abuelos

This past weekend I spent time visiting at a friend's grandma's house. She is 80, able to breathe & walk & drive on her own & is completely lucid and full of stories.

Both sets of my grandparents have passed years ago. My paternal grandparents both had diabetes, my grandpa had to lose part of his foot. All of my childhood is filled with memories of visiting family members in the hospital suffering from various cancers.

I say all this because can you guess the race of my friend's grandma? Can you guess her class? It hurts me to know that with mis abuelos went their language, their nopales y mole, their mambo music, their stories of living in Mexico & Texas in the 1930's. With them went the strongest ties to my culture.

People of color receive less quality healthcare, because that is how our medical system is set up. One effect of lower quality medical care is lower general health and shorter life expectancy. Another is keeping tradition and culture from being passed on to future generations. This is just another way the system intersects with race and class to deny people of color from asserting an identity that differs from the mainstream culture.

THIS POST IS ENTIRELY TOTALLY PERSONAL

THINGS TO DO TO STOP ME FROM BEING BUMMED, IN SLUMPS, RUTS, BLOCKS, & FROM PROJECTING THIS NEGATIVITY ONTO MYSELF:

- get angry
read feminist blogs
read well written social commentary

- expand my mind
read contemporary philosophy
read any philosophy

- listen to death metal
listen to hardcore

- believe in myself & in everything i do
before i begin an art piece always think "this is going to be AWESOME"

- silence the inner critic b/c
it is the voice of the establishment, of inactivity, of the status quo
its a function of capitalism & patriarchy
fear of failure IS failure

Bonding @ el Rio Bravo

though i am a latina, a woman of color, i've grown up with a lot of privilege. so i'm using it to tell the story of someone i met who grew up differently.

so this is lalo's* story:

his parents were illegal, he grew up in a small town near Wichita Falls, TX speaking Spanish as his first language. he told me "i had 3 friends in elementary school, it was me, and my friend who was mexican too but he was more whitewashed than me, and my other friend who was half white half-mexican and my friend chris who was white. we used to have one principal mrs. martinez. but she she left then we got another principal who was also named mrs. martinez and she hated Mexicans. whenever me and my friends got in trouble i would get the most paddles, my other friend would get less, my half mexican friend would get two and chris wouldn't get any paddles just a slap on the hand. and i'd say hey all of us were doing bad! but it didnt matter."

in 5th grade he told his teacher he liked cars and wanted to grow up and do something with design. then teacher told him "oh you'll be a mechanic or you'll clean cars."

his father gave him a truck and he lowered it and fixed it up in high school. one of his teachers told him he'd go nowhere with his love of cars. & he asked her "how is your car? its leaking right because you wrecked it two times" and she did and he told her "my dad gave me a truck and he worked hard for it because that's what he's got to show for coming to this country. so i take good care of it and i take pride in it. i take pride in what i have. and you don't" and she said "well it's just a piece of crap jetta".

lalo is studying art in college. his drawing concepts teacher dismissed a drawing he spent 6 hours on and turned in because it was of him and his car. she told him "my son races cars and thats dangerous so you have to turn in a different drawing". his drawing professor was a white lady.

i didnt grow up speaking spanish in small racist town but i did grow up with art guilt & this is what me & lalo bonded over. his parents sacrificed a lot to send him to school, because they wanted him to do better than they did. my parents did the same. my mom came to the u.s. from mexico and was the first in her family to go to college, against her parents wishes. and she did this all in the hopes that the next generation of her family wouldnt grow up in poverty. & so that's me. i don't know how to explain the guilt of knowing how much your parents & your grandparents have sacrificed for you to have a better chance at life & at the same time knowing that all you want to do is paint. its like saying "fuck you mom & dad, i'm getting an art degree! in today's economy! despite what generations before me have given up in order to give me this option!" for the longest time i wouldn't even let myself consider studying art because of this, because it seemed like a slap in the face to my parents. and so i didnt. and i hated it. and it took me forever to realize that i would never be happy doing anything else. & this is what me and lalo bonded over, a shared guilt in having illegal moms & studying art.


*not his real name
*Lalo is as super-pale as me


cross-posted at LatinoClash

I WAS ON TV TONIGHT

so a couple of hours after i get home from work i get a voicemail out of the blue from a reporter wanting to interview me about feminism for the ten o'clock news that night. he got my number from the feminist facebook group i started. there is a group called the dallas feminists, and the first meeting i went to was last month, and that was going to be their last if no one stepped in to lead so i decided to take it on. that's the only meeting i've been to. & then bam i'm the go-to person for feminist commentary? so strange!
this is about southwest airlines plastering a sports illustrated swimsuit model on the side of a plane.
disclaimer: i had 30 minutes to prepare & there was only one take & i'm terribly camera shy!

TRANSCRIPT & VIDEO
(i'm at 1:43)

SO HOW DID I DO?

Privileged Kids Don't Get It

(image via Guanabee)

This is a picture of Tulane Law Students at a "Border Party" organized by the president of the student bar association, Melissa Swabacker.

I get themed parties, I've been to my share (beard party, hot pants party, ugly sweater party), but beards, hot pants, and ugly sweaters are not cartoonish representations of cultural groups that real people belong to. I don't live on the border, but it's where my mother was born, and its something that my family has been crossing back and forth (and that has been crossing them back and forth) for 200 years.

Here are some excerpts from Wikipedia's entry on Cultural Appropriation:

The term cultural appropriation can have a negative connotation. It generally is applied when the subject culture is a minority culture or somehow subordinate in social, political, economic, or military status to the appropriating culture; or, when there are other issues involved, such as a history of ethnic or racial conflict between the two groups.
It can include the introduction of forms of dress or personal adornment, music and art, religion, language, or social behavior. These elements, once removed from their indigenous cultural contexts, may take on meanings that are significantly divergent from, or merely less nuanced than, those they originally held.

& this isn't the first time college students have decided to reduce the border into stereotypes.

A Republican student club at NYU organized a game on campus called "Find the Illegal Immigrant"

College Republicans at Boise State University promoted a speech with a “food stamp drawing” that requires climbing through a hole in a fence and offering fake identification for a shot at wining a dinner at a Mexican restaurant.

Tulane Law Students Harsh Our Hope Buzz With Mexican Stereotype Party

This Post is About Birth Control & Periods

so i decided to switch to the birth control pill that gives only 4 periods a year ( a generic version) instead of the regular 12 periods a year pill. i waited to make my decision until i read some studies about the effects of this kind of pill & apparently there is no benefit in monthly blood loss for women, so why not?
before, a month supply of birth control cost me about 20-24 dollars + a box of tampons. now, a 3 month supply costs 41 dollars. that's half as much as the 12 periods a year pill. & 8 less boxes of tampons to buy. so this simple switch in prescription is saving me close to $200 a year. i didnt expect to save that much. my reasons for switching were based on the unpleasantness of periods & on reducing waste. if i had known it would cost half as much i would have switched much sooner. i know prices on prescription drugs vary greatly depending on whether you have insurance or not & on what kind, but if anyone was thinking about trying out seasonale or one of its generics, one factor to consider might be how much you save in a year. because it sucks that it costs $376 a year to not have a baby & if it costs $180 to not have a baby, that sucks a little less.

Calling out Privilege = Racism/Sexism??

This was posted on the facebook group of my local FMLA chapter:

My recent experience with sexism.

One of my friends, Katherine, recently posted a picture of a t-shirt that says, "I had an abortion." I expressed my concern that these sorts of shirts are likely to be counter-productive by provoking the opposition to mobilize. She responded by saying, "Thank you for your straight white man's opinion on how women should ask for their rights. I do not care to engage with you when you continually speak from a position of unrelenting privilege."

I regard this as being extremely sexist and racist. Is it wrong of me to comment on the strategy involved in maintaining equal treatment under the law or do you think it's none of my business because I'm a white male?

I'm concerned that there are a lot of people who share Katherine's attitude.

My two cents:
I think what she was questioning is "who gets to decide what is counter-productive and what isn't? and especially to an issue that affects my body?" whether or not she was a jerk about it, wev, that's a diff debate. & if you are going to write "I had an abortion" on the front a t-shirt, I'm pretty sure provocation is what she was going for anyway. Maybe instead of "expressing his concern" this guy could have asked her why she wants to bring up this issue in a provocative manner & maybe understand where she's coming from before he decides if its counter-productive.

What do you think?