enough, to be sure. It does make me happy to see improvement though, and I want to encourage that improvement.

I did not patronize the hate-booths, and still felt fairly free to shop. I picked some targets for AirSoft practice, some great medical stuff (a brass mortar and pestle, glass bottles and tubes, and first aid supplies), two really well priced pieces of luggage, and some camping supplies. I did pick up some of the materials, including the more fantastic stuff to share with you. This included a flyer for an organization that is fighting for you to keep your right to .50 cartridges, an application for the Sons of Confederate Veterans (yes that is exactly what you think it is), the Indiana Citizens Volunteer Militia, advertisements for NRA courses and retreats, flyers for militaria shows, Indiana Gun Owners pamphlets, and material on the Oath Keepers…

*I have a total of three dads: my biological father, or BDad; my mother’s first husband who adopted me when I was five, ADad, and my mother’s second husband (now divorced), ExSDad (ex-step-dad). Also, my mother’s first husband remarried, so I also have a step-mom out there, SMom. Of the five, ExSDad and I have the best relationship, and he is the one I would call in an emergency.

Slurs Are Slurs But Are Not Other Slurs

So, Glee is doing things again – or so I thought. Sigh. I have not talked about Glee here because I do not watch it. Yes, I am aware of it as a subcultural phenomenon. That fact actually upsets me somewhat – I find their treatment of the issues of people of disabilities to be atrocious and disgusting. I know stupid, hateful people I can hang out around if I want to feel that way, thank you very much. So no Glee here, outside of watching clips to share solidarity with the people that are hurt when they watch it.

On Twitter I saw that Elon James White had tweeted about an article describing Glee’s latest screw up.

I completely agree that these slurs are not equal.

Now normally I am in the first wave of people to jump on Glee’s ass and point and laugh at the hole. This is not Glee’s project, though, it is the R-word’s project, part of the foundation that supports the Special Olympics, so I took a breath, went to their site, combed through it,  and thought about it some more…

My brain pan, let me open it for you.

First, I think that both the creators of the clip and some of the people decrying it seem to be ignoring all of the intersections at play. There are people with intellectual disabilities or neuroatypical lesbians, gays, Germans, Latina/Latinos, and blacks; I want to acknowledge that here.

Second, I went through their available content, and I think their point is poorly made but valid. The point is not a moral equivalency, but a resultant equivalency, I think. I believe that what they wanted to do was show people that may not otherwise consider it that this slur also delivers that sick, just punched in the gut feeling. That this word instantly conjures up a history of discrimination and oppressive so odious that even now people refuse to acknowledge that it even exists... if they even know about it in the first place.

Third, it is hard not to feel alienated by the line of reasoning used by some critics. Apparently, some folk feel that “retarded”, and likely also “lame,” “gimp,” “crip,” etc., are just not “as bad.” This is exactly the same wrong reasoning the commercial itself uses! The fact that there is no moral equivalency works both ways – it is hate speech. It hurts. That purpose is to wound. Do not try to feed me that “Oh, but I don’t mean it that way!” bullshit – if it was not meant negatively, you would not be using it to describe something you view negatively, okay? Okay.

For those of you thinking that “retard” and “retarded” simply do not have the same impact because they lack history, you are mistaken.  Retard is a word that went from a specific diagnosis to slur in our most recent century – but discrimination against folks with mental disabilities has a long and sordid history. This is just one of the more recent slang insults used in conjunction with a fear and hatred that is so old and so widespread that the origins of it may never be found (the above link sites the first technical writing about it to 5 B.C.E.).
 

(I am not even going into all the bullshite that still happens today to people with disabilities: the discrimination, the forced treatment, the "good cripple" and super-crip memetic weapons, the "mercy" killings, the astonishing rape, abuse and murder statistics, "angel babies," and so on and so on... The fact that this is still mostly invisible disgusts me.)

People perceived as being outside of some generally accepted social norm of mental capacity and thought have been discriminated against forever – tactics have extended to banishment, forced sterilization, torture, and even death. And until fairly recently (historically speaking) other “trouble makers” such as homosexuals, uppity women, and political minorities (to name but a few) have been labeled mentally incompetent in order to silence and discredit them while also subjecting them to the same treatment.
 
Forth: remember what you learned about the Holocaust? Do you remember learning about the six million Jews, a terrible atrocity that should have never been allowed to happen, right? Right. But you should have also been told that the grand total of people slaughtered was closer to ELEVEN TO SEVENTEEN MILLION.  I am not even going into the military and civilian deaths caused by the war itself; just about purposeful exterminations at this moment. All those other people included, but are not limited to the following: homosexuals, political dissidents, other religious dissidents, Romani, and… people with disabilities! It is a sorrowful thing to see all of those people forgotten almost every time the Holocaust is mentioned. I will never, ever degrade the suffering of the Jewish people during the Holocaust – I want people to remember that they were not alone. 


Are disability slurs the same as racial slurs? No.

Are sexual orientation slurs the same as disability slurs? No.  

Each slur is unique, designed to hurt one specific group of people in specific ways - to justify atrocious treatment with little to no guilt on the part of the abuser.

Do they all carry long, dark histories of discrimination, oppression, and murder? Do they all carry the inherent intent to dehumanize, to "other", to separate?

Yes.

They are all wrong.

Thank you for sticking with me through this piece, I appreciate it. Please do not see my limited linking above as a indicator of sparse information - there is plenty out there if you make even a basic effort to look for it. I am just out of spoons...

On Race (with Fabulous Web Sites!)

First things first – I am white. I am super white. You can see blood vessels right through my sometimes nearly-translucent skin. Yes, sometimes I look like Rand McNally took LSD and decided to get into body painting. I am a shade of white sometimes referred to lovingly as “fish-belly white.”

I am anti-racist.

I am also a recovering racist.

Now, I did not have any of that extra-stupid obvious racism. I was not raised that way, contrary to numerous efforts by my mother’s first husband. (To be honest, I think a lot of that was just to get a rise out of me. That does not change the fact that even being in a position to decide to use racism ironically is okay – it is a glaring sign of privilege.) I had relatives that I almost never saw because they tried to take my toddler self down to our town’s courthouse to attend a Klan meeting – and my mother was completely not okay with that. So I only saw them at family reunions, where they would do things like pass around stickers with an “obviously” African American silhouette enclosed by a circle with a line across it. Yes, some of them are the caricatures of human beings you think of when you think of the classic racist.

So, instead, I grew up virulently anti-racist instead. I can be contrary like that.

So, to even think of myself as a racist means thinking of me as one of those people. That is really, really uncomfortable. When I say I am a recovering racist I mean that I am always looking for and fighting those subtle (to a white person), pervasive pieces of meme that are always ready to steal and keep brain space. You know, the things you can think and still not actually consider yourself a racist: that positive stereotypes are okay, that if no one of a particular group is around then it is okay to smack talk them, that you “don’t see color,” that you got where-ever you are on effort and merit alone, that perhaps “previously” oppressed folks should just get over it and live in the supposed meritocracy of the now, that some people are now unfairly advantaged over white people, that now a days it is all about class (denying racism rather than acknowledging the intersections). I am always fighting the idea that white people are somehow the default, standard human being. This  is amazingly present once you notice it, white folks.

I recognize my race privilege.

I have had fights with people over “gypsy” stereotypes. I have walked away from unacceptable caricatures of people of Asian descent. I have cursed people out over generalizations regarding immigration. I live in a neighborhood with a proud African American history (the first in our county to “allow” black home ownership). My kids are sometimes the only white kids in their classroom. I do not ask the neighborhood moms about their hair, and do my best to answer their daughters when they ask about my daughters’ hair. I remind my husband that to the neighborhood teen boys, he is a stereotypical villain (over 40 white male, heavy, loud and blond). I do not do this for cookies – I do it because it is the right thing to do. 

I do it because it is the shit we should never have to do if we truly lived in a US that was not racist.

I am not perfect, and I will fuck up. Hell, I may have fucked up in this very entry. I am, and will be, working on it.

I spend a lot of time on this issue, and there are some places that I want to point you towards so you can too. I know that you cannot walk around all privileged and expect people to be willing to take time out to educate you – but there are folks that put terrific stuff out there, and I appreciate it so much.

Elon James White is amazing, and so is his crew at the Brooklyn Comedy Company. My daughters and I never miss an episode of This Week in Blackness. The BcCo podcasts are so wonderful that they draw a fantastic audience, too: Blacking It Up, the White House, and the JTMSCast.

Dammit, I am out of time to write for now, but I have to get posting again, so I plunge forward. Just know that I am not giving any of these folks the space or accolades that they are rightfully due!

I have read Racialicious for quite a while now, and they address so much that you better settle in and plan on spending some time there. You will leave a better, more educated person for it. I am new to Jack and Jill Politics, and they are really on top of all of today’s relevant news. They talk about a lot more than the intersection of race and politics, and do it all so very, very well. My most recently added must reads include Angry Black Lady Chronicles, which are amazing, and Angry Black Bitch, which is fantastic.

If any of you Dear Readers go to these sites – please use your manners.

Oh, and avoid articles about “black Twitter.” Seriously.

And hey, Team Voltron: shout-out to the chatroom!