Yearly Archives: 2001

Considering racism…

I should first clarify. I went to a talk this evening which was supposed to be about breaking down the language of racism. Unfortunately, the conversation degraded into attacks on all levels. But i want to bring up a few points that i am trying to resolve. The propositions and comments in italics were statements made by the black activists.

People of color cannot be racist. As far as i understand things, racism emerges when the color of one’s skin becomes a way of controlling them through power instilled by the social hierarchy of race and color. I believe that there is a social hierarchy of race, with white/Euro folk on top (this is true worldwide) and black/African folk on the lowest tier. Yellow/Asian and brown/Latina This hierarchy has been defined and maintained by those in power, primarily the white folk. I believe that the black community has no power to control these definitions or hierarchy, but i also feel as though those in the middle of the hierarchy have the ability to define and control other folks based on race. For example, in Asian or Indian contexts i feel as though there is a racist society without the control of white folk, based on certain people of color controlling other people of color who they feel are “lesser.” Wouldn’t this be racism? I do feel as though people of color can be prejudiced, but this is different. In order to be racist, you have to have power afforded by your race and then use that power to control people who are socially viewed as less racially valuable.

The goal of white supremacy is for the worldwide minority to maintain power so as continue to exist biologically since white + color = color. Until there is racial equality, sexual relations between people of color and white folk should not exist and can only be viewed as a form of white supremacy, whereby the white individual is exerting power and control. Certainly, there is a power differential in interracial relationships, but there is a power differential in almost all relationships. Under this belief, sexual relations between men and women should be abolished. (Why? Because there is a sexual power differential instilled and maintained by the patriarchy. The patriarchy doesn’t exist.) If the goal of white supremacy is to biologically maintain the existence of whiteness, the child born through an interracial relation is only breaking down that imbalance. Historically, people of color have been the sexual servents of whites, and are frequently now. But this idea minimizes any possibility of agency and individualism. To say that a white individual is committing the supreme act of white supremacy by engaging in a relationship with a person of color is an act of prejudice.

Seeing as the racial systems in place currently are maintained by such a small fraction of the population, it is the primary systematic oppression that we should be concerned with. Just as i believe that anti-homophobia initiatives cannot be enacted without consideration of race, class, gender identity, sex, etc., i don’t believe that racism will end if it is done outside of recognition of all forms of oppression. To say that one oppression is more harmful than another only fragments the oppressed, allowing those in control to maintain power. Just as second-wave feminism failed due to racist beliefs, i believe that civils rights cannot be achieved without consideration of sexism.

Now, with a few thoughts on paper, i am trying to imagine how one can effectively incorporate different forms of oppression together in order to overcome them systematically. Obviously, the local answer is the most obvious – eliminate all personal actions that maintain or encourage prejudice. More importantly, call people on their prejudices and help them understand why that is so. That’s another thought…

Racism is the white folks’ problem. As a result, only white folks can eliminate racism. As a black man, i spend my entire life trying to explain to white folk why their actions are racist and i am tired of doing so; it is not my problem. I think that its dangerous to give up on people or to not educate people. This is true for all forms of oppression. Certainly, the oppressed do not have the power to change the system, but they do have localized power to help those in power understand what problems exist and why. I frequently hear people who are oppressed say that it is not their responsibility to educate, and in part i agree. But i also feel that if we are truly interested in ending oppression, that the oppressed will help the powerful understand and the powerful will try to understand. Giving up does not help anything and just creates a deeper divide.

With this in mind, i am constantly wondering what it takes to be an ally – how does one engage in proactive anti-white-supremacy, anti-heterosexism, anti-sexism, anti-classism?

well, let’s see how emotional i can get. i hate my hormones on days like this, despise them for all of their femininity. i should have known it was going to be a bad day emotionally. i woke up, turned on CNN like an addict and started crying because a man from North Korea was seeing his mom from South Korea for the first time in 40 years. i should have known.

so i went to the lab, determined not to cry in frustration in my math class (and i succeeded). but halfway through class, i made the (poor) decision to check email. a note from the school’s medical service telling me that the school insurance will not support me to see the doctors that i want to see for my neck. so i started crying. they want me to see in-house neurosurgeons. and so the frustration continues and i cried and cried and cried. sadly, i am starting to realize the the most sense may be to take a break from school and deal with this. i am barely functional at school, suddenly misdirected, in bad physical shape and in a lot of pain. i have no insurance that will cover me and no money to feel comfortable along the edges. maybe its time to go make some money and come back. frustrating.

so i broke my rules, went home, made food & watched movies and played around being stupid. it was highly entertaining… but the reality is that i am avoiding and i know it..

mutant

I wonder if i am a mutant. Computers react atrociously to me, as though i give off some energy that makes them crash and puke. No one can ever hear me on the phone, even though they can hear anyone else on my phone. I think i give off weird vibes.

Well, i just got back from New York – Madison Square Garden VDAY event. Wow.

Daytime: Stop Rape contest. 60 contestants from 50 countries explaining how they think they can end rape in their various locations. Moving and powerful. But i had to busy myself so i ran around all day preparing for the evening event, organizing folks in my typical fashion.

Nitetime: Mom came.. with her Republican boyfriend. Made me so happy to see her, to sit near her, to have her support me like this. My aunt was there too. So amazing. I just cried and cried and cried.. so powerful watching Oprah Winfrey talk about life under the burqa and then have an exiled woman from Afghanistan get up and unveil herself. And then the women who were victims of FGM and a 14 year old girl who had run away to avoid the knife get up and cry and tell their stories. Or a 13 year old woman from Kenya winning the Stop Rape contest. Calista Flockhart doing a piece on short skirts and Claire Danes and Julia Stiles made Bosnia so unbelievable. Basically, it was truly awe-some.

well, my body has collapsed pretty successfully. i have barely been able to work, to type, to think, etc. almost a week ago, things got so bad that R managed to convince me to go see a doctor at the hospital.

bulges around the disk in the C4 & C5; need to CAT scan to find out more; think that the end goal is spinal shots & physical therapy.

symptoms: lack of feeling in both arms starting from shoulder, black outs in left eye, shooting pains throughout spinal cord. pulsing around all of neck, migraines.

questioning if my recent exercising is making it worse by increasing muscle mass pinching nerves…

now, i am walking like an 80 year old woman and feel aweful with any basic upright movement. to get to NYC this weekend, we filled the backseat with pillows and i rode like cleopatra.

but it makes me feel useless and aweful, unable to take care of myself and have any control – i don’t like it one bit. but as a result, i can’t keep up with anything.. i am on meds that make me sleepy.. i don’t keep up with work, with friends, with anything in my life. and i feel really guilty about it. erg. not sure what is the next move.. avoid people?

o i have been very grumpy about work these days. i think that it is time to analyze what i want to get done at work and why i am doing what i am doing.. just for a reality check up. part of the problem is that people keep asking me and i have formulated so many clean versions that i want companies to hear, instead of saying what i am actually feeling. and, worrisome enough, i start to believe my own retoric. and you wonder why i am worried about getting too involved with tech companies.

first, goals. i am in the technology field because i believe that current technologies are not made with people in mind. i believe that current companies is basically based on marketing and that even those who are doing research are doing it for themselves, thus upper-class middle-aged straight white men. this worries me. i feel as though technology will create a severe social divide. i know that i can’t change how everything is done but i want to make as much of an impact as possible – get in and make people think about how they are doing things, etc.

problem: you have to play to their games. something is only successful as an idea if the market picks up on it (i.e., Brenda Laurel). companies are surprisingly stupid. the older i get, the more i realize that companies are really not the best of the people; they are the worst. the social structure is one of social control and management. even in tech land where people _think_ they have freedom, they are really only minions in a vast system. its quite disturbing. because technology people have worked so hard to be scientists instead of modern day smiths, there is an overemphasis on science as meaningful and no desire to understand people or to respect work that has been done to understand people (except biology and neuroscience). psychology, sociology, anthropology are all considered pointless. how peculiar is that?

so why am i at the lab. no, its not the free food or even the fact that i didn’t have to take GREs (although that made a difference). it is the only place that i could find that values multi-disciplinary approaches to problems related to technology. problem is that i am starting to understand the lab and its kinda like a Model-T perspective. anyone can come to the lab as long as they are engineers. you can utilize other disciplines as long as everything can be analyzed quantitatively. its weird. and its limited. funny is that i am very quantitative but this environment is making me stand up for qualitative and social science perspectives on everything. kinda interesting in my opinion. its one of the reasons that i am so fascinated with my mentor and her work. i totally have an intellectual crush on her – in that stunned unable to contribute kinda way. her perspective is just dumbfounding and the fact that she is so motivated to work with engineers and make them get it is inspiring.

the problem is that i haven’t been doing a good job of narrowing down and doing work. instead i am just amassing knowledge. maybe that is a good thing but not by ML standards. that’s the problem – they want to see products, demos, sellables. although my advisor has been tremendously flexible thus far, i wonder what she is really thinking. is it ok for me to not have tangible things to show? somehow, i think that will wane really fast. i like the idea of doing qualitative visualization – i really think its an interesting subset of work. problem is that it is *damn* hard and i don’t feel as though i have even cracked the surface.

i feel as though a million people want me to do totally different things. and this is only a problem because i don’t know what i want to do. i really like working with my mentor and Henry and all of the other interesting folks.. i can’t get the gender stuff out of my head and i am not sure i want to. its always amazing to talk about queer issues in a boardroom – i find that fascinating. so i don’t know.. still confused.

why do i feel so overwhelmed by my life when, at the same time, i feel as though i am getting nothing done, have no direction or focus? i feel as though i spend so much time dealing that i don’t have any time to do anything. i have too many beloved friends, too strong a community and thus not enough time to manage that and get work done and start a life in Boston. plus, to make matters worse, the only new person that i have met since i moved to Boston doesn’t even fucking live here, adding to my collection of long distance, hard to maintain, impossible to manage friends. and i have no one to be at home when i break down and crumple. it makes me feel so uncertain about what type of community i need versus what i have. and right now, all i want is to be left alone by all my friends so that i can focus in on work. easier said then done as now is the time when everyone has time and wants to spend it with me. and all i want is to figure out how to get my research going. i don’t want outside visitors to my life; i want friends that pop up at lunch and tear me away from my desk to eat since i have forgotten to do so for multiple days. i want friends who drag me to play pool so as to look at the cute untouchable dykes. i don’t want impossible relationships or having to arrange my life around other people’s needs.

ok. so i am cranky. isn’t this the definition of january? this month, this year is going to go down as a month of utter physicaly pain and mental anguish. SAD gone extremely awry.

erg. more grumpiness from the homefront. my body is on strike, vowing to yell and scream until i stop – only i don’t know what stop is. no longer is Advil affecting anything – pills 13-16 got downed an hour ago.

but, despite my feeling like a jack hammer, i managed to impress the folks at I. so much so that my mentor is trying to finagle me three separate summer internship offers. scarily i am taking them seriously. my mentor has offered me her spare room for free for the summer and i would be able to travel with her to Europe and do field studies, learn something about anthropology & actually get to think outside the box. i guess that’s the motto anyhow. i spoke with my advisor this week about a summer internship and she was in favor of me doing so, primarily because she knows how many money problems i have. only, she’s not so thrilled at the idea of me working for M. her past student had mucho problems with IP rights, particularly since they are not sponsors of the lab and thus don’t want all the other companies who are to know about their research. she wants me to seek out an internship at places where various sponsors have been focused. this actually makes too much sense. plus, i adore my mentor. i almost have a crush on her because i am so fascinated with her – mostly because i see myself reflecting back, just as bitch and gender-focused and fuck-you-all corporate culture. she’s loud and obnoxious and touchy-feely and totally aggressive and active. i feel so shy and foolish in comparison but i know she adores me too. I knows how much M will probably offer me which will only make this process more frustrating – i guess the thing is that the main reason i want to be at M this summer is to see if things can work out between me & boy. but i have also vowed not to let other people affect my career direction at this stage, putting me in a weird position. oh goddess, i am confused.

i was having a better day. was, of course, being the operative word. woke up this morning, got my laundry to the laundramat where H stayed with it & got it all done.. got to the lab & had a productive meeting where i helped brainstorm for other projects in my group & got compliments (or teasing) about how much i knew from the SIGGRAPH community. then i went to R’s class which was entertaining. next, had a very productive meeting with my advisor & partner where we did quite a bit of talking about our project which was good. had a fabulous time swimming with H&R and folks at the lab. rushed off to go home, made food & watched TV. giggled with R and goofed around in general. then tried to come back to the lab.. and i remembered why i hate this fucking town. ice. it is all the fault of the ice. i slipped down the stairs in front of my house and now my left side hurts and i am grumpy. erg. i hate this weather. my insides hurt, my outsides hurt.. i feel like i am done with this body – how the hell am i going to be able to grow old?? i don’t get it.. i don’t know how to deal with my body and that is irritating. and i wonder why i am so grumpy.. my mind is definitely following my body’s lead and that is not a good thing.

ok.. more absurd events in my life. all because earlier this evening, i was whining about my back/neck/hands and everything else that has stopped functioning properly.

we – R, H and R’s friend spent the day in restaurants playing Cosmic Encounter and laughing hysterically. R & his friend have known each other for 21 years and are a bloody riot together, knocking on everything; H & i couldn’t stop laughing for the life of us. we got lost in Boston, looking for a really cool cafe that has since shut down – we were very sad about this. finally, we ended up in finagle a bagle at park street. tehehe.. stayed there till they kicked us out.

back at my place, R decides that we should go hottubbing – i laugh at him, reminding him he is on the east coast now.. he putzes around, calls a bunch of different places and finds an open hot tub place in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. so we head off to the lovely state of New Hampshire. R books the tub until the place closes, which shocks the lady at the desk who says that she doesn’t know anyone who has ever stayed longer than 2 hours.. R said she doesn’t know him yet.. he’s the 6/7/8 hour type. we talk, lounge, listen to music, play scrabble. i got a massage that put me into glory heaven state. what an ecstasy nite without the drugs. fabulous conversations.. i spent most of the nite listening to R&H get to know one another and, as i predicted, they got along fabulously, babbling away about relationships and ideas for the future.. typical H happily directing R into emotional talk and i was impressed in the amount she got out of him.. it was precious. my silly friends.

everyone keeps asking me about boy. and i don’t know entirely how to respond. add that to the fact that i am in such a fucked up state right now. body very upset forcing sex drive to approach null & void. all together get emotions all fucked up making me just a pissy little thing. i think R is about to kill me over it. i am unmotivated to work, to think, to deal. i don’t want to talk to people and have been in the habit of not responding to personal emails & phone calls.. i have avoided my date from last week and by now, i am guessing she thinks i am a freak; although she may also think i am out of town since i told her i was going to portland this week. i am just not in the mood to deal and i am not quite sure how to handle that appropriately. the total emotion can be summed up to “blah.”