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Women’s Bodies & Space to Live

1. Brittany Spears and America's Need to Demonize & Fetishize Women.  I lived through Cher, Madonna, disco and the explosion of pornography (Playboy magazine was an acceptable Christmas gift during my childhood).  The biggest porn star of my teens was named for character played by Katherine Hepburn and Grace Kelly (The Philadelphia Story and High Society).  Anyway, Brittany had some great tracks and her whole marketing scheme (not necessarily thought up by her, remember record label exec, stylists, etc.) was almost-legal sexy kitten.  And the music and videos were fun.  But because we are uncomfortable w/ young women's sexuality (say ages 13 - 30), Brittany became a lightening rod in the Culture Wars (I'm rolling my eyes at Tipper Gore et al who resurrected parental outrage towards music in the 1980s).  On The Media did a nice roundup re: Brittany and Monica and all the other white women who were vilified during the 1990s during the height of the backlash against Second-Wave Feminism.  The currently circulating clip of Letterman and Lindsay Lohan illustrate a similar point.  Our culture still has a lot of retrograde energy towards young women and their sexuality/freedom.   2. The fetishization of women of color.  Someone photoshopped a Superman "S" onto Stacey Plaskett and her blue dress.  The rhetoric around Stacey Abrams.  Our cultural constructions of Asian women and Southeast Asian women.  Latinas.  Native American women continue to harmed by the stereotypes that originated w/ the colonizers.  Fetishization is dehumanizing and renders these bodies up to the service of the privileged and the powerful to further their needs, wants, and desires.     I started listening to The Reckoning yesterday.  I also started reading Dress Codes.  Black women’s bodies have been contested sites in this country since 1619.  It’s Black History Month, so old-heads will show you photos of Black women dressed in respectable ways if as if to say that it’s the lack of girdles, knee-length dresses, hats and gloves that keep racism in place.  We’ve internalized the Panopticon.   3. Real Estate.  It's a seller's market.  Meaning that buyers are going to pay more for housing than usual.  Meaning that an increasingly more diverse set of buyers will pay more for housing than the not-so-diverse people who are selling.  Meaning that some people who have struggled to gain a foot in the middle-class for generations will be priced out of the market, or be put further into debt to secure the American Dream.   A drive around Cleveland reveals sometime dystopian-like stretches of real estate periodically interrupted by revitalized housing for the lucky few.  A large public housing development is being demolished to "give the community a better sense of the potential this space (along the Lake Erie at W.25th Street) offers."  I cannot find any information on where the inhabitants of the "Big 8" were scattered to.  A lakefront Metropark sounds lovely.  I find it interesting that in some cities (NYC and Cleveland) public housing was put near waterfront property.  I’m assuming those spaces, the water, used to be much more closely tied to industrial usages as opposed to leisure.  Waterfront and lake living are huge now.  So all those public housing projects, lower SES neighborhoods and their inhabitants must go.   The corners of Kinsman, Woodland and East 55th Street offers some of the bleakest views.  I'm amazed at how little the landscape at that corner has changed in 24 years.  Meanwhile, a block or two away, the Opportunity Corridor project marches forward.  The irony of the Juvenile Justice Center being located along the Opportunity Corridor is spectacular.  Contrast the rehabbed buildings along Detroit Avenue w/ sparkling gyms in the old-storefront spaces w/ the Woodhill Homes that are in desperate need of rehab and revitalization but have been passed over in two rounds of HUD money.  The Opportunity Corridor takes you almost to Woodhill Homes.  We ration out Opportunity in this society.   Freeing Brittany: <iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" height="130" width="100%" src="https://www.wnyc.org/widgets/ondemand_player/wnycstudios/#file=/audio/json/1088476/&share=1"></iframe>

https://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2020/07/16/metroparks-to-demolish-two-buildings-on-w-25th-street-for-irishtown-bend-project https://www.ideastream.org/tags/woodhill-homes-cleveland-public-housing

https://www.ideastream.org/news/mixed-feelings-as-opportunity-corridor-nears-completion https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/renewal/#view=0/0/1&viz=cartogram

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Back to School?

Our youngest child attended school in-person this week.  First time since March.  He enjoyed the experience and plans on going back next week, masks, plexishield guards, and all.  He felt more connected to his learning in two days than he has in months.  This is no one’s fault.  We are all wired differently.  He thrives best in-person. Sending our son back to school was not an easy decision for me and my spouse.  Spouse is still not sure this is the right thing to do.  COVID could potentially cause bodily damage that will last a lifetime.  He is almost 15 and given family genetics and medical improvements probably will live to see 100.  We want him healthy and whole for a future that holds so much promise for him.   Black children like mine, because all Black children are the same when being discussed by political op-ed writers, politicians, and other heavy breathers, are being used to force-march teachers back to the classroom.  Ditto for Latino, Native American, and poor white children - “won’t someone think about what is best for the children?”  David Brooks had the gall to tweet about Black Lives Matter and some tripe about re-opening schools would prove that we value Black students’ lives.  Really?   If we valued Black Lives and respected Black people we wouldn’t have so-much of what is beneficial to poor Black children connected to schools.  The professional class doesn’t believe that Black women know how to take care of their kids.  This is very ironic because Black women have and and continue to take care of white kids in rich households in our country.    Nutrition comes to mind.  Only in a society where poor women, and particularly poor Black women are seen as deficient, would you prefer to provide nutrition assistance through schools versus giving families, mothers, the funds.  It should be a BOTH/AND vs EITHER/OR.  Federal funding for school food programs should be re-allocated and given directly to families that qualify.  Particularly for breakfast.  And school lunches (which need to be improved) should be free to all students in all public schools.   Of course there are services that schools must provide.  But other services like mental health counseling and even academic coaching could be provided in other spaces in a community.  We provide things at school because it is convenient.  BUT we also provide things at school because we don’t trust certain parents.   Which takes me back to the rush to get Black and Brown children back to school.  Virtual learning is hard.  Poor and working-class families lack high-quality internet service.  Some parents are incapable of helping their children with schoolwork.  But the inequities that David Brooks et al are now so concerned about have always been there.  They are baked into the structure of our society.  They are the fuel for our version of capitalism.  The under-education of Black and Brown children ensures a steady supply of low-skill labor for American businesses and enterprises.   Black and brown people have been devastated by COVID.  Many of us live in multigenerational households or see our elders on a regular basis (Sunday dinner).  Many of us are trying to keep our parents and grand-parents and in the case of may family, a great-grandparent alive through this pandemic.  Some of the resistance to sending our kids back to school comes from this communal value system.   But some of the resistance is also fueled by the sad reality that too many of our nation’s public schools weren’t great places for Black kids to begin with.  Statistics and anecdotal evidence bears this out.  America’s public schools have failed generations of Black children.  The school-to-prison pipeline and over-representation in school suspensions.  The lack of curriculum materials that affirm Black history and culture.  Micro-aggressions and inherent bias.  All of this and more has left Black parents with less than warm and fuzzy feelings about school.  There are Black children who are overjoyed with being away from the covert and overt violence that is done to them by educators and staff of all colors in our public schools.  There are Black parents who have discovered that virtual school is better for their children’s self-esteem and/or mental health.  A whole new group of homeschooling parents will emerge from this pandemic.  We have seen the failure of good intentions and some of us are now better positioned to walk away.   The push to get kids back to school is about economics.  Privileged parents want to maintain their children’s advantages.  With fewer children going out to school, I’m sure convenience store and fast-food revenue is down (those quick “I’m hungry” stops we make as parents).  Clothing sales and footwear sales are down.  Just saw that a local hair store is shuttered.  And on-and-on.  I’m sure ticket revenue is down, fewer people out to be stopped for speeding.  Middle-class SAHM are throwing less stuff they don’t need into the cart at Target.  Plus how can she be at Target in the middle of the day if the kids aren’t in school?  

So let’s use poor Black and brown children as the poster children for our collective societal decline to get schools reopened.  Wait, I thought Black and brown children were responsible for our collective societal decline.  Sword and shield.  Virtue signaling.  And yes, I will concede real concern about growing educational inequities.  The problem is that pre-pandemic solutions will no longer work.  We cannot demand that all teachers return or (coming soon) that all students return.  There is no going back to pre-pandemic normal.  It never worked for everyone.  We all know that now.  We need real solutions that center and empower Black, brown, and poor students and their families and communities to fix the inequities that plague our schools and society.  

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Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.

Aristotle (via wayti-blog)

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