Apple Pies, McDonalds, and Gender O’ My

Am I the only that finds it a bit ironic that the restaurant that has been criticized as the culinary culprit in the breakdown of the American family has returned to traditional gender roles in their advertisements? Or at least traditional gender expectations? Yes, McDonalds has been pointed out in the lineup as being many families' route, or rather escape, from having home-cooked meals around the dinner table as stable, nuclear family ought to be doing. I do not mean to single out McDonalds as if those who run the company orchestrated this phenomenon by themselves. But given the general ratchet effect that has taken effect in the number of activities we cram into a single, 24 hour period and changing expectations of members of society as whole, fast food restaurants in general have been seen as enablers of this decline. And when you're the biggest and baddest bully of them all, you tend to take the rap more so than the others.

So what is this post about? Well, my apple pie wrapper pictured above. The apple pie has been a staple and trademark American food since the days of our grandparents. You may recall the old saying, "As American as apple pie." Though mostly a white, middle class story, it did not stay within this demographic group alone. It was not only a gastronomic creation; it was a symbol of American domestic life for many years, both here and abroad. Many home economics books of yore typically employed different depictions of the apple pie on their covers while inside they outlined how women ought to fill their roles of wife, mother, and homebody. I took my favorite oldest niece (our running joke as I only have two nieces and she's the oldest. Get it? Good) to McDonald's for lunch when I was in Miami. We both got apple pies and I saw the wrapper. And I was like, wow. Seriously. "Mommy didn't have time." Really. Kind of pissed me off: I'm not lovin' it.

The kitchen, even in the advertisement for the quintessential fast food restaurant, remains the woman's domain. In fact, one may can interpret the reading as sanctioning women for bring to busy. Though some conservatives, as I say above, demonized these restaurants for allowing women to spend even less time at home, and especially in the kitchen, McDonalds and traditionalists seem to be of one mind. McDonald's has not gone as far as the old saying, "A woman's place is to be barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen," but the general picture, I argue, is still there.

As a practical matter, it takes time to bake an apple pie when you do it right. But, as this advertisement suggests, let's put a child and/or husband not having solely one on mommy.

This post is not meant to be particularly earth-shattering. Rather, it fits with my general thinking about how reified our thinking about gender roles and expectations are and how best are we to continue moving forward in contesting, blurring, and crossing these boundaries. Personally, I feel that there is still much work to be done. However, I know that this is preaching to the choir members who also serve on the usher board on alternative Sundays and volunteer for the Sheppard's care ministry (to use and extend that old adage). In commenting on my post "How Not So Far We've Come: (Still) "Doing Gender"" where I discuss the gendered picture on baby changing stations in bathrooms, one of our more insightful readers said that things will change only when men start to care. I partially agree with her. I think that things will change when both men and women no longer take pictures, phrases, or depictions like these for granted.

The Insolence of Understanding: Part II

It has been a while since my last post. Reason: graduate school is, for lack of better words, no joke. Nevertheless, we prevail. A few weeks ago I wrote a post entitled, "The Insolence of Understanding," as a reaction to seeing an advertisement for wearing baldcaps in support of those with cancer. The post was not to question their motives or intent; personally, I believe their cause (raising money for cancer research and support of those with cancer) is admirable. What I questioned was the idea and/or action of dawning on another's identity, persona, or physical characteristic for a cause when one has the freedom to eschew any such constraint, hindrance, or restriction it places on one's abilities. I update my thoughts on this with another example that I think makes my point clearer. Thus, I turn to one episode from my favorite show of the Fall season: gLee!*

In the episode, "Wheels," the members of the gLee club are ordered, or rather sentenced, to be confined to a wheel chair for at least three hours a day while at school. At first, I was like "LOL ROFL" because this "exercise" was supposed to create team unity as the other members did not show any concern for not having enough money to rent a wheel chair accessible bus so that one of their group member's, Artie, who is wheelchair bound could come. Yet when I watched the show again, the same feeling that I had when I saw the baldcaps on the T and Will Smith's fat suit on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. It was supposed to be both a comedic as well as a teaching moment. I mean, at the end of the show, they sung Ike and Tina Turner's "Proud Mary" in wheelchairs, starting it off with Finn saying, "This one's for you Artie." I mean, they did a good job, but the feeling did not leave me. Were the wheelchairs more to help Mercedes, Rachel, Puck, Finn, and the others understand Artie's plight or just props or accessories for the group to use while performing? The inability to separate the two options from one another or even choose the former as the right question to ask shows evidence for my questioning of these "moments."







I ask again, what exactly is being said when we use other people's situation as teaching moments for privileged individuals. The directors had Artie seem enthusiastic about the fact that his friends will be joining him in being wheelchair bound. I am not sure exactly what his response is supposed to mean. As I argued in part I, "we must realize that we do not become who we pretend to be but also that who we pretend to be are real. It is the mismatch between the show of solidarity and the reality of the life of those individuals that I find most troubling. The insolence of understanding." One key example is the moment when Finn became frustrated with Quinn's constant nagging for money for the baby and mounting doctor bills, GOT UP out of his wheelchair and left Quinn and the others behind, invoking his latent, ever-present ability to walk.

To speak more generally, I think there is a difference between detailing the life experiences of others and walking a few days, in this case, hours in someone else's shoes and then reporting it as one's lived experiences. This may be a fine line, but I believe that it is a concrete line nonetheless. When we begin to speak of other's experiences as our own without questioning the distance that exists between oneself and others, we begin to get into murky waters.

*(Shani, Community is Good, but gLee is Definitely Way Better)

The Insolence of Understanding

I was on the T heading to Boston Common to watch (500) Days of Summer (amazing movie) when I looked up and saw the above advertisement situated on top of the door. Me being over six feet tall and damn near color blind, the relative “loud” sign stood out on the otherwise dim train. I didn’t think about it that much but when I looked again, it made me uneasy. The picture isn’t the best quality but it is a flyer for the BeBoldBeBald campaign, a call to arms of sorts began by the Small Army for a Cause organization, that is raising money for cancer research. September 17 is the day we are to show our solidarity with those living with or those who have died from cancer by wearing a “bald cap”. I find this "show of solidarity" problematic. Before I continue, I hope what I say below does not come off as my denigration of a group of sympathetic individuals who work for a noble cause. Rather, I question the entire process of dawning on another’s identity, persona, or physical characteristic for a cause when one always has the freedom to eschew any such constraint, hindrance, or restriction it places on one’s abilities (taken abilities to include those things one ordinarily are able to do).



Just to be clear, I had this same feeling when watching My Sister’s Keeper when Cameron Diaz's character dawned the “bald cap” when she opted to show her solidarity with her ailing daughter’s struggles. I remember similar conversations with friends when Will Smith puts on a “fat suit" in the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to know what it means to be and feel fat.







I may be jaded in my assessment because of my reading of John Griffin's Black Like Me, a “study” of a white man who wanted to know what the Negro experience was in the South so he chemically darkened his skin and entered the hostile world as dark enemy rather than white friend. I acknowledge that I have grouped physical ailment, body type, and race in the same category. However, I argue that this goes beyond these individual examples. When I look at the show 30 Days, I have the same underlying criticism: walking in someone’s shoes for a while to show solidarity can be a tricky encounter for one must always remember that one is borrowing the shoes and mimicking the walk. And here we arrive at another double-edged component to such an activity. We must realize that we do not become who we pretend but also that those who we pretend to be are real. It is the mismatch between the show of solidarity and the reality of the life of those individuals that I find most troubling: the insolence of understanding.



Furthermore, in the case of this organization, undoubtedly doing work for a good cause, I believe that they make too light of a very serious and, often times, grave situation. They have a feature on their website called the “Balderizer” where you can upload an image of yourself and, basically, make yourself look like one has been through chemotherapy or another treatments that forces one to lose one’s hair. The face that is positioned next to the link that leads to the actual face is a smiling, happy go lucky one. Now, let me be clear, I am not a fan of extremes in any direction: showing the always downtrodden cancer patient is just as erroneous and problematic as the forever, elated smiling one. To make the effect of the treatment into a game of sorts, however, takes it beyond the extreme continuum previously outlined and perverts it in such a way that it makes it more of joke, a fun activity to do, than anything else. I know that there will be those who disagree with this assessment of the computer program (I will call it that and not use a more colorful description) but I stand by my stance that it flattens the reality of the experience of chemotherapy and other cancer treatments has on the body and the family.



I leave with these questions, what are we really saying when voluntarily and temporally “take on” someone else’s struggles in the physical form? What are we to gain or take from those tournaments when healthy individuals voluntarily restricting themselves to wheelchairs for a basketball or volleyball tournament? The fat suit? The bald cap? In my opinion, the experiences between those with the “condition” and those who adopt it for a while are incommensurable for there is always that option, that privilege of exiting from the play that is someone else’s life story.

Gay is Not the New Black

(Administrator's Note: The following piece was written by SSL Guest Contributor Steven Brown, an incoming graduate student in Harvard's department of sociology. He can be reached at ksbrown2@gmail.com)

Gay is not the new black. Black is the new black; gay is the new gay.

Earlier this week, sportswriter LZ Granderson published a piece in CNN entitled “Gay is not the new black.” I one-hundred-percent agree with his basic premise, but totally disagree in the way he argues it. According to Granderson, gay black men identify more with their racial self than they do with their sexuality, a situation exacerbated by powerful white LGBT persons who exclude blacks and criticize Obama.

Apparently, the LGBT movement is dealing with it own issues of racial preference and exclusion. As someone who is not entrenched in this community, I cannot speak to how true or not true this is. But it does appear that the very visible spokespeople for the LGBT community rarely tend to be black (Anthony Woods – the gay, black, Harvard-educated Iraq veteran running for Congress – seems to be an exception).

Granderson uses these racial divisions as the crux of his argument. He notes, “When Proposition 8 passed in California, white gays were quick to blame the black community despite blacks making up less than 10 percent of total voters and whites being close to 60 percent .” I think his language is a little strong, but he makes a fair point. The arguments that black people somehow caused Proposition 8 to pass are demonstrably and demographically false. Even among another minority community fighting for its civil rights, race still matters. Therefore, gay cannot be the new black if black is still black as ever.

Unfortunately, his argument seems to rest on the premise that only race matters, or at least it matters more than sexuality and other identity factors. Race is so important that LGBT-led criticism of President Obama alienates members of the black community – gay or not. “The parade of gay people calling Obama a "disappointment" on television is counterproductive in gaining acceptance, to say the least. And the fact that the loudest critics are mostly white doesn't help matters either.” It is possible to critique the President, and still be supportive. Granderson himself does both in the article. It is possible to inhabit both spaces, to acknowledge multiple aspects of one’s identity.

To make matters even worse, he very distastefully says that blacks have had it worse than gays in the struggle for civil rights, calls the LGBT community leaders “petulant child[ren],” and effectively tells the community they should wait their turn.

“The 40th anniversary of Stonewall dominated Gay Pride celebrations around the country, and while that is certainly a significant moment that should be recognized, 40 years is nothing compared with the 400 blood-soaked years black people have been through in this country. There are stories some blacks lived through, stories others were told by their parents and stories that never had a chance to be told.”

Making comparisons as to which minority group had is worse is NEVER useful (see Holocaust vs. slavery), both because it is pointless and reduces all minority struggles to being one-in-the-same. There is no special prize for being the “most oppressed” group between “competing minorities.” We can acknowledge that the LBGT community, blacks, Jews, Asians, Native Americans (etc, etc) have all struggled at the hands of a more powerful regime and that each group’s struggle is different and complex in its own way. We can and should learn from each other’s histories, not reduce them to slight variations of one another. That only leads to in-fighting, which helps no one’s cause. An extension of this is the idea that whichever minority group cries foul the loudest is the one that will get the most attention. The idea that these issues are relegated to just being special interest issues speaks to a continued belief that these issues don’t concern everyone. I personally long for the day when all these voices can be heard equally and simultaneously – not just one at a time.

While there are obviously similarities in the civil rights movements of the 1910s-1920s, the 1950s-1960s, the LGBT community faces different social pressures (religion and ideas of sexual normativity) and seeks different outcomes (all-inclusive marriage rights, adoption rights, the ability to serve the military openly, and more job discrimination protection more broadly).

But what isn’t different or distinct are the people involved in these different movements. A friend of mine found it interesting that Granderson assumed that gay black men privilege their racial identity. He queried: why does it have to be either-or…why not both? Anthony Jack, one of Social Science Lite's bloggers, has discussed on previous occasions the problematic assumption that people can divvy-up their being into race, gender, sexual orientation, ableness, etc. Indeed, this line of thinking is often decried in womanist literature. Gay black men could be actively involved in both black communities and gay communities equally, or maybe neither if they so choose. On a personal level, to say that gay is not the new black makes sense. If it were, then LBGT blacks would supposedly be forced to supplant one aspect of their identity to the dominant other.

Black is the new black. Gay is the new gay. I could say that being a heterosexual, black man is the new heterosexual, black man, but it would be easier to say that I’m Steven. I am black. I am heterosexual. I am male. I am all of these things, all the time, even in those occasions when I choose to highlight only one part of my identity.

Monday's Musings: I Can Hear Your Shirt, But What's It Saying?

This is not a traditional post where I present an argument or my opinion about a recent post although the social implications for studying identity, culture, and race are considered (admittedly as backdrop). Rather, I would like to offer something for discussion to the larger audience that I cannot quite come to terms with. So, I start with two simple, yet complex questions: What does this shirt mean to you? What does this shirt mean for society at large? A piece at The Root entitled “Can You Hear My T-Shirt Now?” called these questions into existence. The article highlights the current work of Renee Cox* of Maroon Rebel who wants to make t-shirts “racial and radical” once again with messages like “Bye Baby” with “Emmett Till Died For This” as the subtext (I think it would have been more powerful if she would have quoted Mamie Till, Emmett Till’s mother: “I have not a minute to hate. I’ll pursue justice for the rest of my life”).
**
The old adage goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” What is missing, or rather, what is taken for granted in this old phrase is that each picture means a different thousand words to each individual. Though there will surely be overlap, a plethora of internal conversations between picture and individual are held even when only a few of us come across a single image (Look at the vitriolic comments launched against Malia Obama for wearing a peace sign on her shirt in her last trip overseas with the rest of the First Family).

I am of two minds with respect to t-shirts that claim to be “racial and radical” for a purpose on either continuum of the color spectrum. A host of questions immediately come to mind. Are the shirts just for shock value? Are these shirts made for getting a reaction out of passersby? Or are they to inform? Are they to force us to connect the picture or message—effectively, the representation of reality—to one’s reality? I am not sure. In fact, in writing this post I battled over including the following question as the opening so as to move the question beyond my own limited perspective: are there temporal or contextual constraints or expiration dates (if you will) for different modes of celebrating one’s history, the good and the bad? I changed my viewpoint as soon as the words were on screen because I realized that I was singling out African Americans for implicit in that question is that people should leave history in the past and only worry about the present and future, a perspective I do not subscribe to.

The fact remains that we are forever communicating with a larger audience. The body itself is always in dialogue with others. Taking off of sociologist Erving Goffman, the body both communicates and is communicated in the sense that one is always projecting and receiving social information simply by being copresent. The clothes we wear have cultural roots but they are also an expression of one’s individual and/or collective identity. So, when we wear certain shirts like the one pictured above, what exactly are we communicating?

*The picture headlining this post was taken on someone's person and is not one of Cox's design.
**This particular shirt is one of Cox's design.

The Monopoly on Impartiality

A few friends and readers have asked me to comment on the Sonia Sotomayor hearings. I’d love to offer some keen insights, but two things are holding me back: 1) Lindsay Graham’s comment that she’ll get the nomination, barring “a complete meltdown;” and 2) the subtle, yet increasingly salient fact that these hearings are excruciatingly boring.

To be honest, I don’t know much about Sotomayor beyond her general life story and the conservative backlash over the now infamous “wise Latina” comment. I don’t know many specifics about her record beyond the Ricci case, and I’ve never read any of her writings or heard any of her speeches in full.

That said, two things struck me as I watched the hearings: First, Sotomayor has a deft knowledge of the law. My lawyer readers might disagree, but in the eyes of the common social scientist, she obviously knows her stuff. She seemed to have a clear, pointed answer for every question. She didn’t let any senator challenge her expertise, nor did she let anyone bully her into a corner. She let her legal competence speak for itself.

Second, she has a remarkable grasp of the English language—and I don’t mean that in reference to her immigrant background. As the senators fumbled over their prepared questions, speaking in shoddy grammar, Sotomayor spoke with elegant clarity. Look, I have trouble ordering a pizza without half a dozen “um’s” and “uh’s” thrown into my broken sentences. Yet Sotomayor never once—in over two hours of testimony that I watched—sounded garbled or incoherent. She also never spoke with her hands, an unfortunate habit many of us in academia share. She looked cool, calm, and collected; strong, authoritative and poised. She looked—and sounded—like a Supreme Court Justice.

At no point did Sotomayor’s testimony elude to any biases. Yet that seems to be the very point of contention in the weeks leading up to these hearing. Critics on the right—perhaps captured best in Pat Buchanan’s racist, asinine, factually dishonest op-ed—have called her integrity (and intelligence) into question, worried that she’ll ruin the Supreme Court’s long run of impartiality. We wouldn’t want Sotomayor to sully the Supreme Court’s magnanimous, upstanding record with her reckless impartiality, now would we?

Jamelle offers a particularly insightful take on this logic:

What pisses me off is this completely ahistorical sense on part of Republicans that the Supreme Court is and always has been a perfectly just, perfectly impartial institution. For most of this country’s history, the default perspective on the nation’s highest court has been that of wealthy white men, and accordingly, the court’s rulings have reflected the biases and prejudices of its members. The court’s Dred Scott ruling, for instance, clearly reflects the fact that a majority of the Court’s members at the time were slaveholders. Likewise, the Court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson clearly reflects a group of men who had – like most of their peers – internalized a narrative of black inferiority and black “difference.”

The problem here is not (necessarily) that Sotomayor’s impartiality is being questioned and scrutinized. I honestly think any candidate for this position would receive similar treatment, though maybe not to the same extent. That said, the real problem with throwing around this concept of “impartiality” is the ahistorical assumption that the Court was ever, in fact, impartial. There’s nothing wrong with wanting an impartial Court, but romanticizing the integrity of past decisions is woefully naive.

The notion that the Supreme Court has always been fair and balanced fails to adequately problematize the decisions of past Courts, which just so happen to be comprised solely of white males. Whitewashing the past takes the impartiality of previous (white male) Justices for granted, a re-reading of history that obscures the reality of gross bias in past Courts. In fact, with the Court's new gender, ethnic, and racial makeup, there's a strong argument that they're more impartial today, identity politics notwithstanding. But as new faces enter the Court, challenging racial and gender hegemony, “impartiality” all of a sudden becomes a pressing concern. And with Sotomayor, the concern isn't necessarily ideological; rather, folks on the Right are worried that her ethnic and gender identity will somehow cloud her judicial vision and influence her sense of justice. Spare me. There's no white male monopoly on impartiality.

Reflections on Privilege, Guilt, and Identity

This post is slightly different from my usual contributions to Social Science Lite. Nonetheless, this post is as real as the others. I receive versions of the comments anyone posts on our blog via email whether the comment is for Jeremy’s post or my own. His recent posts on white privilege/white guilt (“This is Where White Guilt Comes From”/"The White Privilege of Anti-White Activists") sparked me to write this “reply post” instead of individual comments on each post so as to explain my position and think about the larger issues at play. I think Jeremy’s comments are honest, well reasoned, and well-argued. I think that activists and scholars like Tim Wise can learn something from Jeremy as he relays his personal experiences and effectively places them in a larger context rather than going for sound bites that, to be colloquial for a minute, grinds people’s gears.

My thoughts on the recent posts on white privilege/white guilt are in part agreement with Jeremy. Let me elaborate and be more specific on what Jeremy has alluded to with respect to my comments on being Black and my (learned) reluctance to “argue” my point with “passion” and also the guilt that sometimes ensues from such inactivity on my behalf. I must say that I do not speak to the experiences of all Blacks, let alone all minorities, but do believe that what follows holds some familiarity with many people of color. To put it simply, I can’t show passion for it will be taken as aggression. I always have to hold back and (try to) be the cool, calm, and collected co-participant in debates or even casual conversations otherwise I am painted as the one who shows emotion with physically expressed enthusiasm about my theoretical findings or just my plain old opinion about the most mundane, quotidian things that populate out lives. For reasons rooted in vicious stereotypes, menacing prejudices, and negative external definitions of Blacks (especially Black males), people equate my bark with my bite. I think this is what Jeremy was getting at when he mentioned the conversations we had backstage about me feeling unable or my hesitance to articulate responses when racist comments are made.

But, sometimes, thankfully, I am more than my race. I will be the first to say that I occupy different social spheres of social dominance and subornation. I too feel a guilt of sorts when around other minorities (and sometimes whites) when racist comments are made. When my friend told me about the “Puerto Rican shower,” referencing when one tries to hide the smell of weed with Axe cologne, I knew the comments that followed could not be good. I am male so when I don’t stand up against sexist comments made against males or females, even when made by women, I feel a little twinge in the pit of my stomach. Though more spiritual than religious, when people make prejudiced statements about those from other religions, I feel that pain as well. I actually felt guilty when I didn’t say anything when Nick Cannon, in his zeal to be savior of all those dark and female, inadvisable and deleteriously employs the female gender as a tool to ridicule Eminem by calling him “Miss.” I am heterosexual and insidious, homophobic comments simply piss me off.

The underlying thing that we get out of talking about privilege and guilt is this false bifurcated world between those with and those without, as I have mentioned before. I think we need to be conscious of the multiple identities which make up who were are. Patriarchy is, in many ways, as dangerous as racism, sexism as dangerous as homophobia, depending on the person (or people in question) and especially the ways in which these prejudices as reinforced by structural factors via the job market, housing, and the like.

However, I recognize that this reality is only* in public. As I told my friends, the public Anthony is PC and docile compared to the more private Tony. And with that said, I argue that the private sphere offers a more complex realm of interactions, both real and symbolic.

I say that the private sphere is more complicated because it usually serves as a safe space where things are said without the worry of being held up to public scrutiny. As we used to say back home, one is not held susceptible to social crucifixion. This is for all races, sexes, creed, classes, and colors. Where I believe the differences are purged is the unique experience of certain populations in this country. Some individuals, because of their phenotypic construction, chromosomal make-up, sexual orientation, know the true meaning behind the old saying, “You got to laugh to keep from crying.” The pains of being Black in America, a woman in America, a non-white, non-middle class, non-male… to be an “other” in America is painful and sometimes we laugh at and make jokes about instances that cause us pain in the public sphere when we retreat to the private sphere just to make it to the next day. A close friend of mine in our cohort talked to me about why she considers drug use as a mental health and not a criminal justice problem for inner city Blacks, for instance. I think about Ntozake Shange's insightful play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf. I think about what does it mean when life becomes such a battle that it forces Sam Cooke to say that “It’s been too hard living but I’m afraid to die, Cause I don’t know what’s up there beyond the sky”? I think back to that prolific prophet Malcolm X when he responds to Plato and says, “the examined life is painful.” And who else is under the panoptical gaze of society more than those considered “other”?

This is why it is hard for me to talk about guilt: the private sphere and the public sphere; what is said and where; what is said and why. I appreciate those who attempt to outline the ways in which privilege works to continue the subordination of others but caution us all not to focus on one variable, one component of who were are. It is important that honest, open, and more comprehensive conversations be had.