Posts Tagged ‘bigotry’

TSA ‘molestation’ complaint gives us new ways to hate on gays, Muslims

Apr 29th, 11 / 0 Comments

Did you guys hear about this?

Former Miss USA Susie Castillo received an airport patdown that so violated her personal space that it felt to her like “molestation.” Here’s the video she recorded soon after the pat-down:

Here’s my take: there is a suggestion here (not coming from Susie Castillo, but coming from the wide coverage of this ‘news event’) that the ‘former Miss USA’ was ‘molested’ because she’s so pretty. If this is the narrative–and I believe it’s there, at least to a moderate extent–then the secondary issue–maybe even the primary issue–is one of self-righteous homophobia.

Two pieces of evidence: First, take a look at this post at the blog The Great Political Abyss in which the writer argues that

[p]eople are going to come to the TSA’s defense and say a woman conducted the pat-down, so there could not have been anything sexual about the touching. Do these people honestly believe that none of the female TSA screeners are lesbian or bisexual? There are plenty of lesbian and bisexual women in other careers, why would there not be at least a small percentage working for the TSA? It is just a fact of life that some women are sexually attracted to other women. Even more women are sexually attracted to unusually gorgeous women.

Who is to say, this TSA agent did not abuse her power to grope Susie Castillo?

Second: If you’re not convinced by the above, take a look at the reader comments about this issue at The Blaze. I won’t include any of those comments here because they’re just too gross.

This doesn’t even address the general reaction coming from some commentators that “if your procedure leads you to vigorously frisk Miss USA for a bomb, there’s a problem with your procedure.” Because she’s too pretty! Because she looks too American! So now we’re back to the suggestion that the best airport security procedure is one that makes use of profiling tactics including profiling–by race, by gender, by degree of attractiveness.

Which is awesome.

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someone spewed hate speech all over my car.

Dec 5th, 10 / 4 Comments

On Friday morning, I walked outside and found these things written in the snow on my car:

peace symbol and the word 'AIDS' written in the snow on the hood of my car

This was written on the hood of my car: peace symbol and the word 'AIDS'

(backwards) swastika next to the words 'nig nogs are smelly'

written on the hood of my car: (backwards) swastika next to the words 'nig nogs are smelly'

on the rear window and trunk of my car: the phrase "I ♡ penis" below a drawing of a penis

on the rear window and trunk of my car: the phrase "I ♡ penis" below a drawing of a penis

I don’t believe these were random markings from some drunk undergraduate; I believe I was targeted by one or more people living in my neighborhood. Here’s why:

First, I’m gay. Openly gay. Like really obviously openly gay. And I’ve had the experience of walking down my street and seeing a group of young men sitting in lawn chairs, drinking beer, and very obviously watching me with hostility. I’ve had the experience of knowing, just knowing, they were talking about me. I’ve had this experience more than once in my neighborhood. I’m a normal looking human being (unless you consider being an obviously gay lady ‘abnormal’), and I haven’t done anything that could gain me any enemies, so I can only attribute the hostility to the one thing: the decisive evidence that I look like a lady who might be attracted to ladies.

Second, my car was the only one that had any writing on it at all. If the ‘graffiti artists’ wanted a blank slate, there were plenty of cars with snow on them on my street. If they wanted to, they could have marked up three different cars, one with each hateful utterance and symbol! But no. My car was the only one that was touched. There’s nothing on my car that marks it as the possession of a gay person–not a bumper sticker, not a rainbow, nothing. If it’s true that the graffiti has an antigay message, then whoever wrote it had to have prior knowledge that a gay person owned the car.

Third, though there isn’t a clear antigay message in the graffiti, I believe there’s enough evidence in the three photos to point to an antigay motivation. Here’s what I think happened:

ASSHOLE: Hey, this is that gay bitch’s car. Watch this. draws enormous penis on rear window; steps back to admire work. To friends: She’s gonna love that. has really good idea, writes ‘I ♡ penis!’

ASSHOLE’S FRIENDS: Dude!

ASSHOLE: realizes that another thing he knows about gay people is that they have AIDS, writes ‘aids’ on top of car. Looks at friends. I just wrote aids on her car. looks back at car, draws peace symbol to fill up remaining space.

ASSHOLE’S FRIENDS: Oh my god, dude. You’re messed up. laughter.

ASSHOLE: remembers the recent spate of antisemitic attacks in Bloomington, draws swastika on hood. Realizes this is his chance to also say something racist! Lookit this, guys. writes ‘nig nogs are smelly’ on hood. That’ll teach her to stop being all gay in front of me.

I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to feel all intimidated and scared. I’m supposed to be terrified that someone has learned my secret and is announcing to the world that I’m a fag. Ooooooooooooooooo scary!

Here, dude, I’ll just save you the trouble: Yup, I’m a fag. I have lots of friends who are also fags, and they don’t particularly care who knows it. You know why? Because we’re not afraid of ourselves, not anymore. And we want, through our words and actions, to encourage others who haven’t yet come out of the closet to see that it’s okay to be gay and it’s okay for other people to know it.

You know what else? The world’s on my side, asshole. My friends, queer or not, found what you did disgusting and obnoxious and reprehensible. The police took it seriously, filed a full report and added extra patrols in my neighborhood. If your goal was to scare me into silence, your actions had the exact opposite effect.

See you around, kiddo. I’ll be the one shoving my gay all up in your face every time you watch me walk past your house minding my own business. You should maybe thinking about minding yours.

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brb making you cry

Oct 19th, 10 / 1 Comment

This is the most touching “It Gets Better” video I have seen. I think it’s literally impossible not to cry while watching it.

via Gawker

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a time when I didn’t speak up against anti-gay behavior

Sep 27th, 10 / 5 Comments

This graphic is brought to you by Genderbitch, who describes herself as “Just another pagan, kinky, queer trans chick with disabilities”:

I found the genderbitch blog because of a recent post published there on “calling out” bigoted behavior, and because I’ve been thinking about a recent incident in which I chose not to “call out” a classmate who said something homophobic in front of (but not about) me and a small number of my colleagues. I didn’t say a word when it happened and, upon later reflection and rehashing, decided that even if I could do it again I still wouldn’t speak up.

You know me, right? I don’t have a problem with making enemies, and I have no problem with calling people out when it’s deserved. I even sympathize with the author of Genderbitch when she writes, of her struggle with the idea of “allies”:

I’m not gonna lie, I find the entire concept of an ally to be vile and revolting. Mostly because I think creating an above and beyond the call of duty label for people to just be decent human beings (which is what fighting oppression makes you) gives them more entitlement and a greater capacity to hold their efforts hostage to influence us.

I don’t mind making enemies, and I feel fine about my ability and willingness to stand up against bigoted behavior. Yet I didn’t call out the bigotry when it happened right in front of me. Why?

In part because while the bigotry wasn’t about me, it sort of was about me. I mean, in the sense that anyone who’s paying any attention at all can figure out that there’s something gender-y, perhaps even queer, going on with me. I wear men’s clothes and men’s shoes and I keep my hair very, very short. For example:

If you say something homophobic near me, you’re also saying something homophobic about me, to me, and at me. Which means, in case you were wondering, that I have a right to call you out if I choose to.

In this situation, I didn’t choose to. Because at that moment, I was busy learning that my classmate was at best oblivious and at worst ignorant about gender politics. Because at that moment, it became clear that there was no point in calling out the bigotry–if he hadn’t figured out that he shouldn’t be all gaybashing in front of me already, there was no point in bringing it to his attention. Because his bigoted comment was enough hostility, directed though it was at someone else, for me to bear for one day.

And, most importantly, because my colleagues–who didn’t speak up either–brought it up to me later and asked if we could talk about what we should have done. There wasn’t a question in anybody’s mind that something anti-gay had happened; the question was whether any one of us should have or could have handled it better. My colleagues–all of whom are, to the best of my knowledge, straight.

Straight, but allies. Allies who believe they had a responsibility to speak up against bigotry even though I wasn’t willing to speak up myself.

There will always be bigots, right? What we hope is that there are enough people who abhor bigoted behavior that sometimes it’s not necessary to call bigotry out. Sometimes it’s enough to just turn your back on it.

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I’m going to stop calling things ‘lame’.

Jul 29th, 10 / 0 Comments

Here’s why, courtesy of the fantastic webcomic Riot Nrrd:

cartoon describing why it's not ok to call things lame

It’s ableist to call something “lame.” It’s an offensive and marginalizing term, on par with calling something “gay” or “retarded.” Henceforth, I will work to strike “lame” and all other ableist terminology from my vocabulary.

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turns out Gallagher has become an evil clown.

Jul 8th, 10 / 0 Comments

The Seattle newspaper The Stranger is a free alternative newsweekly, so I suppose that explains the strident anti-conservative tone of a recent piece about the aging comic Gallagher.

The primary target of this piece is Gallagher himself; the author describes Gallagher as “a paranoid, delusional, right-wing religious maniac,” then offers up some pretty convincing evidence:

Gallagher is upset about a lot of things. Young people with their sagging pants (in faintly coded racist terms, he explains that this is why the jails are overcrowded—because “their” baggy pants make it too hard for “them” to run from the cops). Tattoos: “That ink goes through to your soul—if you read your Bible, your body is a sacred temple, YOU DIPSHIT.” People naming their girl-children Sam and Toni instead of acceptable names like Evelyn and Betty: “Just give her some little lesbian tendencies!” Guantánamo Bay: “We weren’t even allowed to torture all the way. We had to half-torture—that’s nothin’ compared to what Saddam and his two sons OOFAY and GOOFAY did.” Lesbians: “There’s two types—the ugly ones and the pretty ones.” (Um, like all people?) Obama again: “If Obama was really black, he’d act like a black guy and get a white wife.” Michael Vick: “Poor Michael Vick.” Women’s lib: “These women told you they wanna be equal—they DON’T.” Trans people: “People like Cher’s daughter—figure that out. She wants a penis, but she has a big belly. If you can’t see your dick, you don’t get one.” The Rice Krispies elves: “All three of those guys are gay. Look at ‘em!” The Mexicans: “Look around—see any Mexicans? Nope. They’ll be here later for the cleanup.” The French: “They ruin our language with their faggy words.

Holy crap. With hate speech like that, Gallagher deserves as much disgusted critique as writer Lindy West can dish out. But she doesn’t stop there; the audience, she explains, are “rabid, frothing conservative dickwads” who lap up Gallagher’s racist, xenophobic rant. Okay, so the question becomes: Is West responding in kind? Is she unloading hate speech on the group she dislikes in a similar way to Gallagher’s anti-gay, anti-liberal “act”?

First, I want to make clear that while all hate speech is abominable, hate speech that targets marginalized groups is more abominable than hate speech that targets dominant groups. Why? Because of power and inertia. Marginalized groups–the LGBTQ community, for example–in lots of ways exist at the mercy of dominant groups–in this case, the heteronormative community. “Should we give them the right to marry?” “Should we pass laws to protect them against anti-gay violence?” “Should we let them claim each other on their tax returns?” It’s taken for granted that American society needs to decide what rights to “grant” gays. The alternative would be to assume that the LGBTQ community already has the same rights as everyone else, and laws that violate those rights need to be struck down.

Power. Inertia.

So calling a language “faggy,” advocating “girly” names to avoid giving daughters “lesbian tendencies,” finishing up an act by, as West describes it, smashing a plate of fruit cocktail and an Asian vegetable mix and announcing “This is the China people and queers!!!”–way more abominable than calling Gallagher’s appreciative audience “rabid, frothing conservative dickwads.” It’s an audience, as Gallagher himself points out, filled with white people, and the risk of getting beaten, killed, or legislated against for being a conservative white person is fairly low relative to the risk that goes along with being gay, African American, Mexican, or any of the other ethnic and cultural minorities against whom Gallagher is stirring up the pot of hatred.

Which makes West’s response understandable but still not quite okay. I say this as someone who absolutely adored this article, who is aghast that hate speech like this attracts any audience whatsoever, and who has the same impulse to rage against anyone who would even chuckle at Gallagher’s diatribe (which, by the way, doesn’t even seem particularly funny).

Anyway, you should read the whole article, which is fairly short and extremely well crafted, then let me know what you think.

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principles for ethical educational research

May 15th, 10 / 4 Comments

I’ve been thinking lately about the burden of speaking for others.

Because I’m an educational researcher, and speaking for others is the heart of what we do. We walk into a classroom, watch some things happen for a little while, then make decisions about which stories are worth telling, and how, and why, and to whom. And this is precisely what we’re supposed to do. This is precisely why we head into the classroom in the first place: to tell stories about what learning looks like.

But it can be such a heavy burden, this speaking for others. You know the burden is heavy when the simplest challenge is finding a way to represent what happened in a way that everybody would agree is reasonable and accurate. But that’s not where our responsibility ends, because no research findings are politically or socially neutral. Every representation of research is an articulation of a belief system; it’s an expression of a worldview; it’s a document that leads people to act in ways that can help or hurt the populations we hope to represent.

And the burden gets heavier for researchers working with marginalized, oppressed, or disenfranchised populations, since speaking for these groups can so easily fall into a reproduction of the oppression that rains down on them from all around. Paulo Freire warns us against the “false charity” that so often comes from members of dominant groups who wish to help the oppressed:

False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the “rejects of life,” to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands–whether of individuals or entire peoples–need to be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world.

It seems to me that false charity emerges when a person becomes too confident that she knows and understands the needs and interests of the oppressed groups she hopes to represent. False charity can therefore look like an awful lot of things: Research focusing on vocational education for poor kids. (Why would we dare to assume working class kids wouldn’t want to go to college?) Research showing working class kids are capable of doing college-level work. (Using college readiness as our measure of ‘success’ allows policymakers to continue to make decisions that assume that college readiness is the most important goal, thereby continuing to marginalize kids for whom college is neither desired nor possible.) Research documenting the learning trajectories of immigrant students. (We’re at a cultural point at which nearly anything that’s said about immigrants, especially in America, can be twisted to hurt the very populations it’s intended to help.)

I’ve been working in a small alternative high school populated primarily by lower class and working-class kids. I’ve seen miracles happen in this school for many of its students, and I’ve met graduates of the school who talk about their time in the school as the most powerful and important educational experience of their lives. Sitting in a classroom in this school, or walking down its halls, or talking to its students, reminds me of how powerfully transformative an education can be. I wish you could all spend a day at this school. You would walk out joyful, hopeful and optimistic about the future of our children. You would walk out with a renewed faith in human beings.

But you won’t get the chance to visit this school, because the school board decided to shut it down. I probably don’t need to tell you that I think this is a mistake. I further believe that the decision to close this school was motivated by a deep cultural prejudice against poor kids. We don’t often say it out loud, but we hold a cultural belief that a child’s value is largely determined by the likelihood that she will go to college; our culture is embarrassed by its children who are poor, who live in rented houses or youth shelters or foster care, who are not college-bound. Our society is built on the backs of these kids; we need their labor to keep our society running–and this need only embarrasses us all the more.

It’s the job of researchers who work with marginalized populations to represent their research in a way that not only serves the best interests of those populations but also helps to rewrite the cultural narrative that keeps these populations oppressed. It’s not easy work, simple work, or quick work, but it’s necessary work.

With these things in mind, I want to offer a set of principles for educational research that I hope can help guide researchers in our work with marginalized populations–and maybe our work with all sorts of learning populations.

1. We exist in the service of the communities we work for. I have to believe that when we forget this, it’s on accident. But we must never, ever forget that our work should first of all support the needs and interests of both the learners and the educators working inside of our chosen learning communities. This means that we have to actually talk to the learners and educators to find out what they want, and we have to take them at their word and not, for example, guess that if they knew more about the world they’d want something different.

2. We exist to serve the needs and interests of the communities we work for. It is not our job to decide whether a community’s interests are good or right; it’s only our job to work in service of those interests. If a researcher can’t get behind the stated needs and interests of the members of her chosen research community, then she needs to find another community to research.

3. It’s our job to represent our work in ways that support ethical decisions by policymakers and external stakeholders. Educational researchers serve as an important bridge between learning communities and policymakers who make decisions about the futures of those communities. One of our most essential roles is to represent research findings in a way that is clear and useful to policymakers while also representing to those policymakers findings that support the needs and interests of the communities we serve. I’m not saying this is easy. I’m just saying it’s essential.

4. All educational research is social activism, and all educational researchers are social activists. There is no such thing as politically neutral educational research. Let me say that again: There is no such thing as politically neutral educational research. All statements of research findings are statements of a belief system about the role of education, and all researchers must therefore do research that both aligns with and serves to articulate that belief system. Further, all researchers must make their belief system clear, to themselves, to the communities they work for, and to policymakers who make decisions about those communities. They must always ensure that their belief system aligns with the needs and interests of the communities they work for, and if there is a conflict then the community’s interests always trump the belief system of its researchers. If the ethical conflict is irreconcilable, then the researcher must find another community to represent.

Here I want to crib a quote from Jim Gee, who laid out his own set of principles for ethical human behavior in his book Social Linguistics and Literacies. After describing these principles, he made this declaration:

I would claim that all human beings would, provided they understood them, accept these conceptual principles. Thus, failing to live up to them, they would, for consistency’s sake, have to morally condemn their own behavior. However, I readily admit that, should you produce people who, understanding these principles, denied them, or acted as though they did, I would not give up the principles. Rather, I would withhold the term ‘human’, in its honorific, not
biological, sense, from such people.

This declaration was made in the second edition of Gee’s book; if you own the third edition, don’t bother looking for the quote–for reasons that are unclear to me, he removed it and instead simply asserts that we really shouldn’t bother trying to change the minds of people who disagree with these ethical principles. I want to call for a return to the stronger language. Given the incredibly high stakes of public education in America, we don’t have time for politeness. We’re in a fight for the very lives of the students we serve, and it may be that too much politeness is what got us here in the first place.

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how to make like an ally

Apr 11th, 10 / 1 Comment

You read Sady Doyle’s blog Tiger Beatdown, right? Everybody reads Sady Doyle’s blog Tiger Beatdown. If you’ve never been to this site, may I suggest you leave my blog immediately in order to immerse yourself in the glory and ladyrage that is Tiger Beatdown? Here, I’ll even do something I never ever do: I’ll give you a link to her blog that takes you directly away from my blog and deposits you at her blog, which if you haven’t read her blog is actually where you belong anyway.

Today I want to direct your attention to the most recent Tiger Beatdown post, which is about feminist allies and offers a nice description, in the person of one Freddie de Boer, of how not to be an ally. Freddie, it appears, is Sady Doyle’s enemy in the worst way: He explains that, as a feminist man, he’s tired of being silenced by feminist women who purport to have more right to speak about sexism than he does!

Well, Sady gives ol’ Freddie a glorious smackdown, which I’m sure he has already interpreted as yet another example of why we shouldn’t let ladies speak their minds. In the middle of her smackdown, Sady offers up what I consider to be most excellent advice for anybody who wants to serve as an ally to a marginalized group. I’m going to include an abridged version of her advice below, though this should in no way hinder your intention to read the entire post in its gorgeous entirety.

Sady writes:

A common phrase, which just about every ally has ever heard or been instructed to heed, is, “if it’s not about you, don’t make it about you.” That is: If someone is describing a gross, oppressive behavior that some people in your privileged group engage in, then there is no reason to get defensive unless you personally engage in that behavior, in which case you need to stop complaining about your hurt feelings and focus on how quickly and completely you can cut that shit out. And rushing to the defense of people who do engage in the oppressive behavior, even if you don’t engage in it, is not acceptable, because you’re showing solidarity with your privilege, rather than with the people who are being hurt or oppressed. There is no better way to announce that you seriously don’t care about racism than to leap to the defense of some racist-ass people and ask people of color to stop talking about them in such a critical tone, for example.

To illustrate what the ally behavior Sady describes above actually looks like on the ground, I want to tell a story about my friend Adam, in whom I recently–and unexpectedly–found an ally.

I have a history of being a woman, and I also have a history of being involved in romantic relationships with women. I talk about the first thing all. the. effing. time. I haven’t done much talking about the second thing, though I’m proud to announce that I’m getting better at talking about it.

I was out with a group of friends a few nights ago and decided to talk about it. Specifically, I decided to talk about my tendency to judge people who affiliate with organizations that make it their business to try to keep gay people as unhappy and unable to live freely and without risk of personal or psychological harm as possible. (I do not accept ignorance or political apathy as an excuse, in case you were wondering.) Uproar ensued around the table, which was filled with people who to my knowledge did not have any history of dating people of the same gender. Everybody wanted to weigh in on whether I was right or wrong to judge others. Everybody wanted to weigh in on whether I was being closed minded. Which was fine with me, really. These guys are my friends, and they seem to like me an awful lot, and I wasn’t mad or upset or anything. I was interested in learning how each of my friends (some of whom belong to their own marginalized–or even doubly marginalized–groups) understood the notion of marginalization. I was intensely interested in fighting about this issue for as long as they were willing to fight.

But Adam, who I believe to be a straight white man, did something I didn’t expect: He acted as my ally. He participated in the conversation, but he mainly did so to help me to clarify my stance and open up space for me to speak. He did this so gracefully and so intelligently that I assumed he agreed with me but only later realized I actually don’t know his opinion on my stance toward people who affiliate with anti-gay organizations. I don’t think he ever weighed in.

Adam is a classmate, and he’s near the end of his graduate career. In class, he’s kinda pushy and extremely talkative; he tends to dominate discussions and it’s sometimes hard to get a word in. But on the other hand, he knows an awful lot about his field and has a lot to say about it.

So I know Adam can dominate a conversation, which means that in Friday night’s discussion, he chose to stand back in order to give me more room to speak.

This is Adam:

Adam knows a thing or two about how to listen. Adam is an ally. I didn’t thank him on Friday night, so Adam, consider this my thanks.

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as goes Detroit…

Mar 22nd, 10 / 4 Comments
file under: if you’re not mad, you’re not paying attention.

I knew the recession had hit Michigan, my home state, harder than it’s hit any other place in the country; I knew this because I’ve been following the news and because my family lives in Metropolitan Detroit. But my recent trip to Michigan reminded me of just how bad things have gotten.

This is not the Michigan I remember. It’s not just that some stores are boarded up and some houses are sitting empty; entire clusters of stores point their vacant windows toward passing traffic. (The cars are heavily American; the bumper stickers declare support for this or that union; there is pride, after all, for what little it’s worth these days.) Priced to sell! the For Sale signs declare. Will build to suit. It’s not one or two houses that have been emptied out; it’s neighborhoods that have begun to empty, the streets peppered with brown-lawned lots and swinging realtors’ signs.

Recession in Detroit doesn’t only look like this:

 It also looks like this:

And like this, as captured by a Michigan resident running a blog called Sub-Urban Decay:

The word “decimated” literally means “reduced by ten percent.” Decimated, therefore, doesn’t begin to capture the blight tearing through metro Detroit.

Because it’s not just the economy that’s imploding. Detroit Public Schools is on record as the lowest performing urban school district in the country. The graduation rate across DPS hovers at 58%, and the district’s Emergency Financial Manager, Robert Bobb, recently announced planned closures of 45 schools in the district, for a total of 140 closed schools in the last five years. That’s over half the district. And by the way, Bobb was brought in because state law requires it when a district fails to meet basic fiscal responsibility guidelines.

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, you may be aware, resigned his post in 2007 upon pleading guilty to two felony counts of obstruction of justice. He was also, among other things, the target of a scandal involving Tamara Greene, a stripper who performed at the mayoral residence and was later shot and killed in an as-yet unsolved case and a civil lawsuit in which Kilpatrick was accused of retaliating against the police officers in charge of the murder investigation. Because this is Detroit, leaving the Manoogian Mansion in disgrace is not the end of your story: Recently, new details have emerged about an FBI corruption investigation involving both Kilpatrick and his father.

Detroit isn’t the only city in Michigan, but in many ways it’s the most important one. As it goes, so goes the state. And it’s going to hell these days even faster than ever.

You want, as you watch the empty buildings flash past, as you hear the stories of families getting their water shut off and people talking about both the need and the utter impossibility of securing a second job in this floundering economy, as you watch the kids boarding their schoolbus in the morning, their parents slowly spreading off toward their cars, their bikes, their houses, you want to identify the simple cause of decay and you want to locate the simple solution. There are some things we know now that we didn’t know before: It’s not necessarily good to treat home ownership as a god-given, universal right. Lending practices should be more rigorous, and banks must be held to vastly higher standards than they have historically been. Credit card companies are largely evil, with a tiny dollop of forced generosity tossed in by the federal government.

But let’s say we take care of all that, and still we watch as 3 out of every 5 kids drop out of high school, and still we watch as people who are doing everything they’re told to do–working a full time job, paying their bills on time, making a budget and sticking to it–still find themselves realizing they’ll never have enough money to retire, still find themselves making tough decisions like whether to set that extra 50 dollars aside at the end of the month for their child’s college fund or to use it to pay the credit card bill.

Let’s say we change the worst laws: We get some honest to goodness health care reform (hooray!), we hold the auto industry’s feet to the fire, we boot the Kwame Kilpatricks. But the problems is that these are patches pasted hastily across a blown-out tire. Politics, local or national, is about as corrupt in this country as can be, and the recent Supreme Court decision knocking down campaign finance laws will only make matters worse. Our economy relies on a few staple industries, puts all its economic eggs in one or two baskets, and then when the bottom of the basket falls out we’re all surprised when we have nothing to eat for breakfast. And you don’t have to be half paying attention to the health care debate to see how much this country hates poor people and minorities, especially its black and Latino popul
ation.

It’s shameful, and it leaves me feeling deflated and defeated. What use is there fighting against such powerful bigotry and self-protectionism? How can we turn a current so powerful it sweeps us all downstream?

Yet we do keep trying, I suppose. We take hope in the victories, even the small ones and especially the large ones like yesterday’s historic vote mandating health care for all. It’s a far from perfect bill, diluted down by special interests and the bigotry of conservative politicians, but as my friend Rafi says, I guess we need to take care not to let great be the enemy of good.

And, I would add, we need to take care not to mistake “good” for “good enough.”

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