Nov
24
US Elected Officials Fail Civics Test
by Rachel | Filed Under Politics | 7 Comments
I just read this article in its entirety. What is particularly pathetic is that elected officials scored worse than the general public.
7 CommentsNov
10
Here’s Me and the Babies
by Rachel | Filed Under Uncategorized | 16 Comments
This is from their 4 month appointment. Mark (on the left) weighed 15lbs. 8 oz., and he was 25 inches tall. Eli weighed 15lbs. 13 oz., and he was 26.5 inches tall. They are growing like weeds.
Nov
10
Still Not Sleeping Through the Night
by Rachel | Filed Under Family Issues | 7 Comments
I promised myself I would get back to Rachel’s Tavern when my little guys started sleeping through the night. Well they are nearly 5 months old and neither one of them has slept through the night, not once. I’m sooo tired. I knew taking care of infants was tough, but I thought the sleep deprivation would be letting up by this point and I would be able to sleep for a 6 or 7 hour stretch.
I remember all those times I lectured in my family class about why we need paid family leave. Now I can use myself as an example. 
Nov
8
Obama’s “Mutt” Comment
by Rachel | Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Interracial Relationships | 22 Comments
I know he was trying to be funny, but it was a little off putting. Comparing mixed race people to dogs–not really a good idea. I understand self deprecating humor is held to a different standard. You know the rule–you can talk about yourself and your group, but you need to tread lighting when talking about other groups or other people. Nevertheless, I would think that he would understand how loaded that terminology is.
22 CommentsOct
2
Weekly Baby Picture
by Rachel | Filed Under Baby Blogging | 15 Comments
I think little Eli may be teething. If he is, it would be awfully young. He keeps chewing his fingers, and when I put my finger in his mouth he gums it. I tried to give him some teethers to chew on, but he’s not coordinated enough to hold them for more than a minute. He’s also been acting uncharacteristically needy, so I’m wondering….
Sep
22
A Great Study on Race and The Presidential Election
by Rachel | Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Politics, Race and Racism | 15 Comments
Here’s a summary of the study sponsored by AP and Yahoo!:
Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them “lazy,” “violent,” responsible for their own troubles.
The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 — about two and one-half percentage points.
However, what I found most interesting was the chart on the side of the article.
What is most interesting is how pervasive a few of the racial stereotypes are. It’s not surprising that white Democrats tend to be the least prejudice on most of these measures, but keep in mind that the chart only goes up to 40%, so it means that a minority of whites hold all of these views. That’s good when we are talking about things like “violent,” “lazy,” or “irresponsible,” but not so good when we are talking about “intelligent,” “hardworking,” and “law abiding”
15 CommentsSep
16
“This is Your Nation on White Privilege”
by Rachel | Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Politics, Race and Racism | 13 Comments
A quote I really like from the essay:
White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll “kick their fuckin’ ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.
White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.
White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”
Click the link above for the whole essay.
13 CommentsSep
13
Gender and Baby Boys Clothes
by Rachel | Filed Under Baby Blogging, Photo Blogging, Original Essays and Analysis, Gender and Sexism, Uncategorized | 39 Comments
This is baby blogging, but it’s also a post about gender. As most of you know by know, I have two little boys, and one thing I really like to do is dress them in cute little outfits. Over the past few months, as I’ve perused the baby departments at numerous stores, I came to the conclusion that I like the clothes made for boys clothes better than I like the clothes made for girls. It’s not that I don’t like frilly dresses and ruffles. What I like about boys clothes is the bright primary colors that are more common in clothes marketed for infant and toddler boys and the themes used in both boy clothing and gender neutral clothing. My favorite themes are usually animal themed clothes, and above all else I like ducks and frogs–probably because yellow and green are my favorite colors. In my view frogs and ducks are generally androgynous, but many animal themed clothes are marketed for boys. For example, dogs, dinosaurs, lizards, bugs, and turtles are often found in boys clothing. I’ve also noticed two other common sets of themes that I like in baby boys clothing–occupational themes and activity themes. As I was looking through my little guys clothes, I noticed several outfits that had themes related to predominantly male (and mostly working class) occupations. The outfits they are wearing above are firemen themed. In the first picture, Mark’s shirt has a firetruck on it, and in the second picture Eli’s shirt says, “Chief Fire Dog to the Rescue.” I’ve also see baby boy clothes with policemen, construction worker, mechanic, pilot, and soldier themes. Activity themes involve clothes the promote going on safaris, hunting, fishing, eating, playing sports, and one outfit my little guys have promotes making robots (which could also be construed as an engineer’s outfit).
What strikes me about baby boys clothes is how much they promote activity and paid labor force work. Even as infants, we start to socialize baby boys into occupations. You rarely find occupation themed clothes for girls. Little girls clothes often have flowers, frills, and some animals (i.e. butterflies), but they don’t have occupational themes. They also rarely have activity themes outside of shopping or cheerleading. In fact, to me the worst subset of little girls clothes are those that say princess or diva. Diva is oftten used in a derisive way to indicate that the girl is overly demanding, and unlike the fireman or construction worker a princess doesn’t earn her title–she’s born with it or marries into it. Princess themed clothes also seem to play up baby girls looks–looking like a princess means looking pretty. I’ve seen a few shirts that have messages about boys being handsome or cute, but those are much less common.
One of the reasons that baby clothes are so strongly gendered is that babies themselves are often androgynous. If you put them only in a diaper, it’s often hard to tell what sex the baby is, but that androgyny doesn’t fit well into our gender polarized society, so this is where the clothes come in. Those clothes have underlying and blatant messages. Baby boy clothes have subtle and not so subtle messages. They say–be active, be bold, enjoy the outdoors, and get a paid job. It doesn’t seem that baby girls clothing has similar messages.
39 CommentsSep
12
More Diverse Pundits Although the White Guys Still Run the Shows
by Rachel | Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Sociology, Media Praises and Critiques, Original Essays and Analysis, Politics, Race and Racism, Gender and Sexism, Uncategorized | 2 Comments
When I was reading Racialicious a while back I ran across this New York Times article, which notes that political pundits are more diverse than ever before:
Both MSNBC and CNN this election season have given new prominence to a handful of contributing commentators from varied backgrounds and perspectives: blacks, Hispanics and women. Whether such moves signal real progress in diversifying the punditocracy or merely reflect the needs of a particular news cycle is the question, some media experts say. The most prominent positions on television remain overwhelmingly with those who are white and male, and some critics note how striking that non-inclusion can seem during this election year.
As someone who has watched political shows for years, this is the first election where I have seen many panels with multiple white women, multiple African Americans, or any African American women (besides Donna Brazile). Overall this is a good sign.
There is still room for improvement. First of all, it appears that women of all races and men of color are not getting to be the primary host for political related shows. For example, take MSNBC, which had had a huge surge in viewers and is attempting to have a more liberal bent than the other networks, all but one of their shows has white men as the primary host–Keith Olbermann, David Gregory, Tom Brokaw, and Chris Matthews. The lone exception is Rachel Maddow, who is the new kid on the block. While the people who appear on those shows as commentators have become diverse the hosts still are not. A brief trip around the Sunday morning political shows reveals the same phenomenon. I also rarely see Asian American or Native American pundits, which is an other area where there can be improvements.
One of the more interesting observations I have about the racial make-up of Black and Latino political pundits– is that conservatives are overrepresented. I frequently see conservative Black and Latino pundits. If the pundits matched the political inclinations of these two groups, one would expect conservative Black pundits to be rare (definitely less than 20%) and conservative Latino pundits a little more common, but still less than half.
In spite of the areas for improvement that I identified above, I am very impressed with the dramatic difference over previous presidential elections. I’m not sure what the exact reasons are for this. Maybe it helps that we have had one black man and two white women who are knocking their heads on the glass ceiling that has kept everyone but white men out of our highest political office ((Obviously, wealthy white men.)) . Maybe the networks were already trending in this direction–I tend to think they were moving in this direction, but they got a little jolt from the emergence of Obama and Clinton as groundbreaking candidates.
What do you think?
2 CommentsSep
2
Personally, I Find the Attacks on Sarah Palin’s Teenage Daughter Deplorable
by Rachel | Filed Under Media Praises and Critiques, Sociology, Family Issues, Sexuality and Heterosexism, Gender and Sexism | 5 Comments
I don’t have the time to write something coherent, but personally find the hatchet job over at Daily Kos to be one of the most offensive hit jobs I’ve seen in a long time. If you click on this link you can see some of their handy work. They even have a tag dedicated to Palin’s daughter.
Is it really necessary to go out of our way to attack a child because we don’t like her mother’s politics. We know that abstinence only doesn’t work, but we don’t need to make this young woman the poster child for that political position. Attacking a pregnant 17 year old is way too much.
Here are what some others are thinking:
I personally agree with most of what Lauren at Feministe, says.
And I like Amp’s quote in the comments over at Alas:
I do think that this story will implicitly make it harder for Sarah Palin herself to argue for abstinence only education on the stump, and that’s good. (Assuming, for the sake of argument, that Palin’s kids were given abstinence-only education.)
But I don’t think there’s any need for people to talk about her daughter, for that effect to apply. It’s enough to have it be an unspoken elephant in the room whenever Sarah Palin discusses abstinence-only.
Also, I think the political downside for Democrats trying to make hay of this is obvious.
Mandolin at Alas, has also collected several posts on the subject. Including a very relevant point that Amanda Marcotte makes,
I find it interesting how the McCain/Palin campaign tried to shut down the P.R. disaster that is Bristol Palin’s pregnancy by calling for privacy, which was, just short of their invocation of “choice”, about hiding behind feminist values to assault feminism itself, since they wish you and your family have neither privacy nor choice when it comes to management of your life. But what I find especially interesting is that “privacy” was not actually a feminist value until it had to be in order to get reproductive rights established. Which isn’t to say that I’m against respecting people’s privacy (and really, this is the last mention of the Palin thing in this post*), but that rooting reproductive rights in the value of privacy instead of autonomy and self-determination has actually created some massive problems for us.
Privacy is a double-edged sword. Outside of its use by feminists to get what we want (reproductive rights) without scaring people by arguing for women’s equality, privacy is generally a patriarchal value. It shields rapists and wife-beaters. The sense that women are the private property of men is still more ingrained in our society than the idea that uteruses are the private property of women.
All of these posts and subsequent discussions are quick to point out the relevance of this issue as it relates to public policy, specifically the republican opposition to comprehensive sexual education.
Personally, I feel we can talk about these issues without making this one pregnant 17 year old the center of the discussion.
5 Comments