I've written a few politically-oriented blogs in my blogspot account, and I scored a C on my Criminal Law midterm (yessss).  I have a legal memorandum due Monday that I don't want to start.  I've reached that plateau in the school year where I just don't give a--

I turn 21 on November 6th.  I'm going to a casino midnight of that day, and then I'll celebrate with alcohol some later time.  I'm not planning to get trashed because I don't want to go that far, honestly.  Not while I'm staying home.  Is it sad that I don't want to have sex because it freaks me out and ugly people do it?  If porn needs to be banned for any reason, it should relate tangentially to its newfound equal opportunity.  Everyone with a wee-wee or a hoohah (or both) should not be in front of the camera.  Seriously.  *shudder*

And maybe I'm being immature but...*convulsion*  I am not joining the ranks of people who do that.  The fluids and the noises...!  How do people...I mean...I can hardly masturbate without laughing at myself.  I feel great and then I feel so dumb.  Even when I fool around with my boyfriend (no offense, boyfriend), I'm into it in that moment, but afterwards I just...wonder what the hell I did, why I did it, and why I have to do it. 

I feel like a 12-year-old, so I'll stop here with the sex reflection.  But I do want to reproduce my most recent class experience.

Shifting Objectifications Solve Nothing -or- How to Oppress a [White] Woman

While the title of this post does connect indirectly to the discussion over at nubian's blog, it also relates to an experience I had in my Contracts class today.

Two key points:

1. Objectification isn't cool, regardless of who uses it.
2. Objectification isn't cool, regardless of whom is objectified.

Point 1 is exemplified in that comment thread about Jessica Valenti's new book, Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters. (The comment thread on Feministing's pretty interesting as well.) Using another form of objectifying women to promote something good is still objectifying and commodifying women's bodies. You're using the body part of a woman to market your product. Period. It doesn't matter if you're marketing jewelry, alcohol, guns, feminism, world peace, or Jesus. If you use the body part of a person or the image of a person to sell or to market something, you're using that person as a means to accomplish your own ends. As Kant would say, "That's pretty fucked up." Doesn't matter how much you have in common with the person, either. So, how do you singlehandedly oppress a woman and make her cry? You explain to her that using the tools of the patriarchy to dismantle the patriarchy make you no better than the patriarchy. In other words: you wrong and you ain't special. Besides, shouldn't we question why subversion is powerful and what exactly makes it powerful? What powers are we using, people? And if they're identical to the powers used against us, do our intentions/motivations really matter in the end?

Point 2 happened today in Contracts class. I swear, when our professor gets laid, his personality improves. Today he exchanged cake for giving correct answers in class. (Okay, his new weirdness could link to drugs, but HE HAD CAKE!) Today's class introduced the subject of damages for breaching a contract. We went over the fundamentals of two ways to compensate damages for breach: expectancy and reliance. My notes describe the difference thusly:

Reliance damages measure the difference between post-K (where you are now) and pre-K (where you were before) situations. Expectancy damages weigh the difference between expected results (where you would have been had no breach occurred) and actual results (where you are presently).

Our first case illustrating the weight of these two theories for calculating damages dealt with plastic surgery. (I believe the name of the case is Sullivan v. O'Connor.) The judges deliberating on Sullivan's appeal toed the line between reliance and expectancy calculations. Our main take-away point for the day emphasized that expectancy calculations would result in higher costs than reliance calculations. However, our teacher chose a very...interesting way to illustrate this example.

First, he proclaimed that he wanted to avoid anything that would anger feminists. Since Sullivan involves a "professional entertainer" suing for a botched nose job, our professor switched the facts. He transformed the plaintiff into a male seeking ab construction surgery. Then he "regrettably" drew a scale on the board from 1-10, corresponding of course with any infamous beauty/sexiness ranking scale.

Mr. Sullivan's abs before surgery rated as a 5. However, his "5" abs weren't raking in the sexist chauvinist female pig ladies (and I'm quoting), so he decided to go under the knife to obtain Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise abdominals (ranked 11 on his scale o' sex). After surgery, poor Mr. Sullivan's abs failed the cut and have sank to a rating of 1. Ouch.

So on this scale, he illustrated the difference between expectancy and reliance. Using the expectancy scale, Mr. Sullivan would collect a hefty penny because the difference between an 11 rating and a 1 rating is a whole fucking lot. To illustrate the reliance rating, our professor then waded deeper into the pool of stupid: he equated Mr. Sullivan's ability to woo women with their level of intoxication at the first meeting. Yes, he went there. He argued that before the operation, Mr. Sullivan only needed three beers to distort the woman's judgment enough in his favor. However, after the botch job, Sullivan will require many more beers for women to ignore his newly created potbelly, so to speak. So his reliance calculations would determine the difference between his post-op situation (1 rating) and his pre-op situation (5 rating).

So after a day of cake sharing, objectification of males, objectification/denigration of females, and a strange streak of quality teaching, our professor calls it a day. We all pack to leave, and my friends realize that my [white] female friend is fuming at this lesson, to the point that she is physically trembling with anger, and she leaves the room immediately after the conclusion of class. I was pissed off as well, but after the last time I became angry about something that affected me deeply, I now try my hardest to focus on the lesson and to let the stupid fade to the background. (This is the same friend that I referenced as an anti-racist sympathizer in my post.)

A few of my friends (of course) did not understand what the big deal was. I mean, he did it with guys! Come on! He left women alone! What's the problem?! Specifically, what is HER problem?! I explained as plaintively and as calmly as I could that it does not matter who is the target of objectification -- objectification is wrong. It is also condescending to think that feminists speak out against patriarchy because they want to establish an equally wrong matriarchy in its stead. Of course, they all just scoffed and rolled their eyes at the whole situation. We Kwazy Lib'wals Wif Owr Kwazy Ideaz.

I referred to this instance in my title as oppression of white women because I found it strange that I did not have as visceral of a response as my friend did. If it were a racist matter, I would have been upset. If it were a racist and sexual matter, I would've cut somebody. But just sexist? Especially a sexist stereotype that's lumped more heavily on the heads of young white women and glosses over other women? Not so much. I wondered why that was.

I think I became jaded after a Philosophical Issues in Feminism undergraduate course where perspectives of women of color emerged nowhere in the curriculum or the discussion unless one of the five women of color made a tangential comment about it. The end-of-term discussion really fucking pissed me off after hearing all these white women around me talk about how ending sexist treatment "trumps" ending racist treatment. Good thing a section of me is saved; I guess the rest of me can go to shit in other ways.

I raised my hand and made the point that eliminating sexism will not be successful until we eliminate racism, homophobia, ablism, transphobia -- we have to tackle all the oppression-laced -isms and cooperate. My white female classmates then informed me that I would unfortunately have to wait until their problems were solved. One of them explicitly turned to me and said, "Yeah, but that stuff can come after we're done with sexism, you know?" As a way to placate me. I don't know how I resisted punching her in the face, especially since I was running on a half-hour's worth of rest for the second day in a row. I remember how livid I was, and I wrote very sloppily on the course evaluation that more course readings written by women of color need incorporation into the course.

So I guess as long as people felt comfortable spitting on different aspects of my identity, I tried to write off my disconnect as an ability to develop affinities and responses to individual violations of them as I please. Today, however, I realized that insulting one part insults the whole being. I can't accept that or tolerate it. The difficulty starts here.

What's the most memorable building you've lived in?
Submitted by Shelly.

A homeless shelter.  There was a cool playground outside of it, but we only stayed for one night.  Two days.  It was the second time I've ever slept in a bunk bed.  To be as poor as I was/am, I was snotty and I thought it looked disgusting.  The food was...not yummy.  I didn't eat it all, and I kinda wished people would clean the food off the floor.  I remember there being a small devotional room or prayer room.  I thought that was the prettiest part of the shelter.  It wasn't very big, and for some reason it didn't feel crowded to me. 

Maybe this question answers the most memorable place I've stayed in rather than the most memorable building I've lived in. 

The answer to that would be my aunt's house, hands down.  She bought it one or two years after I was born, and I practically grew up there as much as any place my mother and I lived on our own.  I still love that house.  My aunt loved decorating and redecorating, and her house looks exquisitely coordinated, expensively outfitted, and ridiculously comfortable.  The upstairs has always been hot, and the basement has always been storage/living space.  If they took out all the stored items down there, they could open up a little flat with a shared kitchen space.   I don't see that happening any time soon.  My grandmother has the greenest thumb ever ever.  ^_^

Also, I hate dial-up and breakdowns. I'm trudging through law school, and I'm learning to avoid awkwardness in social environments.  Sometimes I just can't help it.

"Do you like me?"
I asked the blue blazer.
No answer.
Silence bounced out of his books.
Silence fell off his tongue
and sat between us
and clogged my throat.
It slaughtered my trust.
It tore cigarettes out of my mouth.
We exchanged blind words,
and I did not cry,
and I did not beg,
blackness lunged in my heart,
and something that had been good,
a sort of kindly oxygen,
turned into a gas oven.
Do you like me?
How absurd!
What's a question like that?
What's a silence like that?
And what am I hanging around for,
riddled with what his silence said?

Teammates: Allen used "N-word" in college

Three members of Sen. George Allen's college football team remember a man with racist attitudes at ease using racial slurs.

By Michael Scherer

Sept. 24, 2006 | WASHINGTON -- Three former college football teammates of Sen. George Allen say that the Virginia Republican repeatedly used an inflammatory racial epithet and demonstrated racist attitudes toward blacks during the early 1970s.

"Allen said he came to Virginia because he wanted to play football in a place where 'blacks knew their place,'" said Dr. Ken Shelton, a white radiologist in North Carolina who played tight end for the University of Virginia football team when Allen was quarterback. "He used the N-word on a regular basis back then."

A second white teammate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution from the Allen campaign, separately claimed that Allen used the word "nigger" to describe blacks. "It was so common with George when he was among his white friends. This is the terminology he used," the teammate said.

A third white teammate contacted separately, who also spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of being attacked by the Virginia senator, said he too remembers Allen using the word "nigger," though he said he could not recall a specific conversation in which Allen used the term. "My impression of him was that he was a racist," the third teammate said.
Shelton also told Salon that the future senator gave him the nickname "Wizard," because he shared a last name with Robert Shelton, who served in the 1960s as the imperial wizard of the United Klans of America, a group affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan. The radiologist said he decided earlier this year that he would go public with his concerns about Allen if a reporter ever called. About four months ago, when he heard that Allen was a possible candidate for president in 2008, Shelton began to write down some of the negative memories of his former teammate. He provided Salon excerpts of those notes last week.

On Sunday morning, Salon spoke with David Snepp, a spokesman for Allen's Senate office, to ask for a response to the recollections of the three former teammates. E-mail and phone messages were also left for Bill Bozin, a spokesman for the Allen campaign, and Dick Wadhams, the campaign manager. Though Snepp indicated that the campaign, and probably Wadhams, would respond, eight hours later no one in the Allen camp had replied to Salon. Chris LaCivita, a consultant to the Allen campaign, hung up when a Salon reporter reached him mid-afternoon Sunday. Additional attempts to contact the campaign were unsuccessful.

The racial attitudes of Allen, a once formidable presidential contender in 2008, have become an issue in his highly contested reelection campaign against Jim Webb, a former Marine and author. Last month, Allen was videotaped calling an Indian-American college student "macaca," an obscure word for monkey that is also used as a racial epithet in some parts of the world. Allen has since apologized to the student, saying that he made up the word, and did not know its other meanings.

Last week, Allen again created controversy by appearing offended when a reporter asked about the Jewish lineage in his mother's family, which he has since acknowledged. Allen has also faced questions about his affinity for the Confederate flag, which he wore as a pin in a high school yearbook photo and exhibited in his home in Virginia.

In public statements, Allen has said that he realized later in life that the Confederate flag was a symbol of violence for black Americans, and he has expressed some regret. "There are a lot of things that I wish I had learned earlier in life," Allen said in an appearance this month on NBC's "Meet the Press." But Allen has maintained that he never harbored any discriminatory attitudes toward blacks. "Even if your heart is pure, the things you say and do and the symbols you use matter because of how others may take them," he said in the prepared transcript for remarks to a luncheon with black educators on Sept. 13.

Over the past week, Salon has interviewed 19 former teammates and college friends of Allen from the University of Virginia. In addition to the three who said Allen used the word "nigger," two others who were contacted said they remember being bothered by Allen's displaying the Confederate flag in college, but said they do not remember him acting in an overtly racist manner. Seven others said they did not know Allen well outside the football team, but do not remember Allen demonstrating any racist feelings. A separate seven teammates and friends said they knew Allen well and did not believe he held racist views. "I don't believe he was insensitive," said Paul Ryczek, who played center in Allen's year before joining the Atlanta Falcons. "He had no prejudices, biases or anything else."

In the interviews, old teammates generally spoke of him highly, as a good friend, a bright and ambitious student, and a colorful character who embraced Southern culture, listened to country music, and attracted the nickname "Neck," as in redneck. "If a black guy dropped a pass, he would say something to him," said Gerard Mullins, who played defensive back in Allen's year. "If it was a white guy, same thing. It really didn't matter where you were from, who you were, or anything."

The three former teammates, however, painted a very different picture of Allen when he was around his white friends. Shelton said he feels a personal responsibility to tell what he knows about Allen's past, especially now that Allen has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. "I got to know Allen a little too well," Shelton said, adding that he does not believe Allen should hold elective office. "He had prejudices that were deep-seated."

Shelton said no political animosity has driven his decision to speak out. He has switched between Democratic and independent registration in recent elections, he said, and does not consider himself politically active. Four years ago, Shelton and his wife donated $1,000 to Sam Neill, the Democratic challenger to Rep. Charles Taylor, R-N.C., because Shelton said they knew Neill and were upset by the allegations of corruption against Taylor, who was reelected. In February, Shelton supported Rick Davis, a current Republican candidate for sheriff, and penned a letter to the editor in the Hendersonville Times-News backing Davis' campaign. Shelton says he does not know much about Allen's political ideology and says he hasn't spoken to him in about 30 years. "There are no personal grudges," Shelton said. "There was no falling out."

helton played football with Allen in the 1972 and 1973 seasons, according to the team media guides from those years. Shelton remembers Allen's attitudes about race surfacing early in their relationship. At one point, Shelton says, Allen nicknamed him "Wizard," after United Klans imperial wizard Robert Shelton. "He asked me if I was related at all," Shelton remembers. "I knew of that name, and I said absolutely not." Several former teammates confirmed that Shelton's team nickname was "Wizard," though no one contacted by Salon could confirm firsthand knowledge of the handle's origin. "Everyone called me 'Wizard' that knows me from those days," said Shelton. "My nickname stuck."

Shelton said he also remembers a disturbing deer hunting trip with Allen on land that was owned by the family of Billy Lanahan, a wide receiver on the team. After they had killed a deer, Shelton said he remembers Allen asking Lanahan where the local black residents lived. Shelton said Allen then drove the three of them to that neighborhood with the severed head of the deer. "He proceeded to take the doe's head and stuff it into a mailbox," Shelton said.
Lanahan, a former resident of Richmond, Va., died this year at the age of 53, said his aunt Martha Belle Chisholm of Richmond. In an interview on Thursday, Chisholm said that she remembered Lanahan speaking highly of Allen. "Bill was very complimentary of George Allen," she said. "He said he was just one of the boys." Chisholm also confirmed that the Lanahan family owned hunting land near Bumpass, Va., about 50 miles east of the University of Virginia campus.

Allen, a college quarterback, arrived at Virginia in 1971 as a sophomore transfer from the University of California at Los Angeles, where he had a football scholarship after graduating from nearby Palos Verdes High School. He relocated to Virginia around the same time that his father, also named George Allen, took a job as the head coach of the Washington Redskins. At the time of his arrival, race relations at the University of Virginia were delicate. Allen's graduating class was the first to offer scholarships to black athletes, and included the first four black players on the football team and the first black starting quarterback, Harrison Davis, who did not return calls from Salon.

Accusations of racial insensitivity have long dogged Allen's political career. As a member of the Virginia Legislature, Allen opposed a state holiday honoring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As Virginia's governor, Allen issued a proclamation honoring Confederate History Month that contained no mention of slavery. In recent years, however, Allen has made a point to reach out to minority communities, sponsoring legislation to fund historically black colleges and a resolution to condemn the lynching of blacks in the South. In a New Republic article by Ryan Lizza earlier this year, Allen discussed a "civil rights pilgrimage" he had taken to Birmingham, Ala., in 2003. "I wish I had [gone] sooner," the magazine quotes Allen saying. "I was listening to the old civil-rights movement, the strategies, the foundations, the tactics."

Several of Allen's teammates remember him arriving at the University of Virginia in 1971 with long sandy blond hair and surfer stories of the Pacific Ocean. "He was a Californian," remembers Craig Critchley, a family doctor in Ohio who played linebacker in Allen's year, and did not remember the senator displaying racial views. "It was like, 'Wow, man, yeah.'"

Shelton last remembers speaking with Allen in the mid-1970s, in Charlottesville, when Allen, then in law school, played with Shelton, who was in medical school, in an inter-city football league. For Shelton, the memories of Allen's behavior during his football days raise clear questions about the senator's fitness for office. "I just think that someone who attains that level of higher office needs to have higher standards," Shelton said. "He has deep-seated core values that are hard to reverse despite what he says."

By contrast, Allen has pointed to a different lesson from his days of football playing in recent public statements. On "Meet the Press," he said his football career was an experience that taught him racial tolerance. "I grew up in a football family, as you well know, and my parents and those teams taught me a lot," Allen said on the program. "And one of the things that you learn in football is that you don't care about someone's race or ethnicity or religion."

It's very depressing when 90% of your most recent updates are questions of the freakin' day.  And then you discover you missed a few days of questions.  I am the negliblogger.

So now, I'm going to cheat.  I'm going to post an excerpt from a rather long entry in my LiveJournal on how my life's been going.  I'm not cheating terribly much because it encompasses how things have felt in my heart for the past couple of weeks. 

While waiting for the 11 line to come down the street, I started thinking my usual embarrassed thoughts about standing on the bus stop across from the law school alone. My law books filled my bookbag today, and I felt the shakes because I had to leave my laptop at home. (Civil Procedure I is BRUTAL without some sort of distraction.) I felt listless and bored. My shoulder ached so horribly. I put my bag down, and I seriously just wanted to sit on the curb and cry. I feel like every car, every student, every federal hidden surveillance camera, every extraterrestrial lifeform was staring at me and smirking about the big poor black chick with the two bags on the bus stop alone. I knew it was not true (though people do stare at me from their cars; I have an old pedestrian habit of staring back). But I started thinking of ways to cheer myself up through this law school experience and these moods. The moods are growing more frequent than I care to admit.

I was listening to a live performance of "On and On" by Erykah Badu the night before, and I thought about how serene I felt then. Then my mind traveled to more Baduisms, and I thought about my heavy bag. Before I knew it, I was singing snippets of the song and piecing it all together.

Bag lady you gone hurt your back
Dragging all them bags like that
I guess nobody ever told you
All you must hold on to
Is you, is you, is you

One day all them bags gone get in your way
One day all them bags gone get in your way
I said one day all them bags gone get in your way
One Day all them bags gone get in your way

So pack light
Pack light
Pack light
Ooh ooh

Bag lady you gone miss your bus
You can't hurry up
Cause you got too much stuff
When they see you comin
Niggas take off runnin
>From you it's true oh yes they do

One day he gone say you crowdin my space
One day he gone say you crowdin my space
I said one day he gone say you crowdin my space
One day he gone say you crowdin my space

So pack light
Pack light
Pack light
Ooh ooh

Girl I know sometimes it's hard
And we can't let go
Oh when someone hurts you oh so bad inside
You can't deny it you can't stop crying
So oh, oh, oh
If you start breathin
Then you won't believe it
You'll feel so much better
(So much better baby)

And the more I sang the song, the more amused I felt at lugging all the books I carried. I didn't need half of them that day, though it's "mandatory" to take them. Being on the bus stop alone didn't bother me quite as horribly. I realized I wasn't up there to worry about putting on a show for all those eyes. I just have to start breathing and keep it up. And pack light.

I missed a social opportunity -- you know, an opportunity not lunch-oriented or library-oriented for once -- because my mom tricked me home for some fade cream for my blemishes, a few costume necklace/earring pieces, and some medicated pads for acne. I needed them, but she made it sound like I'd won another scholarship or something on the phone, and it was pertinent I returned home. Needless to say I was slightly peeved, but I liked the fact my mom bought it for me. She didn't have to do it, and I would have yelled at her if she asked me before she did it. I thanked her and calmed down somewhat.

The constant happy hours are bothering the hell out of me because I'd feel so removed from it all even if I could go. I'm not psyching up for my 21st birthday so I can get soused; I'm more egging it on so I can go out with my classmates and not feel like dead weight. I won't magically contribute to the best drink conversations or transform into a fairy princess, but I'll just feel less distanced from my classmates.

I'm also worried about participating in class and online. Whenever someone posts an inquiry on the class TWEN site (equivalent to Blackboard on the Westlaw network), everyone gets a notification. My Contracts professor has field days posting inquiries and probing willing students for answers. Everyone gets pissed. I heard them talking about a different kid who kept posting who'd earned their ire. I'd posted quite frequently answering and discussing cases, too. Plus I tend to ask clarification questions so I understand what's going on in the class. I've volunteered a few times and answered the wrong question; I've also piped up and brought things on track. But I still feel like I'm standing out too much, and I want to fade back into the scenery.

I've also embarked on this horrible, horrible trend of making law jokes. My social group laughs it off, but I feel like a dork after I do it. For example, my friend and I joked about suing my Contracts professor because of his haircut, claiming it was intentional infliction of emotional distress. Punitive damages are in order, we joked. When another friend and I made a wisecrack about giving my Criminal Law professor a high chair so he could play poker with us on Friday (if I go), a friend laughed and said she didn't hear it. I then told her she couldn't plead deliberate ignorance after laughing, because it has the same weight as actual knowledge. (It has a lot to do with proving the mental state of a criminal when committing an act or considering the commission of an act.)

Someone shoot me.

Lately, I've been on a Shakira appreciation kick.  Her song "En Tus Pupilas" is beautiful. 

I don't know what the lyrics mean; "en tus pupilas" obviously means "in your eyes" (or "in your students," whatevers).  But I think that any American critic who bashes her singing because of her accent has obviously never heard how awesome her voice is in Spanish. 

This article is interesting and painful.  
In some ways it glides superficially over basic human interaction and understanding, and in other ways it reveals a gaping wound that not many people want to confront.  The wound will probably never heal, either. 

Race Wasn't an Issue to Him, Which Was an Issue to Me
By KIM McLARIN

Published: September 3, 2006

HIS name was Jerry. A nice man, late 40’s, funny and smart, divorced with two grown children, a social worker who had dedicated his professional life to working with troubled kids.

He was also — let’s be honest — the first to come around. He was the first man after my own divorce to raise an eyebrow, to take an interest after my ex not only moved out but moved on. Funny and smart and dedicated to troubled kids is all admirable, but in truth I would have said yes to a drink with a four-foot gaptoothed troll had one smiled my direction. The self-confidence of a 40-year-old divorced mother of two is a shaggy thing.

So the fact that Jerry was also white I noted but decided to file away for now. Why worry about it right out of the gate? Yes, race had been an issue in my marriage — not the issue perhaps, but an issue nonetheless. What I did not know was whether race arose as a problem because I am black and my ex is white or because I am a person who grapples with race and he is not.

That my ex does not grapple with race he would not dispute; he does not care to read, think or talk about it, and he wondered why I did. My ex believed I always went looking for race, but I didn’t; race came looking for me.

And when it did, I would stand and call its name: when officials in our inner-ring suburb talked about closing our “borders” against a wave of nonresident students sneaking into our schools; when a white woman at my gym reached up, uninvited, and petted my locks like she was petting a dog; when my sick mother received one level of medical care and my ex’s sick sister received another. At such times he tried to understand my feelings, but he did not share them, and even talking about it made him uncomfortable.

It’s a dividing line as real as any in America — those who grapple with race and those who do not. But like most dividing lines, it’s impossible to tell on which side a person stands by looking at them, or at least that’s what I thought at the time. So why get ahead of myself with Jerry? Why dig for land mines when I may not make it past the way he slurps his beer?

We met for drinks. Sparkwise, I felt little, but we ended up talking and laughing easily for more than an hour. I told him I was a writer; he told me his five favorite books and how they had shaped his life. He told me he had gone to a seminary as a boy but eventually left the Catholic church; I told him I’d been raised a Pentecostal but mellowed into Methodism as an adult. We talked about our children, travels, mutual love of the blues and mutual dislike of the cold, and then he said he would like to read my books; he thought he would like them. I said he well might not.

“How do you deal with it when people you know don’t like your work?” he asked.

I quoted a playwright whose name I could not remember who admitted in an interview that he told his friends if there was a choice between being honest and being kind in talking about his work, they should choose to be kind. “Don’t value your opinion over my feelings,” the playwright said.

Jerry nodded. “Some people use honesty like a weapon.”

“Like a switchblade,” I said. “Like a bayonet. They slice up your heart with all these ugly, hurtful words and then, while you’re bleeding on the floor, they hand you a Band-Aid: ‘I was only being honest.’ ”

“Honesty is overrated,” Jerry agreed.

SO the following day, when he e-mailed his attraction, I tried to be both honest and kind. No spark, I wrote, but he was great, good company. If he was looking for “the one,” I was probably not going to be her. But if he simply sought intelligent dinner companionship some Friday evening, I’d be more than game.

Not a bayonet, I thought, but a butter knife. And still it hurt.

“Ouch,” he replied, and disappeared.

By the time he resurfaced a few months later, I had suffered through two terrible blind dates, joined an online dating service, carried on several e-mail conversations that died, actually talked on the phone with a few men, met three for drinks, backed away carefully from each, then canceled the service.

A few of these men were black, the others white, and in no case did I find anything remotely resembling chemistry. In fact, so utterly lacking in connection were these encounters that it made me appreciate anew how rare is connection. In the face of human isolation, race seemed to retreat a little.

So when Jerry called again, I decided to let the spark thing coast, because at least he and I could talk. “My wounds are licked,” Jerry said. “Have dinner with me.”

“Why not,” I said. Maybe, in time, the spark would come.

We talked and laughed for four hours, then necked like teenagers in the parking lot in the rain. The next day we e-mailed and text-messaged each other. It was all so much fun, such a heady relief after the months of loneliness.

But then, on our third date, things changed. First, he was late and I was irritable. Earlier, I’d had a frustrating discussion with several white undergraduates in my Literature of Slavery class. All semester I had struggled to teach them to think critically about race and slavery and history, to have them challenge their assumptions. They insisted, for example, that racial divisions were as old as time and that the myth of African inferiority preceded slavery, not, as I suggested, the other way around. And they argued that racial genetics were more than skin deep, whether I wanted to believe it or not. How else to account for the way black athletes dominate some professional sports?

That evening, when I shared my frustrations with Jerry, he wondered if the students didn’t have a point. “What about all those Kenyan marathon runners?” he asked. “Isn’t it possible there’s some genetic reason for that? Isn’t it possible blacks are just better athletes than whites?”

A PERFECTLY innocent question. Yet something small and painful flickered inside my chest. Logically, if one accepts a genetic physical superiority of blacks, one must also accept the possibility of intellectual superiority in whites. Did he not consider that notion? Did he reject it out of hand, or subconsciously believe it? And if I wondered these things aloud would he, like my ex, judge me bitter or oversensitive?

I mentioned an essay I’d given my students in which the anti-racism advocate Tim Wise suggests that no one brought up in America can claim to be free of racist indoctrination, that doing so only perpetuates the crime. “What Wise says is that we all must recognize and confront the legacy of the past,” I explained.

“I don’t think everyone is racist,” Jerry said. “Maybe racialized. But that’s not a bad thing.”

By now my hands were trembling, so I did not ask what he meant by that. I had the feeling that even if he tried to explain I would not understand. James Baldwin said being black in America is like walking around with a pebble in your shoe. Sometimes it scarcely registers and sometimes it shifts and becomes uncomfortable and sometimes it can even serve as a kind of Buddhist mindfulness bell, keeping you present, making you pay attention.

This is why, among other reasons, I engage with race, but not all black people do. I know several interracial couples in which both people swear race is never an issue, almost never comes up at all. I believe them, but it amazes me. And I know one thing: I can never join that pack.

My ex did not grapple with race, at first because he did not have to, being a white man in America, and later because it frightened him. This difference was a small but steady river that ran between us, and the more he tried to ignore it the more I clawed at the banks, and the more I clawed at the banks the larger the river swelled until, at last, we were engulfed. A black person who grapples with race cannot be with a white person who doesn’t. Whether a black person who grapples with race can be with a black person who doesn’t is a different and unresolved question for me, but on the first point I’m solid.

So when Jerry called and asked if I would meet him for a drink, I agreed, but this time I went only to tell him. We met a bar with billiard tables. He wanted to teach me to play but I said we wouldn’t have time.

“I can’t see you again,” I said.

He blinked with surprise. “Why?” he said, finally.

I used my bayonet: “Because you’re white, and it costs too much for me to date a white man. It cost me to be married to a white man for 13 years. I can’t do it again.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said, after a minute. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Which proves my point,” I said. “It’s not ridiculous.”

“You can’t be with any white man?”

“No, I don’t think I can.”

I may as well face it. Because, after all, Jerry was a good man who worked with troubled kids and lived his life open to relationships with people of different races. And yet I couldn’t be with him, even though, unlike my ex, he did seem willing to grapple with race.

But he was nearly 50 and his grappling apparently was just beginning, whereas mine started at 5. For nearly 50 years he’d lived in America and yet it surprised him that race might even be an issue for us. There was an innocence in this, an innocence born of being white. An innocence I could neither share nor abide.

“It costs me too much,” I repeated.

We were silent for a minute. Behind us balls clicked and people laughed.

“And now,” Jerry said, “it’s costing me.”

What are your plans for the holiday weekend?

Like many of my law school comrades, I will be chin-deep in catch-up work this glorious non-holiday weekend.  I'm off to a joyous start, as this post shows.  In proper Romeo and Juliet fashion (complete with the parental disapproval and obliviousness to the plan), I am spending time with my wonderful boyfriend tomorrow while doing research at the law library.  Rumors have surfaced that my grandmother plans to barbecue for the holiday, and I am anxiously awaiting time to see her and spend time with her.  So I am hoping to get enough work done today and tomorrow so that I can spend the day with her relatively carefree. 

I thought my class today started at 10 a.m., but it actually started at 9:30 a.m.  So I was ten minutes late or so.  Damned rain, damned studying late, and damned lack of intelligence in me. 

Damnit!

This article originally read that the movie World Trade Center cast its heroes as white although the actual heroes by whom those characters were inspired are black.  The article has been edited to note that Nicholas Cage's character is not, in fact, inspired by black former Marine Jason Thomas. Seeing as that's the only edit, I am inferring that another character portrayed as white in the movie is actually inspired by a black person who performed heroic acts during 9/11.

I'm avoiding the QotD because it's only asking a bunch of people to start wailing about Snakes on a Plane, including myself. 

Now.  These:

A lot of people by now have seen this advertisement campaign and this parody.

The campaign did in fact have good intentions, but their intentions were executed poorly. 

The parody reflects the internet's snarking principle and calls one of the figureheads of the campaign to scorn.  It's utterly laughable but strikes some harsh chords of its own. 

Attempts to defend the advertisement campaign, which also features celebrities like David Bowie and Kimora Lee Simmons, spotlight the fact that remotely, all of us are African descendants. Comparisons have been made to the advertising campaign made after 9/11, where people of different nationalities proclaimed to be American (presumably -- for all we know they could have all been American; I don't carry around my nationality detector), and advertising campaigns with assorted people claiming to be New Yorkers. 

A common theme in all these awareness campaigns is the need to co-opt a certain situation as his/her/its own to feel properly sympathetic towards it and to inspire its viewers to action.  Sort of a message sounding like, "you'd help yourself, wouldn't you?" or "you help if it were me, wouldn't you?" or "I've suffered; therefore we all suffer."

I am, and will always be, the first person to argue that the human condition shares a common thread.  We all have more in common than we care to admit.  However, I object to these advertisement campaigns.  I think they're superficial and inspire people's narcissism rather than their activism. 

If Gwyneth Paltrow was replaced by Average Schmoe #4847294, would I feel less prompted to act?  Am I supposed to reach out to help the continent of Africa, specifically those within its countries who are suffering from AIDS, because Paltrow is topless and has donned a beaded necklace?  What is she saying about Africans?  What am I supposed to understand about her now being African?  Where am I to find this righteous indignation for the suffering of Paltrow and her appropriated ilk? 

The same questions arise when I think about 9/11 and the advertisements there.  What metaphysical transformation have I undergone to share the plight of these people?  9/11 characterized a time when I felt terrible for the losses of New Yorkers affected directly by the attacks, but I did not want to be a New Yorker.  I didn't even want to be American at that point.  All the cards in our house of superiority fell fast, and I wanted to get the hell out of here. 

I contributed to charities that supported the families hurt by 9/11, but I didn't do it because I transposed myself into the bodies of those people dying and those people whose tears wet the pavement as they look at a scarred cityscape.  I contributed because it seemed like the human thing to do.  I didn't need to see my ethnicity's face painted on the eyesore of 9/11.  I don't need to see a continental identity painted on a white Hollywood celebrity, or anyone else for that matter.  What happened to the days when atrocities and pandemics were horrific enough to create desires to help? 

Whenever I see advertisements or enactments that transpose identities, it annoys me.  I wonder who will tell the protesters who dress up like trees and animals that no one wants to be a tree or an animal.  I wonder who will tell Oprah that contrary to popular opinion, a straight man cannot "be gay" for a period of time and know what it's actually like to experience those things from day to day.   A white Hollywood starlet can't be one of the many inhabitants of Africa who suffer from AIDS, nor can she be one of the many inhabitants of North America who suffer from AIDS.  If the thrust of these ad campaigns are true -- that we have forgotten Africa, that we haven't been attentive to AIDS, that there are constant sufferers and atrocities around the globe that need attention and funding -- borrowing someone's cultural, geographic, and/or ethnic identity is not the way to bring about that change.  If anything, it merely calls attention to how shallow and superficial some cultures have become -- thinking that changing clothes or applying paint or claiming new locations alters who we are or how we're perceived. 

A very short excerpt from Dr. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (omg it's not the "I Have A Dream" speech!!!  *t3h p4n1cz!!11eleventyone*):

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

I wish I could have met them while they were both alive.  I wish corporations would leave them alone unless they actually took their lives and their work seriously.  You know, beyond broadening their consumer base.