Facebook

You can now follow me on Facebook guys. The links work a little bit better there and I can reach a woder audience. Trust me, I'll still be blogging it up like a champ though.

http://www.facebook.com/darren.j.glenn#!/pages/The-Angry-Homosexist/161037433921499

The Clint McCance Episode

Clint McCance. A name that will FOREVER make my blood boil. As one facebook user describes him, he is the "hillbilly jerk" that was determined to use both his voice as the elected vice president of an Eastern Arkansas school board and his facebook page to express a little bit more than distaste for the recent nationwide tribute to the five suicides of bullied queer high school students in the form of wearing purple.

To illustrate exactly the flame that is currently making the blood of this Angry Homosexist boil, let me just pull some of the quotes posted by this respected member of his community: "Seriously they want me to wear purple because five queers committed suicide. The only way I'm wearin' it for them is if they all commit suicide... I can't believe the people of this world have gotten this stupid. We are honoring the fact that they sinned and killed themselves because of their sin."

That was basically McCance calling down the shitstorm that he inevitably recieved. He was eventually interrogated by a genuinely puzzled and bewondered Anderson Cooper, who was in awe at what exactly the mechanics were that were at work when McCance made the conscious decision to not only formulate such an abjectly derogatory opinion, but also to publicize it in the attempt to facilitate to development of more anti-homosexual sentiment--the same kind that lead to the tragic (to say the least) suicides that sparked the memorial in the first place.

But this is not what is grinding my gears alone. I would not return to my blog after a 5 month hiatus just for one dumb-ass piece of self-righteous trash. What truly SICKENS me is the support that he is getting from people all over the internet. There is a facebook page... actually, here's the link:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Do-NOT-fire-Clint-McCance/128621650526071

"Do not fire Clint McCance" is there battle cry. Clint McCance supporters unite to voice their own dissent of homosexual proclivity as it naturally occurs. Users summoning text from THE BIBLE to breathe life into their hatred. Some people who posted even tried to work some gay conversion therapy magic in there. Again, being (notice I said BEING) a queer person was repeatedly condemned as a sin (in line with the thought of McCance) and that there is no reconciliation with an immutable preference built into one's being and a relationship with God.

At this point, I can only direct a fiery tirade to all those Clint McCance supporters out there, or those who, while not agreeing with his words and violent directives still use this as an opportuinity to condemn, not a lifestyle but a life...

This entire ordeal has made me more proclive to hate straight people. I'm already heterophobic--unable to trust heterosexuals as readily. But the words I saw on that facebook wall have burned into my mind and I can so easily say that I HATE straight folk. What if I did that? I hate Straight, White Conservative, Upper-middle class, American, English-speaking Christians. ALL of them. YOUR PEOPLE shit on the planet, strip the environment of it's resources, kill indigenous tribes with such ease that I'm conviced that it is just in your nature to destroy people of color. You erect shambles to encage your fellow earthlings and breed life just to destroy it in mass numbers, carving the flesh of millions on your carefully crafted overpriced dinnerware from mega-stores that are driving humble local business into the ground and creating slaveries across the globe in countries that "don't count." And then you have the nerve to stick your nose into a clean, leatherbound book to justify your thirst for the blood of God's creatures and God's children who are unable to love the same way you do. Who experience the same kinds of sexual urges you do (and you know you do) in just a different way. You look into a book written by other straight, white males in the past and IGNORE where it says that we are ALL (straight, gay, colored, white, American or from countries that don't count, human or animal) "fearfully and wonderfully made." A book so rife with interested, politically informent mistranslated that God doesn't even know where (esp. in the Old Testament) we get half this stuff from. You use that book to justify polluting the enivronment to transport yourselves to someone else's country to coloni--I mean, Christianize them, assimilate them and purge them of their "sin."

What if I were to say something like that? Fortunately, I am sober enough (barely, but my anger is not SO blinding) that i recognize that heterosexist does not equal heterosexual. Clint McCance, I thank you. You brought out the true ignorances in people. You reminded why I am... the Angry Homosexist.

--TAHS

The White Side of History

From Binghamton University's Right Side of History Page: "A civil rights struggle is brewing in America, and we want to be on the right side of history. Get involved to support equal rights for our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) friends!"


From the official Right Side of History website: "After extensive research, RSOH launched a pilot on Facebook to test the power of personalizing equality as a way to collect names of new supporters. RSOH Founder Brian Elliot invited 600 straight friends to join a group supporting his right to be a full citizen. Four weeks later, more than 19,000 people had joined "Give Brian Equality" - an effort to galvanize support for a single LGBT American's legal equality. Most of these supporters were straight, and few had ever been on an LGBT organization's constituent list before. The huge potential impact of rolling this out to LGBT Americans and their tens of millions of friends was immediately clear.

Based on this proof-of-concept pilot, we're building a platform that will have the power to amass the largest list of straight supporters of LGBT equality in the country. This standing army of supporters will be mobilized at critical times to take actions on behalf of their LGBT friends.

This is not your typical gay rights organization. We're losing the rainbow. We're reframing the issues. And we're making it easier than ever to get involved whether you're a frat guy in Alabama, a stay at home mom in Utah, or an activist in New York. Sign up and we'll keep you up to date on our progress. This will change everything."

Before I continue, it is worth noting the Herculean effort that it is taking for me to contain my laughter long enough to continue this blog post.

Firstly, the Right Side of History frames it's particular course of political action in that of the democratic process, filled with all its inspiring and humanizing discourse as well as all its insidiously problematic assertions about who deserves rights.

The movement is all about getting legislation passed to ensure legal equality across the board for people who's lifestyles are not considered in the current language of the law. It is about egalitarianism, and justice for all. I am all about these things too. And that's where our commonalities end...

The democratic process works like this: If one can reason with the folks in power, appeal to THEIR (monocultural) conception of "the law" (Themis) and make them believe that you are worthy of THEIR rights, then maybe they will redefine the boundaries of the law.

For example, Black Americans could not get in a word edge-wise with the white-washed, negrophobic US legislatures until they assimilated, adopted their Anglo-Saxon model of humanity/familial bonds/lifestyles and made them feel that they were "just like them" (see boomerang perception). Once Blacks in America appropriated the Anglo-Saxon legal language of "liberty," "justice" and "fairness," used their own cultural more of shame against them and made the Anglo-American government percieve them as American enough to have their rights. In order to progress in society, Blacks had to mimic the cultural ideal of the Anglo-Saxon imagination. Consequently, homosexual, non-Christian, financially disadvantaged, natural-haired and even female African Americans had to be placed to the background of the movement.

"F'cked Up Thing or Most F"cked Up Thing Ever?" (Round 1)

This is the first installment of a new online participant game I started. It's called "F*ucked Up Thing or Most F*ucked Up Thing Ever," where the audience decides whether or not what I post here is truly the most f"cked up thing they had ever seen, or just simply f*cked up.

The first example:

http://www.stylelist.com/2010/05/06/mission-makeover-from-fashion-fumble-to-stylishly-chic/?icid=main|aim|dl3|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stylelist.com%2F2010%2F05%2F06%2Fmission-makeover-from-fashion-fumble-to-stylishly-chic%2F

"I'm Not Myself Tonight" (shitshow s4 ep22)

This late Sunday night, I am dismounting the coat tails of a very profound weekend with regards to my homosexist advocacy. Specifically, my friends and I devoted this night to entering one of the most straight-dominated establishments of our college town in support of one of our heterosexual friends. In an effort to assist him on his quest for a good night, we entered the fold of a bar that I usually describe as: "it's basically where straight people go to exchange STDs."

Then plan? We all went deep undercover as straight people to act as a system of support for him while blending into the setting. The girls femmed it up to the point of atonishment, donning mildly catty, impressionable and subtly stereotypical long-island, hetera personas. My other male friend, who was already a natural hetero, simply fell into some of the more brutish aspects of the stereotypical male hetero consciousness. I astounded my friends almost to the point that they were genuinely disturbed by my complete transformation into a total bro-ski. I hardly recognized myself. I was the (socially) straightest I have ever been. It was awesome to be able to shed the coding of my sexuality and wondrous how easy it was. I could spend an entire blog series discussing the ways in which my race factored into my new alter-ego, but for tonight it would only be a tangent.

The outcome of the night is also inconsequential to this entry, but I will assert some of the basic phenomenology. It was an admitted relief to not be automatically marked or other-ized based on the perceived sexuality that I bare, or even by the way I present myself as a militant, political queered symbol (I have my reasons for doing that... yet another blog).

Now, why should straight people not be offended by us seemingly mocking them? Well let's talk about hegemony for one thing. I'll make the analogy to race (which I'm not particularly wont to do, but I find it appropriate this time). A Black American male, who already lives in a white-bred, white-owned, white-washed world, purposefully assuming a "White-acting" persona would never meet any criticism from the Major Social (my term for the mainstream) as he is (one could say "Finally") moulding himself to the normative standards of behavior that is set by the (Capitalist) culture that longs to fully subsume his body and mind. He's "finally" woken up and realized that holding onto his alterity in behavior only (one could say) 'exacerbated the problem of his Blackness. Likewise, in "straightening up," I'm only acting in accordance to the prescriptives that are already in place pressuring me to be like "everyone else" or behave "the way I should." If I did that everyday, I would make the friends that I should make, make my parents proud and I could enjoy an ease that, in my insecure stages prior to my metamorphosis into TAHS, I always craved. I don't want to exacerbate the problem of my non-heteronormativity by behaving like a homo, now do I?

The next point of contest to any possible offense is that, straight folk, I LIVE IN YOUR WORLD! I live in YOUR world, watch your television, am told that you are my role models, am expected to want to be like you and thus can only live comfortably (and I can trouble that) in the margins. And yet you make fun of us, you find us monstrous, wayward, unnatural and so far removed from yourselves that you would quicker puff out your chest and chat up how heavily and militantly preoccupied you are with only heterosexual encounters to the point of gross exaggeration and self-denial (yes guys, I see through some of you).

And lastly, I was embodying a "straight guy." Not "a guy who happens to be straight." There's a conceptual difference there that is key. I was aiming to mock the stereotype and found it hilarious how easily even a caricature of a member of the Major Social can blend in and fit in the world. Going for that Platonic essence of male heterosexual sociality is what made this experiment valuable in the first place. I recognize intimately that heterosexuals are more than just heterosexuals and are complex agents of multiple nuanced identities. The critique that my "performance" was based on however was of those men who are unnecessarily overcoded by their heterosexuality.

I'm not done analyzing last night by a long shot. Especially given the encounter I had towards the tail end with the girl who cried the word "faggot" three too many times in front of the wrong Angry Homosexist. I will leave you with a link to a piece of satirical comedy wherein the character is threatened by the phenomenon pursuant to what my firends and I accomplished last night: the ability to shed the overcoding of our respective alternate sexualities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFjWRGaV-Fs

--TAHS

Redefining Schooling, Redefining Society (Class Assignment no. 7)

This week's reading got into what is, for me, the most valuable and crucial element of Multicultural Eduction; and that is it's value as a tool for expanding Social Justice.

Specifically, the Sleeter and Grant reading (Chapter Six), discusses this beautifully in detailing the theoretical merit in "Education that is Multicultural and Social Reconstructionist." The theory herein is primarily concerned with "[eliminating the] oppression of one group of people by another" and "deals more directly... with oppression and social structural inequality" (pg. 188). The approach uses conflict theory to analyze why prejudices and inequalities exist and then seeks to stop the trend in the classroom.

The material this week was my favorite as we examined resistance theory, specifically anti-Black racist structures (of the more covert nature) in education. In adopting the Womanist framework to analyze systemic disadvantaging and strategize resistance, Anderson and Kharem highlight the kind of thought process that is needed to end discrimination at any level once and for all (without resorting to my chosen violent, insurrectionist, anarchist fantasies). This level of thinking is effective because it tackles the hegemony at work that Asa Hilliard names (and not simply it's nominally 'racist' manifestations) to eliminate the perpetuation of inequalities in classrooms. Recognizing these patterns of continued subjugation (stage 3 in Collins' Conflict Theory model) give us the tools to effect change.

So, what do I make of this all? For one thing, I feel that the readings say it all this week. I agree that intersectional models, like the womanist perspective of resistance theory, have a lot to offer in terms of stripping down hegemonic sturctures beyond their manifestations as any particular "ism." As a person who's very familiar with racism/negrophobia, nativism and homophobia/heterosexism, I feel that one can never be too critical and too sensitive to the structures in place.

I think that the more people who adopt this extra-critical mindset, the more effective we can be at eroding the reproduction of inequality.

Why don't they tell us?

Yesterday evening I had the great privelege of listening to Dr. Haroon Kharem and Dr. Noel S. Anderson speak at the symposium my EDUC 440 class put together. The volume of research and work the pair have put into reconstructing an afro-critical discourse in the master narrative of particularly American historiography. Their work, particularly that of Haroon Kharem, has prompted their respective careers in reforming the American education system to both correct the social justices issues that are rife within the current prescribed practice of schooling.

Perhaps one of the most striking points that were made throughout the symposium, for me, was Kharem's analysis of school curriculum, specifially the obfuscation of the African contribution to the creation of one of the most powerful cities in the world (NYC) and the African heritage of some of the most important figures in Western culture. His presentation questioned the images that are glorified in Black American schools of "Martin Luther King Jr. and basketball players," which ignore or, even more insultingly, abased the historical significance of Black scholars, activists, humanitarians, inventors and founders. (I mean, granted there is Black history month, but come on).

There are two questions that were raised in the context of this information that are pursuant to the point I'm weaving here.

The first was raised by a student in the back of the room, which struck me as just as arrogant as it was genuine (in all honesty). To paraphrase his question: "Aren't we perpetuating racial inequity/discrimination by calling it Black history to begin with?" He explained that as a Jewish person, he found it hardly relevant if and when educators identified a contribution to history as a Jewish one. His concern was that by highlighting the "blackness" of a historical contribution, event or figure one would make it susceptible to racially motivated biases.

Dr. Anderson's response to this question was respectful to the genuine note of the student, as well as unmitigatedly brilliant, thorough, effective and impressive. He explained that in order to understand something in earnest, one must understand its origins. My response to this question would have sounded as follows: "Well, the risk of highlighting the ethno-racial aspects of the contibution/event/figure is first to provide a wider and more nuanced understanding of minority groups that have historically been socially stigmatized, systemically oppressed and underrespresented in order to reverse the trends of these three effects of prejudice ion younger generations. Secondly, it would inspire members of said subaltern community to rise to these expectations rather than just the images highlighted by a capitalist, corporate media that is likely inherently biased against them."

Moreover, the second question was posed by Dr. Kharem as a point of rhetorical strategy in order to provoke us to this about the curriculum as it exists today. "Why don't they tell us?" The question refers to the sweeping achievements of many African Americans at a time when they were harldy possible. The obscure achievements that factored greatly in shaping literature, customs, technology, epistemology, philosophy and other commonplaces of "mainstream" Western culture. My personal response to this question is for another blog at another time. I feel, however, that it important to keep that critical skepticism in the back of our minds.

--TAHS

Just How far We've Come (Class Assignment no. 6)

This week in class was a tremendous learning experience. The theory behind the "Human Relations" practice in education that Sleeter/Grant presented in the reading was fascinating. Even more interesting were the answers to the "Equity and Diversity Awareness" quiz, that proved to crystallize for me just how egregious the systemic barriers for people of disadvantaged groups are. As a matter of fact, my reaction to the results of the quiz were so charging that I would have blogged about it regardless of the assignment.

I got 11 out of the 15 questions correct, which is not too bad. As an ardent skeptic, not much surprises me about just how corrupt the network of bipolitical institutions in America are. However, the ones that I did get wrong were so shocking that it proves to color my picture of our nation in an even darker light, which really is something.

Specifically the 8th question:

"According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median annual income for U.S. white men, 25 years or older, who have earned graduate degrees is $80,000. What are the median annual incomes for Latina and Native American women, 25 years or older, who have earned graduate degrees?"

The answer was "50,000 and 40,000 respectively." That is horrendous. I honestly did not think that the professional world was that cruel to people who had their degrees. I would hope my alarm is understandable. If the problematic attitudes that create these discrepancies are still at work in this day and age, then when will they end?

And then the more heartbreaking question that surprised me was the 2nd actually:

"Compared with white women, how likely are African American women in the U.S. to die during childbirth due to lack of access to prenatal care...?"

The answer is not twice as likely. It's four times as likely. This is an outrage. This is an outrage that teachers need to be knowledgeable about in order to successfully get to know and educate his/her repective class.

As a matter of fact, taking this quiz may help students understand one another better and what things their peers go through because of their respective differences. This is pursuant to the Human Relations approach posed in the Sleeter/Grant reading. Specifically, in handling the role the perception plays in the process of peer categorization (Allport).

One thing that taking this quiz revealed to me is the importance of the social justice portion of Multicultural Education. That is, in the long run, effective Multicultural Education--while I still contend the goal is still mutual understanding--should also aim to mitigate these systemic problems that create such a fragmented social in this country. it's just difficult to mend these fragements when you're unaware that they exist.

http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/quiz/quizNEW.pdf
--TAHS

Education Policy Successes, Failures and Restructuring (Class Assignment no. 5)

So this week's reading for EDUC440 was indeed the most interesting to me since reading Anderson's critical analysis of the failures of Brown vs. Board of Education (which was superbly educating). Herein, the authors conveyed a look at the ways in which standardized testing and standardized test-taking are problematic in addressing the cultural affectations of a diverse classroom.

More specifically, Professor and education expert Linda Darling-Hammond examines the promise, success and failures of President George W. Bush's 1000 page "No Child Left Behind" act 2002, expanding on the understanding of uneven schooling in the Unites States. She critiques the use of punishmentand sanctions that pressure schools to educate students to test well rather than expand their academic abilities and understandings.

Coupled with the already uneven schooling situation in the wake of an improperly executed "Brown vs. Board of Education," the sactions that fund schools that are able to perform better encourage the better teachers to work at under-performing schools as only a temporary spring board into the former schools, further disadvantaging students. Since the problems of NCLB were not clear to me up until I began taking this class, here is a link to a fictional analogy that parodies the situation, which can help anyone understand the issues without being an educator or education student:

http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/no-dentist.html

Delpit, Anderson and Wayne Au all expand Hammond's picture of a problem-ridden school system by racializing the questions of why NCLB does not work. The ability for a child to test well, as NCLB encourages, is contingent on his/her ability to thrive in an Anglo-American classroom that instills test-taking strategies: "I believe we must overcome... the narrow and essentially Eurocentric curriculum... so that they do not reflect the only... 'the public lives of white Western men.'" (Delpit, 181). To illustrate her concerns, Delpit explores many examples of social location making success in accessible for diverse students such as the problems brought about by decontextualized multiple-choice problems that would otherwise be accessible for a wider range of students, the stereotyping that leads to "[in]appropriate instruction" of individuals, and the misinterpretation of community norms that do not match the mainstream norms such as Native American story-telling codes.

Even more interestingly, Anderson uses the concept of "Stereotype threat" as a way to explore certain semi-structural problems in instruction that encourage students of color to become self-fulfilling prophecies of failure, or to concieve of their success in potentially harmful ways.

In my reading of the poor educational climate described hitherto, the need for education reform on multiple levels is dangerously necessary. I think Hammond's recommendation for a less flawed system of operation (ESEA), wherein a continuous improvement model that incorporates "multiple measure of achievement" (6), can allow enough flexibility in the classroom for teachers to also combat some of the racialized disadvantages that exist in classroom instruction. Essentially, if a teacher had more discretion in evaluating how her students live up to an educational standard, disparate cultural norms, means of expression and individual needs could no longer act as hindrances to a student's success.


--TAHS

The Capitalist and the Queer - A Love Story?

This blog entry was also inspired by a conversation with a certain man in my life who made the shallow assertion once that "capitalism loves us," referring to our brotherhood of homosexuals. And I was stricken, biting back my ardent protests, and was forced to think on the not inconsiderable ways that this was indeed true, and the many more ways that this assertion was false.

Freed from the reproductive constraints of the heteronormativity that our community, by its very nature is wont to defy, homosexual (men, for the purposes of this article) are in a position to be, on a whole, wealthier. No extra money is spent on larger living space for offspring, food for offspring, clothes, accessories, presents, doctor's visits or schooling for offspring. Since being Queer is an invisible identity, there is the added advantage for homosexuals to continue to rise in the ranks of their respective industries and make the same money at the top as the married heterosexual man with children. Consequently, we tend to be
afforded a greater deal of financial affluence.

With these factors in mind, a great number of businesses, industries and financial ventures are marketted to be "friendly" to the gay community. The reluctance of even the most conservative business empires to (quote) "piss off the homos," even at the risk of the dissatisfaction of their traditional family consumers, is testament to the discourse of gay financial power in capitalist society.

Between the factual circumstances that bring about this change to the ways in which businesses operate in order to capitalize on this percieved wealth of gay males, I can see where one would make the assertion that "Capitalism loves us."

Hmmm. But if only that were really the case. Firstly, the survey of the homosexual community is skewed by the overrepresentation of already well-to-do, able-bodied, white gay males as the face of homosexual community. These people have the money, class/race/gender privelege and subsequent access to resources to establish themselves as the only face of homosexuality. So if capitalism did in fact "love" homosexuals, this elite subclass is the population that they would love.

Now, more relevantly, I point to the historic relationship between capitalism and Christian hegemony. The infamous and long-standing campaign against homosexuals by traditional Christianity is inextricably linked to the need for the reproduction of capitol and the labor force. You can't have a successful capitalist economy that produces an unrivaled GDP if people aren't popping them out like rabbits. Period. Homosexuality is a threat to that. God forbid (no pun...) people refrain from reproduction because of the sexualities. The "Christian" (read: capitalist) population would wane and failure (of what? you ask) would be inevitable. The discourse of compulsory reproduction still continues to saturate Christian sermons in many traditional denominations that aim to (as my pastor put it once) "expand God's kingdom, one way or another."

Now that the world population is insanely out of control and Christian-Capitalism has reached so far across the world, the homosexual threat is barely consequential. Instead, now that there is increased "acceptance" (a foul word) of the overrepresented white, bourgeous gay man, they can be seen for what truly matters: their money.

Capitalism doesn't love gays. They love our money. And we--or SOME of us rather--have it. The corporate spirit operates like a temptress--or, more appropriately, temptor--who seduces us out of our money for "Gay Cruises," "Gay Day" at Disney Land, even "Pride Week" (yeah, I said it!). It is, however, empowering to know the value of our (whoever that may be) spending power, but as a Queer anarchist, I encourage us to question the powers at work that aim to "capitalize" on our spending power.

--TAHS

The Conversation We Don't Want To Have (Class Assignment no. 5)

The chapters in the Wayne Au book for this week were pretty interesting to read, as they produced a bit of tension. The confrontations and conversations around race that were reported, especially in the Tolentino article, were extremely uncomfortable. I think mainly of Carlen's outburst at a seemingly innocent inquiring.

Clearly this indicates a lot of deep pain that results from the racialized experiences of students of color. As this class continues, I'm starting to see more and more that there is a fine line between ignoring differences of the students and overmagnifying the issues to an essentializing degree. Granted, the teachers in these chapters actually did a good job of navigating this, having the necessary conversations to breach the gaps in mutual understanding without reducing the children's beings to solely their ethnic identities. Specifically, in handling questions about the N word, Tolentino explained the positions but ultimately maintained that no one in the class could use the word because they were all on equal ground. The message was clear: that no matter what the outside world tells them what they can and can't do because of race and what discriminations they face, it did not effect who they were as respectful human beings in the classroom; this did not mean that their experiences did not count for anything in the class either. (Funny, horribly offensive and inappropriate video below that points to this cultural dialogue around who can and can't use the taboo words).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jApXLlyiJNg

Some thoughts that I had after reading these articles was about the sheer difficulty that teachers of high schools have in addressing these issues. In my high school there had been no talk of the racial experience as it pertained to the students in the classrooms--only to characters in books or people a long time ago that may have well been fictional. Also, in high school, I did not have either the language, the experience or the confidence to stare my own racial experience in the face claim it and use it as a point of bridging the gaps in understanding of my Irish American and Italian American classmates. (Granted, I didn't have any teachers that had the tools or the initiative to instill that in me either).


Moreover, I thought about the questions raised in class about the readings. What "qualifies" the teacher to handle such a discussion? What level of training or experience gives the teacher the tact and strategic agility to navigate these conversations skillfully so that they would be more educational and less hurtful? I cannot offer any answer other that the teacher knowing the history of race relations in this country and knowing his/her class.

This video shows one teacher actually discussing how she as a white women "became qualified" to handle such issues in the classroom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhXQDQZdKq4

--TAHS

Tackling Diversity in the Classroom (Class Assignment no. 4)

The topic for this week's class was "Facing Difference." The article by (then) educator Rita Tenorio describes the ways in which she tackles the color, racial and ethnic differences in her classroom in order to instill a sense of understanding and mutual respect between these lines.

Herein, Tenorio describes six activities implemented in her classroom to get out dialogues, not only about the inherent differences in skin color, lifestyle and heritage, but also about the attitudes attached to them. The early elementary aged children reveal the truth about their conditioning regarding "the Other" (ie. pg. 257 "my mom says that you can't trust black people" etc.)

Additionally, the activities reveal the internal anxieties already beginning in some of the children, such as the dark-skinned girl who refused to put her arm out on the table to compare with her classmates.

After much debate about the effectiveness and potential harm of these activities with myself, I eventually found these activites wonderfully helpful at attacking alterity anxiety head on and untraining the beginnings of prejudices. The 'Skin color and Science' activity demonstrated how each child can associate their color with something in the world that was not lesser or greater than another. The 'Writing about skin color' demonstrated the training of a more balances sense of their own color the students had and seemed to speak to the reversal of some colorism in the classroom.

The chapter reinforced my view that much can be gained by tackling these issues head on and getting discussions out in the open. My initial criticisms were based on the youth of the classroom that she was working in, but on further reflection I found that this is perhaps one of the more important stages to do this in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w1sVsDrGDs

The video here previewed encourages similar kinds of dialogue at the high school level where these things have alreadt affected the students' experiences. the ultimate consequence of not tackling these issues can be best illustrated in the vignette from "Mean Girls" wherein the protagonist attempts to find a table that she feels most comfortable at.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsPvRtQIKG0

Naturally, my wonder is if every early elementary classroom adopted these activities, would it truly change the racialized sociality of most high schools as portrayed in "Mean Girls?" Thoughts?

--TAHS

It's All the Same Thing

*This is an article that I was commissioned to write for a campus publication called The Zine, due out next month I believe. Have at!*
-------------------------------------------------------------

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
--Martin Luther King Jr.


It’s hard not to chuckle when I think about my life before going vegetarian: a lifetime decrying the sheer wickedness of racism; a good couple of years ardently campaigning for the equality of my homosexual brothers and sisters; months expending my time exposing the truth that all oppressions, prejudices and injustices were linked. ...All-the-while sustaining myself on the flesh of being not too different from myself, that deserved the same kind of consideration I had felt vital to everything else.

Why had it been so difficult for me to come to the realization that the same patterns of oppression that had barred people of my race from basic welfare and allowed men of my preference to be incarcerated, demonized and killed at whim also justified our literal objectification of the creatures with which we share our planet? Why? Why, when the same shackles that once bound my forefathers crammed to the point of suffocation on the Slave ships, now bind cows and pigs, crammed in their stalls? Why, when the same ideas of Africans being soulless and “not like us” used to justify, their abused, mutilation, rape and murder at a whim? Why, when on the same ground where Christian settlers decimated the Native tribes, and where noted local families ran plantations where once slaves were shackled, beaten and starved new factory farms have risen? It is sickening to think that once upon a time someone looked at another person as simply a brainless, soulless object only existence to serve his needs… the same way I once looked at that Thanksgiving turkey.

Similarly, my sexuality limits my capacity to escape oppression. And it’s not just in Nazi Germany, where we were corralled into the camps, where the glances that fell on those pink triangles were little different than those glaces that fall on animals in the slaughterhouse. It’s not just in modern day Jamaica, where the violent, relentless and brutal hunt to kill the homosexual is taken up with comparable relish as the animal hunt that many people engage in for leisure. It’s the fact that my sexuality codes me as Other and bars me from the same kind of humanity and on the day that I foreswore animal-eating, I saw that an animal’s non-humanness similarly coded barred it from mutual respect.

I cannot even try to think of the number of birds, calves and pigs—once caged, despair-laden and confused as to why they were born into such a cruel and merciless existence—that have made my stomach their final tomb without being sick with guilt. It’s probably close to the number of colored voting applicants turned away in the early 1960’s by the Racist working the registration desk, or the number of times the bigot yells “Fuckin’ Fags!” today at the gay couple walking past. I implore my reader to think about this the next time you raise that burger to your face: if you at any point are or could have been the victim of an oppressive system, how could you turn around and participate in another oppression?

New Classroom Discourse Analysis (Class Assignment no. 3)

In class this week, we took up the critical view of education voiced by both Asa Hillard and Sleeter and Grant's "Multicultural Education" chapter. Specifically, we took up the question of how the cultural competence of the instructor affects the effectiveness of the instruction of the child.

Hillard contructs this picture of distinct behavioral styles that (to put it in the least problematic way possible) tend to create a cultural gap between African American students and White American students. As Sleeter articulates further, the kids have no concept of the instructor's cultural context and so it is up to the instructor to bridge whatver gaps in understanding the child might have due to his/her own "behavioral style" or cultural codification.

Directly linked to this is the danger of teaching a child away from his/her creativity. This goes beyond behavioral styles and cultural distiction, but still maintains the same idea of, as my professor puts it, "meeting the student where he/she is at." The video lecture by Sir Ken Robinson addresses this topic very appropriately in my opinion.

Now, as I am wont to do, I would like to critique this fractured notion of how children learn. Don't get me wrong, I think that it is more important than anything else to specialize educating methods to maximize the ways in which the individual student related to the lesson (which i feel helped me learn every language I've ever spoken effectively). I would rather the lesson be no other way than tailored to address the needs of visual learners, audial learners, hands-on learners as related to the children's individual experiences. But I can't help but acknowledge the concern I had when reading Hillard's article: In the shadow of recognizing behavioral styles that TEND to codify students along the lines of their social location (ie. race, gender, sexuality, ability, class, nationality), does there not lie a danger to deemphasize their similarities as children and common human experience at the risk of highlighting their differences.

For example, if I were a able-bodied/minded, heterosexual, lower-class, inner-city African American 5th grader, whose family has been in the country since the 1800's and began to subscribe to the "typical" urban African-American subculture in a classroom with little other demographics, a teacher imparting the lesson to me solely in "my context" at the risk of imparting the the part of the lesson that can be palatable to me as a child regardless of my social location could be denying me something as well.

This video both illustrates the gap of the cultural styles of the instructor and that of the students and the problems that it creates with regard to educating students, and also examines critically the way in which both the students and the teachers are reduced only to their behavioral styles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVF-nirSq5s

--TAHS

Innovative Advocacy

Today, my campus' Queer organization had it's sophomore GSA conference for the local High School LGBT organizations. Our keynote speaker was Christopher (err, something) from Campus Pride in Connecticut.

In the informal Keynote Speech, Chris talked a lot about the theme of being an advocate for the Community. Specifically, he stressed that one can be an advocate without being an active advocate. In other words, to be an advocate, one need not lobby Congress, and stand on picket lines and make his/her entire existence a political dry-erase board. In my understanding of Chris' point, to be an advocate is to use whatever opportunity one sees to spread understanding of what it means to be a Queer person and why change is so important. It is also making these opportunities whereever possible.

This speech really got me thinking about the nature of activism, and how it can pervade multiple scenes. This thought occured to me once before when researching Stacey Ann Chin http://www.google.com/search?q=stacey+ann+chin&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGLR_en , whose career as a slam poet/poetry performer is her activism; it is how she is an advocate.

So what new ways of Activism can we (yes, we) think of? Slam Poetry contests and performances? ...Yes. Blogging? ...okay, that was easy. What about song-writing? What about Facebook status' (sparingly)? What about on occaison wearing a shirt voicing support of same-sex couples? What about in painting?

One thing that I've been really thinking about for myself is being a comedian. (yeah I know, but bear with me). I'm a pretty humorous guy. I mean, I'm part of three systemically marginalized and stigmatized demographics... I need sarcasm to survive. With my ability to manipulate the English language, and my ability to relate to people regardless of discrepancies in life experience, I think that being a comedian would be a great field for me as well as a great opportunity to make people think critically. EVERYONE loves to laugh. And, incidentally, humor also works as a great way to approach subjects that people are sometimes afraid to be confronted with. As a matter of fact, the more I think about this, the more I like this plan. I may have to think about it some more though.

--TAHS

School House Rock

Let's just talk about this for a second:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twFs9Vk6F0A

For those of you born after 1992, this educational Saturday morning mini-special used to air during the cartoon line-up that was marketed and watched by millions of young elementary school aged children in America during the 90's. "School House Rock" became a favored segment among adults and kids alike for introducing the young ones to elementary concepts of linguistics, policy making and history.

Now the problematic stuff: Ummm, everything! Obviously, school house rock actually does have a net positive effect on the education of children. It really does a commendable job on both making common facts palpable for the learning mind as well as making it fun and memorable. Clearly the perspective is very interested insomuch as how history is presented. in this video alone, so many narratives are lost of the Native settlers, the trafficking of Sub-saharan Africans as well as European and Chinese immigrants. And the problems only start there.

This problem is what Multicultural education seeks to critique and I find this a great illustration of how blind common perspectives of history can be to the equally valid experiences of "other" people. But Thank God THAT doesn't still go on to this day...

--TAHS

The More Things Stay the Same (Class Assignment no. 3)

This week's presentation touched on the ways in which "tracking" programs in modern American education fail to give students even opportunities to both improve and succeed.

As the reading assignment by Christine Sleeter discussed, the current discourse and policy of United States education systems places a very clear emphasis on performance. The "No Child Left Behind" act demands from educators high marks on standardized testing as evidence of actual education in the classroom. In reality it is forcing teachers to teach kids how to produce the results required of the federal government, causing them to learn even less. Consequently students are stratified based on the promise they show to test well over time. The unfortunate truth that shadows this fact is that the better performing kids tend to be the ones with greater access to educational resources and a tradition of education in their family (class privilege) and a greater understanding of the cultural context that the schooling is coded by (white privilege).

The statistics that Christine Sleeter serve to cement both the matter-of-fact inequalities that an "average" classroom will have as well as the inability for and educator to simply assume the obstacles of each student based on racial or ethnic indicators. I was personally surprised at just how many families were living below the poverty level. I was also surprised at my previous lack of consideration for issues regarding class privilege before reading just how problematic it can be.

The idea of tracking holds much to be explored in terms of identifying why children fall "behind" in schools. Then I thought about the reading assignment on John Mercer Langston. It went through the history of education being extended as a right to African Americans shortly after the American Civil War.

To review quickly, there was (imaginably) widespread resistance and opposition of the fiercest kind to the increasingly progressive policies that expanded the rights of Black Americans to educate themselves. States began to use all manner of tactics to keep down the numbers of educated Blacks in their jurisdiction as people tried to scare Blacks and Whites alike from pursuing advanced Black education. Why? What were they afraid of? What did they have to lose so long as they had white privilege anyway? Could they not have simply gotten over it so long as they didn't have to comply with intergration? Then, author Judith E. King-Calneck made no bones about the true worry of the conservative White America of that time: "the fear was that too much freedom, especially for Americans of African descent, would disrupt the social order."

CAPITALISM (that bastard)--while obviously not operating independently of racism, social exclusion, alterity anxiety, negrophobia, classism, etc.--is to blame for this! Calneck also maintains that nineteenth century writers established the discourse that is still employed today of "schooling as an equalizing power." That just can't happen in a capitalist economy.

In elementary school we are taught that Capitalism is amazing because anybody can make it. The truth was far more complex. Anybody can make it on the backs of those who don't. Where there is capitalism, there is a hierarchy. There is Whites with full access to a proper education, and there are Blacks who face a myriad of structural obstacles to getting the same. There are the kids in class that are promoted through schools with good marks because they are included in the track of kids that "perform better" than the kids that "fall" behind because less is expected of them, and who face a steep curve of under-performance, just like the system originally intended. Cap Bad.

To reform the education system so that no child is truly left behind, so that everyone truly does get ahead, we need to critique the Beast that is Capitalism. Tear that mother down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN_AOVWirzo

--TAHS

Article Review... Please

So my campus' Queer Publication has permitted me (as TAHS) to write for them again. After two issues of censorship by the former self-hating editor, my voice is now allowed to be heard. Unfortunately, in addition to my token "Angry, political" segment, the publication also needed some filler. So I wrote up a little blurb on stereotypes, because that's something I can always sound off on. Below i pasted the 518 word rough draft, still unsure about my satisfaction with the quality of my work...

Suggestions?

"'Gay Industries'
(The Rainbow Workforce)

The stereotype that’s easiest for Straight America to consume of Homosexuals encompasses a very flat lifestyle of partying, shopping with the Straight Girl and exploring ways in which he can bend gender norms in every act that he does. But for those who dare to muse beyond this single dimension of the homosexual, a host of other questions arise in connection to life as a stereotype. And not just questions like “where does he shop?” and “what race is he?” (both of which have obvious answers explicit within the stereotype itself). They are questions of, “what classes does he take?” “what does he eat?” and “where does he work?”

Specifically this last question is something worth exploring. Using popular representation of the gay stereotype in decades past as a crude lens, one can easily find that there are indeed “Gay Industries.” These are jobs filled with noticeably high populations of homosexuals. Now, we can look at the obvious “Gay Industries” first as they are the common and timeless associations we make with the stereotype. Doris Day’s 1961 movie, “Lover Come Back” provides evidence of the discursively homosexualized profession—in this case it is the interior design business. Not much has changed with that. It is important to note that, since decades like the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s were marked by heavily heterosexism and sexual repression, it takes one quite a great deal of effort to even locate the homosexual in popular culture under all the coding. That being said, we have a host of other obvious industries including the fashion industry, the number one circle wherein societal norms are flipped to the point that any male designer is gay until proven straight (Ah, gotta love those binaries). This industry is explicitly linked to the make-up industry, and salons. Really anything that involves the outward appearance of a person or a space really.

As my mother once off-handedly put it to me, the marketing branches of many firms and such in the States are another niche for the gay man. This is something I’m particularly pleased with: using our epistemic advantage to get those heteros spending. And so we’ve filled other jobs wherein a keen epistemic advantage serves a crucial role. Just try wikipediaing “List of LGBT writers.” You can spend days going through that one. You don’t really have to rack your brain to think of jobs that are compatible with the gay stereotype. Decade after decade, the image of us is the same. Stylists, bakers, tailors, artists, wedding planners… these jobs seem to dwell on the aesthetic, the frivolous, the inconsequential; making the lives of our straight counterparts more pleasing—if only visually.

Dare I be bold and ask… why? Why the gay mind must be so wont to aesthetic contributions to society. Why our stereotype is only of white bourgeois effeminate males presenting straight folk with clothes, and food and beautiful houses and gardens. Why we are easier to digest that way. Dare I question this paradigm and delve deeper? Nah. After all, I’m gay! And I’m just supposed to be covering the facts that matter to my queer little mind: the ones on the surface."

Defining Multicultural Education (Class Assignment # 2)

For this past Monday's section of my "Multiculturalism and the Practice of Education" class, we read an incredibly engaging paper by Dr. Geneva Gay called "Synthesis of Scholarship in Multicultural Education." Herein, Gay offers a litany of possible and employed definitions for Multicultural Education. Now, as I said in class, while I do like a little bit of everything from each definition the fifth bullet point was the proposed definition that worked the most for me: "Institutionalizing a philosophy of cultural pluralism within the educational system that is grounded in principles of equality, mutual respect, acceptance and understanding, and moral commitment to social justice."

Why do I favor this definition of Multicultural education over some of the others offered by Gay? Well, this one, cited from Baptiste 1979, makes a point to highlight the practice of Multicultural education as an institutionalization, philosophical and principled. Moreover, it highlights "understanding." Understanding, for me, is the be all end all for all forms of Multiculturalism. Other definitions fell out of favor by citing the combatting of discrimination, prejudice and histories of oppression. These definitions implied that multicultural education is needed only in nations with systemic discriminations and histories of oppression--a theory that I am completely in disagreement with.

Wayne Au in his book, "Rethinking Multicultural Education" pursues the institutionalizing of culturally pluralism. In the interview with educator Christine Sleeter, the issue of colorblindness arose. Echoing the sentiments of the 90's racial discourse, the question pointed to the attitude of teachers to "not see a child's race." That is truly the worst. Fortunately, Sleeter shared my attitude and contested that taking a colorblind approach is a teacher's failure to understand his/her students and thus ineffectively curtail the education to that student. Denying the importance, as Sleeter puts it, of the child's background really proves to create an educational atmosphere that is anything but multicultural.

I must say that nothing really bugged me about any of the readings, which is rare. I do feel that I must re-emphasize how important understanding one another is to building social bonds as well as successful eductaion. My ability to understand another person will influence greatly how I relate to that person. How will a person who's not Caribbean know how to approach me as an American if they don't understand me. How will a White teacher know how insulting it is for a black student to be considered a credit to his race or essentialized as black if that teacher doesn't understand sufficiently the way the Black experience processes it all?

There are many people and things I don't understand that I should to augment the ways in which I approach people. As a vegetarian it helps when people aren't always down you're throat saying I need protein. (They have a grave lack of understanding of the vegetarian lifestyle due to the carno-logocentric food pyramid as constructed by our Western pattern diet). http://youtube.com/watch?v=e5uAQwVIwY As a Caribbean American, it helps when people understand that my culture cannot always be compared to Jamaica and that American pop culture is more infectious in Trinidad than you would think. I think that an education that is truly mutlicultural can address these things, not explicitly, but rather by incorporating considerations of other lifestyles in classes such as US History and Health/Nutrition classes. Basically, a pradigm shift (or reform) in education is needed to created this desired result.

--TAHS

Uganda. Uganda. Uganda.

So it continues. The long saga of systemic genocide of my queer brothers and sisters has found itself in the law of another nation. Now, in the fiercely Christianized State of Uganda, the criminalization of homosexuality is, unfortunately, something to be expected. I mean, the African continent, in its unconscious (and arguably futile) attempt to appear more civil in the gaze of the Euro-American master States have enthusiastically internalized the former colonial mores that abhorred same-gender sexual relations and are now more committed to that cause than the nations that inspired such an ignorant attitude.



History review: The White Man came to Africa. The White Man immediately establishes himself as superior and wiser through physical and (more detrimental) epistemic violence. The African tribes (now haphazardly reorganized into constructed nations by the White Man) now look to the White Man as the ultimate example of how to be human and take his teachings as the law of God Himself; The White Man's dress, his language, his societal conceptions, his hair texture, his practices and his beliefs must now become the dress, language, societal coneptions, etc. of the Black natives if they are ever to be humanized like the White Man is (which is a goal they can only approach but never reach as prescribed by the terms of humanity as set by the White Man). The White Man says that homosexuality is a filthy abomination, a sickness, the cause of disease and calamity, the sexuality of savages... the African Natives take his word and pursue actions to rectify it with the utmost ferver in desperate persuit of the goal to be culturally Whiter.



These patterns of meaning production and cultural appropriation are not simply the origin story for the fiercely anti-homosexual politics that has become a trademark of the African nation-state, these patterns are being revisited TODAY (right now) behind the flag of Christ.



Fundamentalist Christian missionaries from America, (the not-so new visage of the White Man) have continued to pour these horror stories of the homosexual into the ears of the Ugandans. Child molesters, AIDS proliferators, God-forsaken they call us. The homosexual has become the new face of the Devil in the imagination of the Ugandans--regardless of the intent of the missionaries who minister to them. What many of these more ignorant Bible carriers fail to realize is the way historically constructed narratives about their race magnify the impact of their words ...how their words carry a different result in a Western mega-church borne of an Anglo tradition from the result of the same words in a nation with a tradition of subordination to the Anglo colonial project.



Rachel Maddow, political pundit and advocate for unmitigated Human Rights across all social locations tackled these questions in a segment entitled "Uganda be Kidding Me." In this clip, (which I watch everytime with relish), she attempts to highlight to her guest the ways in which he almost directly incites the inception of this "Kill the Gays Bill" despite his claims that he cannot be held responsible.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#34337416



The above segment is just one of a handful of interviews Maddow conducts in investigation of this frightening turn of events. Fortunately, she has the sense of responsibility to pursue interrogations of those who contributed in any way to the inception of this bill, thus exposing the true nature of the origin rising anti-homosexual sentiment in Africa.

I must note that as she exposed the direct link of American Christian activists to the atmosphere of heterosexism in Africa, my anger flared violently. Is this what happens when the precious and beautiful Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, is placed in the hands of greedy, capitalist, priveleged and prejudiced straight, white American men? These educated, first-world and supposedly compassionate people are guilty of INCREASING the violence and hate in the "third world" rather than working to decrease it.

I suppose, given the history of colonial relations between the colonized Africans and the colonizing white men, my surprise in unwarranted. What else would they do?

--TAHS

The Unpalatable Other (Class Assignment no. 1)

Wow. I am unsure how else to go about beginning to process, much less express my reaction to what I just came across. The shock; the desperate disbelief; the unmitigated anger. I was just looking through YouTube to find the video that I'm required to post with my weekly web-log entry for my "Multiculturalism and the Practice of Education" class. To my raw dismay, I came across the profile of a particularly vocal individual who commented on a tongue-in-cheek video commentary on race and romance. I'm not going to do him the service of posting the name of his YouTube channel. Intrigued by his nonchalant reporting of the fact that black men are wont to raping whites, I checked out his profile and suffice it to say I was floored by the bold, white-supremacist, negrophobic, antisemetic content. I could not bear it.


The individual was clearly well-educated, well-read and well-informed about what he was saying. I gathered that he took the time to do research to formulate his opinions. And he still had the certainty to make the claims that he made in defense of the white race. I'll spare any further details about his page. What was truly scary was the list of his friends... confederate advocates, Aryan pride brothers, someone with Hitler as his icon! Imagine in this day and age, such a large and such an active community of hardcore white supremacism.


I thought this was perfect way to both exemplify and expand what Victor in "The Color of Fear" said during his explosive rant. He says that as a black man, he (he being his morphology/appearance, his hair, his culture, his language, his dress, his nature) is unpalatable to mainstream, Anglo-America. That the social climate of the United States is allergic in a way to the ethnic other that must assimilate. After browsing through the active channels on YouTube rebuking mutlicultural politics and advocating for the rise of the white race (I won't even touch that), it becomes clear that this indigestability of the racial Other in America isn't solely because institutions like schools and the corporate sphere are adapted for Anglo-Americans in their cultural image. It's also because there exists a politic of resistance to the narrowing of the gap between the racial "self" and racial "Other." That there are those, on both the ethnic and the white-washed sides, who oppose potentially losing themselves in re-adapting American traditions to encompass disparate cultural traditions and such. This opposition can be overt--in which case it is very alarming and unbelievable--or more covert, which should honestly be just as alarming.



www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY04gIruZ4E#watch-main-area

This video highlights the contemporary discourses being used to address race in America. Now, keeping in mind this video uses the easy target of Fox News for it's case study, it is terrifying that these clips echo some of the same sentiments as those that are announced all over the page of that Wodinist White Power YouTuber that I came across earlier. The package and the delivery may be more apporpriate, but my reaction should be no different. And it's not. I can no longer fooling myself into thinking that White Supremacy is but a myth. Let no one say that Victor's anger is unjustified. We who are black are a challenge to the essentially white-centered framework of this nation. Just because the White Folk that I see on a daily basis are egalitarian, eager to understand me or are at least supportive of my progress as a Black person in a White nation, I should always recognize that there is much intolerance yet to be battled.

--TAHS

Some thoughts on Anger

Monday, in my "Multiculturalism and the Practice of Education" class, we screened the first part of a video in which the producer Lee Mun Wah collected ethnically diverse (heterosexual) men with strong socio-political convictions and sat them together in a circle to address openly racial politics and well as conceptions of race struggle. The video was released in April of 1994 and featured men of ages ranging from mid-thirties to upper-fifties.

In response to the naive and ignorant comments of David, the token "tolerant" Anglo-American, that suggested that there was no reason for the minorities to have the embittered attitude that they have and even questioned their refusal to comform, Victor lashed out in vehement shouts at David, telling him off and directing the full force of his rage at Anglo-America as an institution towards David as a surrogate victim. Victor, easily establishing himself as the enraged, embittered and scorned person of color was speaking out of offense as Daviddownplayed the affects of systemic pressures on Victor's African-American and Native American ancestors.

For those of us who grew up in the sheltered, all-embracing, difference-mitigating discursive climate of the 90's in the United States, our first instict would be to smack our foreheads, snap at Victor in muffled protests to cap his gratuitous outburst or immediately re-explain, re-interpret, re-word Victor's beastly and most stereotypical tirade into cooler, more logical, less embarrassing, and effectively less angry response for David. That would avoid the assumptions that Black men were bitter and angry, right? That would prove that we're more articulate than an impulsive outburst of blind fury and perhaps get the point across better to the white man, who is probably turned off by the militant approach in any case. After all, what's the point of just being angry.

I should like to offer some thoughts on anger in light of our natural reaction. Anger is the very essence of inviting change. Anger is how we as subaltern, as persons of color, as queerfolk, as women, immigrants and disabled communities survive. The way I see it, anger is a force that we ought NEVER shy away from. Let them know that we are angry, that we are dissatisfied, that we refused to accept this and refuse to meet their expectations of us and submit to a system. Let them recoil in the face of our anger and let them know an echo of the fear that we as the oppressed have felt since Adam's rib turned into a woman.

Victor had every right to be angry and I admire the passion that he had the courage to express in the room. However, anger alone is not effective. Barking at David and going off on a tirade that addressed more than Davidcould have understood without giving David the tools to understand first was a mistake. David, being in the social position that he is in, is already inclined to the temptation of blinding himself to the plight of the Other, inclined to shrugging off the sheer reality of Victor's pain and experience. Exploding in one's anger only produces the opposite effect of what Victor and most minorities aim for. Instead of being induced into readily recieving education, Victor's attacks are only registered as angry white noise.

Victor could have turned his anger into something more productive and subtle, like sarcasm, sheer humor, mild-mannered critical discussion, story-telling, poetry, a blog... But instead he delivered his anger in it's raw form, perpetuating the gap of understanding between himself and David, who could presumably have used the outburst as an excuse to completely tune out.

This exchange in the film illustrates perfectly both the power and motivation that anger can give us to promote change and increase mutual understanding, but also illustrates how easily the potential for all of that can be lost and how the anger can hinder these goals if it is not checked. Moreover, my point is that this was a poor execution of a useful emotion. I rebuke my generation's temptation to dismiss Victor's anger as entirely inappropriate, inconsequential and inherently ineffective. I recognize a strength and a passion to educate and nuture David's relatability to the minorities that he cannot comprehend and fully respect through his own devises. It is with a similar strength that I fuel my writing and hope to nurture the mutual understanding of everyone I touch.

-TAHS

The Birth of the Author II

Today was my first day of classes for the semester and I must say how strangely comforting it is to be back into this particular routine. Given my presumed detest for hierarchies and systemic reinforcements of hegemonic stratification, it may come as a surprise to you. I justify this by saying that it is this routine that keeps my mind active and alert.

Additionally, I am very excited about the classes that i am taking this year. Today's class was an Africana Studies/Education seminar called "Multiculturalism and the Practice of Education," and it was absolutely exciting. Why so? Here's the description of the course: "This course will guide students in exploring and examining multicultural education through historical, sociological and philosophical foundations as they relate to race, ethnicity, culture, religion, ability, gender, sexuality and overall diversity. The course will emphasize the role of multiculturalism and cultural competency in pedadogy. The course will focus on the significance of multicultural curricula in the critical development and enhancement of an equitable, democratic nation." This stuff is RIGHT up my alley (except the whole democratic thing...).

Incidentally, one of the class requirements is that I publish a web-log to respond to various questions and topics of controversy raised in class. Since this web-log is my first since middle school, and the issues that the course requires me to blog about interect seemlessly with many of the concerns that this blog was intended to tackle, I think it only appropriate that my weekly blog assignments be posted on this blog.

The question of my anonymity remains a tricky one to tackle, but my professor (who seems to be the teacher of my dreams) may be understanding as to my particular requests.

So there you have it, "The Angry Homosexist" has now added a new dimension to it's purpose. It's time to change the world... one blogger.com post at a time.

--TAHS