social capital

In one of my classes this week we will be reading selections by the late Melvin Dixon, a gay and African American poet-scholar who died during the nineties. In one of his essays, “I’ll Be Listening for My Name,” he touches upon the kind of doubled death lgbt artists face in the AIDS crisis, as they face racial discrimination in the public sphere that is compounded by the denial of their emotional and sexual lives by families and communities who refuse to recognize gays and lesbians. We have also been reading Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits, which is about a teenage boy who is the chosen one, smart and athletic. Also gay, he eventually dies under the burden of homophobia, of being forced to see himself as simultaneously chosen and damned, angel and demon.

Well, this morning I was greeted by a story on crimes against the LGBT community in Newark, NJ, “In a Progressive State, a City Where Gay Life Hangs by a Thread.” The story is by Andrew Jacobs, who’s on the Newark beat at the NYT. It’s not a terrible story, and it does a nice job of outlining a broad picture of options for the lgbt community in lower and working class communities of color in Newark.

The story got me thinking, though, about how difficult it is to talk about sex and race– especially when we barely have language for sussing out race and class. So what happens when, as in most cases, we need to talk about all three at once? Often, it seems, we latch onto the one that best serves our own needs, a need fed by our perceptions “what counts” and “what matters.” But, again, what does this mean for the possibility of
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[you can sing the title with the Beatles or w/ Slick Rick, depending on your mood]

I am sure you are well-apprised of what I am going to call “The Michelle Obama feminism challenge.” But just in case, Mirror on America did a very nice post last week, outlining some of the most notable sites of contestation, particularly as they’ve been crystallized in Debra Dickerson’s recent article in Slate, and Maureen Dowd’s syndicated op-ed piece, reproduced here from the San Jose Mercury News. Racialicious also has a great post outlining the Dickerson and Dowd articles (amongst others). It’s redundant to rehearse the Racialicious and Mirror on America points, so check them out!

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I didn’t want my students from Racial Passing to feel left out of the end of semester postings. We’ve just finished reading Percival Everett’s Erasure, so here is one for you– from Gawker, by way of Racialicious: “Blacks Terrorize Harvard Students”:

Last weekend, on the bucolic Quad at Harvard University–typically, the site of a casual game of Ultimate, or perhaps an afternoon reading of some Shakespearean sonnets before English class-an unusual and, to some, frightening scene was played out. There were people throwing things! And running! And jumping! And most scary of all, every single one of them was black. So the Harvard students watching from their dormitory windows, growing increasingly agitated at the sights below, did what any normal, white Harvard student would do when they saw a large, seemingly unruly group of black people: They called the cops! Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I was reminded of how hyperlinking might happen in all kinds of places. I was at the Montague Bookmill, grading papers while jd and mhpd played alongside the river. If you’ve ever been to the Bookmill, you know that the bathroom walls (now there are two bathrooms, upgraded, but they haven’t fully lost their randomness) are covered with letters and newspaper clippings. The bathrooms always remind me of the independent journalist Mae Brussell, who used mountains of news clippings and cross-filings to develop theories and keep tabs on all kinds of government activities. She was down with the “internet” before there was an internet!

Anyway, on my way out, I just happened to catch sight of a Natalie Angier article from 1993–”Fashion’s Waif Look Makes Strong Women Weep” (If you don’t get TimesSelect, you can click here to read it). It shot me back to college, to when waifs–and their attendant “poverty chic” and “heroin chic“–were new and news.

Angier, a New York Times science writer, sets it up like this: Read the rest of this entry »