By Polly Price

Photo credit: Gerd Altmann

This article appeared originally on plaguesinthenation.com.

Well, it’s official. A presidential administration that left US citizens to sink or swim when facing the worst pandemic in a century has finally admitted what we already knew. It has given up. Saying the quiet part out loud, White House Chief-of-Staff Meadows acknowledged the coronavirus task force no longer even pretends to address the spread of the virus. But this is no surprise to anyone paying attention. This presidential administration was never interested in using the full power, resources, and authority of the federal government to combat COVID-19. And shamefully, it shows.

Chance brought us the unhappy coincidence of a pandemic and an election year for a first-term sitting president. A president who speaks and acts as though the coronavirus pandemic was a plot by Democrats to deny him a second term, so he denies its existence, spreads falsehoods, and divides the country. A president who takes no responsibility for COVID entering our shores, the failure to contain it, or the preventable deaths that have occurred and will continue in frightening numbers this fall and winter. A president who calls medical experts in his administration “idiots” and the CDC—the world’s premier disease-fighting agency—part of the “deep state.” A president who left states to deal with basically everything and then undermined their efforts constantly, whether by calling for militia to “liberate” states from public health measures put in place to save lives, or by ridiculing face masks, which, after all, are a proven measure to help limit spread, allowing businesses and schools to remain open. Even though his own administration’s experts agree that mask wearing on a wider basis could save hundreds of thousands of lives.

All the while, the United States continues to lead the world in the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths, with numbers currently hurtling toward new records. How can it possibly be that the wealthiest nation on earth, with medical expertise and institutions the envy of the world, has responded very much like a second-rate, if not a third-world country?

Under the cover of a stingy, warped view of “federalism,” it’s every state and locality for itself. Territories, states, cities, tribes, hospital systems, and healthcare facilities all compete against each other for critical medical supplies, adequate testing, and other resources. Long-term care facilities are still unable to acquire adequate PPE, let alone adequate, affordable testing. The current administration has left the nation’s defense completely up to the States while at the same time undermining public health measures its own task force deemed essential. All while the federal government sits on enormous resources and capabilities yet to be tapped.

It need not have been this way. If President Trump were to be elected to a second term, would he work harder to save lives, no longer focusing on his reelection but instead concerned about his legacy? Or might he at least stay out of the way and let the medical experts at the world’s premier health agencies guide us, without undermining every effort?

Whoever is the occupant of the Oval Office come January still has time to turn it around. A do-over is possible. Here is a short guide to immediate steps the new administration should take.

It is not too late for the federal government to mobilize for an aggressive fight against COVID-19. Take these steps. 

A pandemic virus spreading as easily as COVID would always be difficult to contain, as the experience of other nations shows. Germany and France, for example, have returned to limited shutdowns in the face of a COVID resurgence. Step one for the next administration: study how other nations combat COVID-19, especially those that have been relatively successful and continue to learn. This is a pandemic, after all, and the US is not leading the way out.

There is no shortage of policy prescriptions for steps we must take. Fifty leading legal experts recently offered recommendations on how federal, state, and local leaders can better respond to COVID-19. Their proposals include: how to strengthen executive leadership for a stronger emergency response; expand access to public health; health care and telehealth; and fortify protections for workers.

My top three priorities for the next administration? Read about them here. There is so much that could yet be done, rather than just give up.

Congress is not off the hook either. In past public health emergencies, most recently Zika and Ebola, Congress held numerous oversight hearings to ask whether our federal health agencies were responding appropriately and had the resources they needed. What has the US Senate done in this pandemic? Oversight hearings in the Senate have focused on the so-called Russia “hoax” from four years ago. As if getting to the bottom of that will save lives now. The Senate committee overseeing the Department of Homeland Security has spent its time assessing discredited Russian propaganda funneled through presidential intermediaries in an apparent attempt to relitigate the prior election, or to find nonexistent crimes to make the president look better in guess what—an election year. These are not lethal threats to the American public like COVID is. If protecting Americans during a pandemic is not in the purview of Homeland Security, what is? And shouldn’t the Senate be interested in how DHS is responding?

When we think about how we can be better prepared next time—and there will be a next time, perhaps with even more lethality—what needs to change? No doubt better coordination is possible among our disease-fighting agencies and medical institutions (as President Obama’s Ebola czar proved). Harnessing the power of federal agencies to all row in the same direction requires constant effort, not the one-time appointment of a task force that soon gives up to go out on the campaign trail.

Is the federal government constitutionally restricted in favor of state action to address a pandemic? In other words, are our laws getting in the way of an adequate federal response? The answer is NO. The federal government can act on the many critical issues we face. The executive branch has ample legal authority to improve our situation, if only it would.

Our inability to control the pandemic within our borders has caused other nations to quarantine against us. We are now the exporting threat, but at least our allies express pity while they take the necessary steps to protect themselves from us. Instead of responding like a powerful, wealthy, nation with enormous reserves of scientific expertise, the US responds as if we were fifty different, relatively poor nations with inadequate access to critical medical supplies and other basics of public health. Harness the authority of the federal government and use it to protect us, please.

About the Author 

Polly Price is an award-winning legal historian and professor of law and public health at Emory, and is the author of two scholarly books and numerous articles on issues related to public health. Her book Plagues in the Nation, a narrative history of America through major outbreaks, is a forthcoming title from Beacon Press. Connect with her online at plaguesinthenation.com and on Twitter at @PollyJPrice.

A Discussion with Andreas Karelas, Katharine Hayhoe, and Bill McKibben

From left to right: Andreas Karelas, Katharine Hayhoe, Bill McKibben

The existential threat of environmental collapse may loom high, but Andreas Karelas, founder and executive director of RE-volv, shows how we can move past our collective inaction on climate change and work together in our communities in his book Climate Courage. Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe and environmentalist Bill McKibben joined him for his book launch on September 29 to talk about it. They also discussed how saving our planet, our economy, and our democracy are not mutually exclusive goals. Amy Caldwell, the book’s editor, moderated the discussion.

Climate change was a key topic in what turned out to be two rather than three presidential debates. On one hand, President Trump defended the fossil fuel industry while not displaying much understanding of how humans are responsible for changing the climate. On the other, Vice President Biden spoke about his climate plan’s goal of job creation. According to Karelas, we already have the tools needed to solve the climate crisis. Here’s what he, Karelas, McKibben, and Hayhoe had to say during the book launch about the power of community steering our course to solving our crisis with those very tools.

Amy Caldwell: We know that the fires that have been decimating California and the Pacific Northwest are related to climate change. There are also huge fires in South America and Australia. So this is a global issue. Every year, we hear bad news about the polar ice caps; there’s more bad news this year. What are some bright spots? What are some bright spots and solutions that focus on inclusivity within the climate movement?

Andreas Karelas: Bill, I was recently flipping through your book Falter, and one of the things you write that speaks to a big portion of Climate Courage is that we have two technologies that, if employed, could be decisive to the era: the solar panel and the nonviolent movement. RE-volv, the nonprofit that I founded, finances solar-energy projects for nonprofits that otherwise couldn’t go solar. Those nonprofits can then reduce their electricity costs, benefit the people they serve even more so, and demonstrate to the community the benefits of solar energy.

One of the things we have on our side in the fight against climate change is the fact that solar energy is contagious. When someone goes solar, their neighbor is more likely to go solar. And their neighbor is even more likely to go solar. We’ve seen this play out in communities across the country. It happens over and over and over again. You can see it on a map in clusters of people going solar.

To tie this to the equity piece, there was a great study that came out of Tufts and UC Berkeley about a year ago. It talked about the racial and ethnic disparity of solar installations in those communities. What they found, not surprisingly, is that communities of color, particularly African American communities, have much less solar, even after you account for wealth disparity. But what the study also found was the solution they call seed projects. These seed projects build off the idea that solar is contagious. In fact, if you put solar in a community of color, the adoption rates are even faster. The solar contagious effect is even higher, dramatically so, than it is compared to other communities. That is super powerful. It means that we as communities look to our neighbors to see how we can solve this thing, and if we see other people taking action, we want to take those same actions, and those can spread.

The climate movement, in my opinion, has often painted one of two areas of engagement. One is, as Bill mentioned, changing your lightbulbs, or taking individual actions. Like you said, we have a detector that says, “That’s not going to cut it.” I can bring a reusable tote bag, but that’s not going to stop companies from spewing carbon into the atmosphere. The other side looks at what our leaders can do. What can our federal government do? As somebody who’s been in this fight for a long time, we all know that none of us are holding our breath, waiting for the federal government to solve this, right? We send petitions, we sign letters to our congress folks and representatives, but we don’t necessarily think that’s the only way it’s going to happen, as important as that is. Between those, what I see is the way to engage people so that they can feel agency is at the community level. What can we do with our neighbors? What can we do in our cities and our counties that can actually have an impact, that can demonstrate the benefits of sustainability, and thus, like a seed project, have this contagious effect from one community to another?

Some examples, the Sierra Club has their Ready for 100 campaign. They’ve basically trained volunteers to say, “Go to your community. Go to your local city and county and convince them to commit to 100 percent renewable energy.” This campaign, in just a few short years, has been so successful that now we have one out of every three Americans lives in a city or county or state that is committed to 100 percent renewable energy. That’s the power of community.

Bill McKibben: I do think there are things that should give us plenty of reasons to be optimistic. Or if not optimistic, at least not a reason to give up. We’ve watched over the last year or so a real sea change in the way Wall Street thinks about carbon and climate. It’s happened because lots of people have gotten together and pushed. And it’s also happened because solar power and wind power are now the cheapest way to generate electricity, and that causes your spreadsheet to start blinking amber in alert. Between that, the way money gets allocated has begun to shift. And Andreas is right to caution us that Washington is not the only place that counts. There are lots of possibilities. The part about coming together is really important. There’s been some good coming together even over the course of this horrible year.

The most important thing anyone has said in 2020 was what George Floyd said as he was being murdered: “I can’t breathe.” There are lots of reasons why people can’t breathe. They can’t breathe because there’s a cop kneeling on their neck. Or because police brutality stifles their community. Often, in the very same communities, people can’t breathe because there’s a coal fire powerplant down the street. We know enough about the effects of COVID to understand that it follows lines of race and class vulnerability, too. People can’t breathe because the wildfire smoke gets so thick that the authorities tell people to tape shut their windows and stay inside. People can’t breathe because it gets too damn hot. We saw the hottest temperature ever reliably recorded on our planet this summer. 130 degrees in California. 120 degrees in San Luis Obispo, which is pretty much on the Pacific Ocean. That really shouldn’t be possible, but it is now. We have the possibility for a commonality that we have not felt before, or at least not for a while, in this overly divided nation and in this overly divided world. It’s a commonality of vulnerability as well as of possibility. We’re at this moment when the technologies that engineers gifted to us could be transformative if applied quickly and at scale. Our job is to make sure we create the conditions for that to happen.

Had Andreas’s book come out ten years ago, it would’ve been whistling past the graveyard, because we wouldn’t have had in place the possibility for solutions at scale. But now that we do, it makes enormous sense to be precisely having this conversation.

Katharine Hayhoe: People often ask, “How do we talk about this when there are so many other issues right up in our face?” There’s injustice, poverty, inequity, the inability to supply the physical needs of our families and put food on the table. Right here at home, as well as everywhere around the world, everybody is struggling right now. The reason we care about climate change is not because it increases the average temperature of the planet by one or two or three or five degrees; it’s because climate change is the great threat multiplier. It takes everything we already care about today and it makes it worse. It increases the risk of health impacts, the area burned by wildfires, the risks of extreme heat, which, of course, hit the poorest first. It makes our hurricanes stronger and much more devastating.

If you look at every basic goal to reduce poverty, eliminate hunger, insure people have clean water to drink, make sure that we have stable systems where people can go to school and go to the doctor—all of those basic things are threatened by climate change. So what I say to people is, “Who you already are is the perfect person to care. In fact, you already do.” It isn’t a case of moving climate change up your priority list and displacing something else. The only reason we care about climate change is because items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5—all the way down are being affected by climate change.

***

If you weren’t able to attend the book launch, you can watch it here in full.

About the Panelists 

Andreas Karelas is the founder and executive director of RE-volv, a nonprofit organization that empowers people around the country to help nonprofits in their communities go solar and raise awareness about the benefits of clean energy. He is a dedicated clean-energy advocate with over 15 years of environmental and renewable energy experience. He is an Audubon TogetherGreen Conservation Leadership Fellow and an OpenIDEO Climate Innovator Fellow. He lives and works in San Francisco. Connect with him at re-volv.org and on Twitter at @AndreasKarelas.

Katharine Hayhoe, who wrote the foreword for Climate Courage, is an atmospheric scientist whose research focuses on understanding what climate change means for people and the places where we live.

Bill McKibben is a founder of the environmental organization 350.org and was among the first to have warned of the dangers of global warming. He is the author of several bestselling books.

By Gustavus Stadler

Photo credit: Al Aumuller/New York World-Telegram and the Sun

I knew that when my book, Woody Guthrie: An Intimate Life, came out, I would inevitably be asked questions like, “What would Woody Guthrie do today? Where would he stand on this issue? What would he think of this candidate or that elected official?” I’m mostly accustomed to writing about topics at least several decades distant from the present, and I try hard to honor the otherness of the past, rather than portray it as a simpler version of the now. Plus, responses to such questions so often depend more on the projections of the answerer than on historical evidence. Witness the sick spectacle of contemporary conservatives claiming the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. because they can cram a single phrase from a single speech into the mold of their ideology and conveniently ignore his fleshed-out views linking racism to capitalism and militarism.

Consequently, I confess to a bit of dread, and resistance, toward such questions. Nonetheless, in some very real way, these are also the essential questions to ask of a book like mine; why write a book about a historical figure without some sense that, in no matter how obscure or transparent fashion, something about them matters in the present? Also, I have seen the evidence, having viewed the vast majority of Guthrie’s archive. So, a fair assessment is somewhere within my reach. And some of its aspects might surprise you. So here goes.

His soul imprinted by personal and collective trauma in his childhood, Guthrie believed, unabashedly, that government should play a strong, reparative role in people’s lives, easing suffering, righting injustice, and enabling all citizens to flourish. To this extent, he would have despised the more and less militant, but nonetheless consistent anti-government orientation of our last six Presidents of both parties. And he would have enthusiastically welcomed the Bernie Sanders campaign, as well as the rise of the new stars of the leftier regions of the Democratic party: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of “The Squad”: Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, as well as the growing numbers of state and local politicians committed to grassroots campaigning and governing.

But here’s where things get more controversial. The politicians I’ve named straddle Democratic-party-approved liberalism and a more radical set of views that drives their advocacy for selected policies one could fairly call socialist. Fundamentally, though, they remain committed to “America” as a powerful ideal, a synonym for ideals of freedom and equality, and they have faith in its institutions to, ultimately, realize these ideals. I don’t believe Woody Guthrie shared this commitment or this faith, at least not in the same form.

Indeed, no person of sound judgment and good faith could leave a deep reading of his archive with the idea that Guthrie’s main passion was to celebrate America and Americans. No one could come out of that place believing he would ever have embraced calls for unity before calls for justice. Guthrie would have sacrificed America in a split second if doing so could eradicate fascism from the world.

Obviously, the sense that Guthrie is a celebratory nationalist comes largely from his by far best-known song, “This Land is Your Land,” which has become a favorite tune in elementary schools and at campfires. But this is not a song about inclusivity. Even overlooking the seldom-sung verse in which he explicitly condemns private property, the song’s refrain carries an implicitly negative message alongside the explicitly positive one: this land is your land, not the land of the people who, in market terms, own it, who hold the deeds to it. Those deeds are fictions, these people are thieves. (The question of the song’s erasure of Indigenous people and settler colonialism is more complicated.)

I won’t hazard a guess as to whether he would have bent his principles, as so many leftists are doing, and supported the centrist-liberal Biden-Harris campaign for the Presidency. I do know that Woody Guthrie was a radical, not a liberal. He didn’t believe that any of the ideals America claim as its foundation could be realized without the destruction—or at the very least substantial transformation of—capitalism. The ideal America he envisioned, in other words, would look wholly alien, if not utterly terrifying, to many of the nation’s citizens today—perhaps even to the majority of them.

Another largely underexplored area of his writing speaks meaningfully to the struggles of the present. Later in his life, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, before his permanent hospitalization with Huntington’s disease, he began to think about race and racism in ways that challenged nationalist liberal common sense. He had worked hard to shed the influence of his white supremacist father and the ambient racism of his growing years in Oklahoma and Texas. As his positions drew him more and more toward communism, he learned of the Party’s efforts, led by Black members, to address a range of issues related to racism—not only voting rights and equal access to institutions, but problems faced specifically by working class Black people, like economic inequality and police violence. In 1949, he was among the crowds leaving a Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill, New York, only to be set on violently by white supremacist gangs and police officers. He called it the worst thing he’d ever seen.

In the following couple of years, Guthrie grew closer to his friend Stetson Kennedy, a white anti-racism activist in Florida, who worked with the Civil Rights Congress, a largely Black group affiliated with the Communist Party. In 1951, the CRC issued a petition to the United Nations titled “We Charge Genocide,” which condemned the history of racial inequality in the United States as a deliberate program of mass extinction, led in the present day by the state via the police. Appended to the petition were hundreds of newspaper accounts of police brutality. Guthrie turned several of these cases into never-recorded songs. He also wrote a long poem embracing the document’s position, titled “Genocide.” Despite the growing acknowledgment among white liberals that structural racism exists in the US, and the wide acceptance of the idea that racist police violence is a serious problem, it’s hard to imagine any electoral candidate or elected official taking a stance this confrontational and not destroying their career.

Finally, Guthrie believed that fascism and capitalism overlapped significantly. They were both driven by rapaciousness and cruelty, and they both stifled the lives of the vast majority of a nation’s people, all so that a small minority could systematize their self-inflating, sadistic vision of the world while living in opulence. If the last four years haven’t convinced someone of this truth, it seems safe to say nothing will.

About the Author 

Gustavus Stadler is a professor of English at Haverford College. A well-established scholar of nineteenth- and twentieth-century US culture and popular music, he is the author of Troubling Minds: The Cultural Politics of Genius in the U.S., 1840–1890. His writing has appeared in the Bay Guardian, SF Weekly, the North Carolina Independent Weekly, Social Text, Sounding Out!, avidly.com, and numerous other outlets. He lives in Haverford, Pennsylvania. Connect with him at gustavusstadler.org and on Twitter at @majortominor.

By Linda Hogan

When Chickasaw poet and essayist Linda Hogan fell in love with her current home, a 1930s cabin in Idledale, Colorado, she would be continually astounded with wonder from learning the surrounding environment and animals. As she writes in this selection from her latest book of poetry and prose, The Radiant Lives of Animals, cultivating her connection with the land has been a lesson in the impact human life leaves behind and, with the insight of Indigenous knowledge systems, the kinship between us and the natural world begging to be nurtured to this day.

***

The story of this land is ancient. The red earth, crags, and canyons were once an inland sea. I imagine the currents when this mountain basin was ocean, water swaying as the moon became full or as wind moved it, swaying. Within the water, a shining circle of fish, many lives all thinking and moving as one. Sea animals hid inside stone caves and indentations that now, so many years later, shelter canyon wrens and swallow nests, once protecting numbers of indwelling bats.

In the times that passed between all these, dinosaurs left behind their footprints and bones for humans to find and fight over. Those are on the other side of this mountain that holds me.

On a dry day with particles of dust shining in sunlight, I drove up one hill and down another, my Blackfeet friend having me stop the car several times to gather red and yellow ochre for ceremonies or to use as paint for powwow dancing. That was long ago when I lived several homes away, but even then, I looked down this valley and knew one day I would live in this home and with this land so alive, so vibrantly enchanted with songs from ancient times, and with the night animals wandering through the forest of trees or the ones crossing hillsides by day. I knew other tribes had once stayed in this place of accepted amnesty as was the rule at the hot springs not far away. The earth here is created of all their stories, ancient and new.

Even so, down below the main road, at Bear Creek, Col. Chivington planned the massacre of human beings at Sand Creek, while promising them peace and safety. This betrayal, unfortunately, is also a story of this land.

Four miles up the road, Buffalo Bill is buried, a man known only for his abuses. Not so far away from his remains is a large buffalo herd. It is a joy for me to watch them calve in the spring, then watch the light-colored calves grow and darken, but mostly it is a pleasure to witness the tenderness between mother and calf, knowing that love is an unmeasured emotion even for human beings.

Not far over the mountain, northward down a highway, the land was once a great buffalo wallow filled with large numbers of bison. Now it is the city of Denver.

~~~

I fell in love with my home a few years back when I was hiking animal trails through the forest across from here. At the time this uncared-for little place wasn’t rented, so when I saw the cabin, I felt I was not trespassing. I crossed the creek and climbed up the hill, then tried to look inside. I found only one window allowing me to see a wall with wallpaper peeling like bark from a birch tree. But for me, the condition of this 1930s cabin didn’t matter. The land was my gravity and eventually gravity won. All these years later, it still holds me.

This became my home twenty years after that day of window-peeking. It is land that owns me. At first, I didn’t know the large number of animals that lived here and passed through, needing protection from development to the north. Nor would I have guessed I’d be years learning an environment so powerfully alive. Here are a million years of stories to tell. Some are immediate and very present, like the flattened morning grasses that reveal what slept here last night, usually a small group of doe and fawns curled together in herd dreaming. Or how the marmots across the way call out with a gentle trilling voice when they see a predator, and the three o’clock fox sings as it passes by on its daily journey with its wide tail full and beautiful. From hidden places, crows scream out and fly down to swarm their enemy, cawing loudly, alerting me to danger.

Then all becomes peacefully quiet forest and canyon once again, the singing creek passing through green mountain curves, traveling past the location where the lion keeps her bones, past the infant forest, an entire world filled with both visible and secretive lives.

Perhaps the ancestors dreamed it into existence, dreamed the future where I now live after many years of looking down into this valley with curiosity and longing, hoping I would one day live here and feel safe with the animal lives around me. I do feel that safety, living and planting above the place where water seeps out through the canyon walls, pure and clear from its secret journeys of underground miles.

I continue learning the animals, but I also want to learn the human animal. After all, we are the puzzle, the most difficult to understand or know. All the others may cohabit a field together easily: wild turkey, deer, rarely even a coyote, and the small birds at the edges. They are fine together until a human is near. Seeing us, they scatter. I am a predator known to them, when my own inner sea wants to know how we might be a part of the wilderness congress.

~~~

It is not my purpose to create a pastoral world. There are nights I hear death cries or screams of animals caught by others. I am also aware not only of the great number of species lost everywhere each day, but of the toll climate change is taking on the entire beleaguered planet. We are inundated with this pain in every book, every story on the news.

When I think of change, I consider the re-minding of ourselves and I mean that it is time to consider other kinds of intelligence and ways of being, to stretch our synapses to take in new ways of thought. As an Indigenous woman, I look toward our Native knowledge systems, the times when our relationship with the earth wasn’t the disjointed connection most of us have learned from our Euro-American education systems. I am one human animal who wants to take back original meanings and understandings in ways that are possible and are necessary.

Perhaps some of us make poetry, music, and art because the ancient story still dwells inside our body, as does a feeling for old ways of seeing and knowing the world. I see it in our work, our circles of native science conversations and the popularity of our books. We also know it in some quiet moments, intimations that surface from deep in the marrow as a brief yearning. Sometimes it feels like grief, sometimes it is grace. Sometimes it is like loneliness. Sometimes a joining together with all others. In any case, it is a true and deep need, this desire to change our systems of thought and vision. In this same way, we still feel our animal kinship, our own animal life, and the primordial green and dirt-rich odor of our world connection as a reminder.

The kinship and relationship between human and nonhuman others rise from inside to seek what is relevant in this changing world. But there is more. Many of us remember this in our shared histories. We want to know what sees us when we do not know we are being watched, but only feel that watching. Our need is like the shadow attached at our feet, never to be walked away from. Instead of speaking to what is beneath that shadow, it is often easier to ignore the dialogue asked of us by earth, its language spoken within and without our own skin.

In most Indigenous creation stories, humans were the last ones created. Around us are our many teachers. For now, it is enough to simply know that we do not live alone in the skin of any environment. We are part of a collective, the way marmots hibernate together in their complicated burrows beneath ground.

About the Author 

Linda Hogan (Chickasaw) is a poet, novelist, essayist, teacher, and activist. Her work illuminates environmental and Indigenous activism, as well as Native spirituality. She was born in Oklahoma and now lives and works in Idledale, Colorado, a town of 252 human souls. Her literary works have earned her awards and fellowships including a National Endowment of the Arts award, a Guggenheim, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of America, and, most recently, the Thoreau Prize from PEN and a Native Arts and Culture Award. Connect with Linda at lindahoganwriter.com.

By Judith Ortiz Cofer

It’s a minefield that women of Hispanic and Latinx heritage have to navigate in mainstream white culture and spaces—the media-engendered image of the Latina in the United States and all the stereotypes that come with it. For Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month, we share with you an excerpt from writer Judith Ortiz Cofer’s personal essay on the subject, “The Myth of the Latin Woman,” collected in Women Writing Resistance: Essays on Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Jennifer Browdy.

***

On a bus trip to London from Oxford University where I was earning some graduate credits one summer, a young man, obviously fresh from a pub, spotted me and as if struck by inspiration went down on his knees in the aisle. With both hands over his heart he broke into an Irish tenor’s rendition of “Maria” from West Side Story. My politely amused fellow passengers gave his lovely voice the round of gentle applause it deserved. Though I was not quite as amused, I managed my version of an English smile: no show of teeth, no extreme contortions of the facial muscles—I was at this time of my life practicing reserve and cool. Oh, that British control, how I coveted it. But Maria had followed me to London, reminding me of a prime fact of my life: you can leave the Island, master the English language, and travel as far as you can, but if you are a Latina, especially one like me who so obviously belongs to Rita Moreno’s gene pool, the Island travels with you.

This is sometimes a very good thing—it may win you that extra minute of someone’s attention. But with some people, the same things can make you an island—not so much a tropical paradise as an Alcatraz, a place nobody wants to visit. As a Puerto Rican girl growing up in the United States and wanting like most children to “belong,” I resented the stereotype that my Hispanic appearance called forth from many people I met.

Our family lived in a large urban center in New Jersey during the sixties, where life was designed as a microcosm of my parents’ casas on the island. We spoke in Spanish, we ate Puerto Rican food bought at the bodega, and we practiced strict Catholicism complete with Saturday confession and Sunday mass at a church where our parents were accommodated into a one-hour Spanish mass slot, performed by a Chinese priest trained as a missionary for Latin America.

As a girl I was kept under strict surveillance, since virtue and modesty were, by cultural equation, the same as family honor. As a teenager I was instructed on how to behave as a proper señorita. But it was a conflicting message girls got, since the Puerto Rican mothers also encouraged their daughters to look and act like women and to dress in clothes our Anglo friends and their mothers found too “mature” for our age. It was, and is, cultural, yet I often felt humiliated when I appeared at an American friend’s party wearing a dress more suitable to a semiformal than to a playroom birthday celebration. At Puerto Rican festivities, neither the music nor the colors we wore could be too loud. I still experience a vague sense of letdown when I’m invited to a “party” and it turns out to be a marathon conversation in hushed tones rather than a fiesta with salsa, laughter, and dancing—the kind of celebration I remember from my childhood.

I remember Career Day in our high school, when teachers told us to come dressed as if for a job interview. It quickly became obvious that to the barrio girls, “dressing up” sometimes meant wearing ornate jewelry and clothing that would be more appropriate (by mainstream standards) for the company Christmas party than as daily office attire. Th at morning I had agonized in front of my closet, trying to figure out what a “career girl” would wear because, essentially, except for Marlo Thomas on TV, I had no models on which to base my decision. I knew how to dress for school: at the Catholic school I attended we all wore uniforms; I knew how to dress for Sunday mass, and I knew what dresses to wear for parties at my relatives’ homes. Though I do not recall the precise details of my Career Day outfit, it must have been a composite of the above choices. But I remember a comment my friend (an Italian-American) made in later years that coalesced my impressions of that day. She said that at the business school she was attending the Puerto Rican girls always stood out for wearing “everything at once.” She meant, of course, too much jewelry, too many accessories. On that day at school, we were simply made the negative models by the nuns who were themselves not credible fashion experts to any of us. But it was painfully obvious to me that to the others, in their tailored skirts and silk blouses, we must have seemed “hopeless” and “vulgar.” Though I now know that most adolescents feel out of step much of the time, I also know that for the Puerto Rican girls of my generation that sense was intensified. The way our teachers and classmates looked at us that day in school was just a taste of the culture clash that awaited us in the real world, where prospective employers and men on the street would often misinterpret our tight skirts and jingling bracelets as a come-on.

Mixed cultural signals have perpetuated certain stereotypes—for example, that of the Hispanic woman as the “Hot Tamale” or sexual firebrand. It is a one-dimensional view that the media have found easy to promote. In their special vocabulary, advertisers have designated “sizzling” and “smoldering” as the adjectives of choice for describing not only the foods but also the women of Latin America. From conversations in my house I recall hearing about the harassment that Puerto Rican women endured in factories where the “boss men” talked to them as if sexual innuendo was all they understood and, worse, often gave them the choice of submitting to advances or being fired.

It is custom, however, not chromosomes, that leads us to choose scarlet over pale pink. As young girls, we were influenced in our decisions about clothes and colors by the women—older sisters and mothers who had grown up on a tropical island where the natural environment was a riot of primary colors, where showing your skin was one way to keep cool as well as to look sexy. Most important of all, on the island, women perhaps felt freer to dress and move more provocatively, since, in most cases, they were protected by the traditions, mores, and laws of a Spanish/Catholic system of morality and machismo whose main rule was: You may look at my sister, but if you touch her I will kill you. The extended family and church structure could provide a young woman with a circle of safety in her small pueblo on the island; if a man “wronged” a girl, everyone would close in to save her family honor.

Because of my education and my proficiency with the English language, I have acquired many mechanisms for dealing with the anger I experience. This was not true for my parents, nor is it true for the many Latin women working at menial jobs who must put up with stereotypes about our ethnic group such as: “They make good domestics.” This is another facet of the myth of the Latin woman in the United States. Its origin is simple to deduce. Work as domestics, waitressing, and factory jobs are all that’s available to women with little English and few skills. The myth of the Hispanic menial has been sustained by the same media phenomenon that made “Mammy” from Gone with the Wind America’s idea of the black woman for generations; Maria, the housemaid or counter girl, is now indelibly etched into the national psyche. The big and the little screens have presented us with the picture of the funny Hispanic maid, mispronouncing words and cooking up a spicy storm in a shiny California kitchen.

This media-engendered image of the Latina in the United States has been documented by feminist Hispanic scholars, who claim that such portrayals are partially responsible for the denial of opportunities for upward mobility among Latinas in the professions. I have a Chicana friend working on a PhD in philosophy at a major university. She says her doctor still shakes his head in puzzled amazement at all the “big words” she uses. Since I do not wear my diplomas around my neck for all to see, I too have on occasion been sent to that “kitchen,” where some think I obviously belong.

One such incident that has stayed with me, though I recognize it as a minor offense, happened on the day of my first public poetry reading. It took place in Miami in a boat-restaurant where we were having lunch before the event. I was nervous and excited as I walked in with my notebook in my hand. An older woman motioned me to her table. Thinking (foolish me) that she wanted me to autograph a copy of my brand-new slender volume of verse, I went over. She ordered a cup of coffee from me, assuming that I was the waitress. Easy enough to mistake my poems for menus, I suppose. I know that it wasn’t an intentional act of cruelty, yet of all the good things that happened that day, I remember that scene most clearly, because it reminded me of what I had to overcome before anyone would take me seriously. In retrospect I understand that my anger gave my reading fire, that I have almost always taken doubts in my abilities as a challenge—and that the result is, most times, a feeling of satisfaction at having won a convert when I see the cold, appraising eyes warm to my words, the body language change, the smile that indicates that I have opened some avenue for communication. That day I read to that woman and her lowered eyes told me that she was embarrassed at her little faux pas, and when I willed her to look up at me, it was my victory, and she graciously allowed me to punish her with my full attention. We shook hands at the end of the reading, and I never saw her again. She has probably forgotten the whole thing but maybe not.

Yet I am one of the lucky ones. My parents made it possible for me to acquire a stronger footing in the mainstream culture by giving me the chance at an education. And books and art have saved me from the harsher forms of ethnic and racial prejudice that many of my Hispanic compañeras have had to endure. I travel a lot around the United States, reading from my books of poetry and my novel, and the reception I most often receive is one of positive interest by people who want to know more about my culture. Th ere are, however, thousands of Latinas without the privilege of an education or the entrée into society that I have. For them life is a struggle against the misconceptions perpetuated by the myth of the Latina as whore, domestic, or criminal. Every time I give a reading, I hope the stories I tell, the dreams and fears I examine in my work, can achieve some universal truth which will get my audience past the particulars of my skin color, my accent, or my clothes.

About the Author 

Judith Ortiz Cofer was born in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico, and spent her childhood traveling back and forth between Puerto Rico and the United States. She has published ficion, creative nonfiction, and poetry, including The Latin Deli: Telling the Lives of Barrio Women, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; a memoir, Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood; several children’s books, including An Island Like You and Call Me Maria; and several volumes of poetry, including Reaching for the Mainland and A Love Story Beginning in Spanish. Cofer teaches at the University of Georgia as the Regents’ and Franklin Professor of English and Creative Writing.

By Enrico Gnaulati

Photo credit: Victoria Borodinova

Under normal circumstances, family life in America is a “fire shower of stress, multi-tasking, and mutual nitpicking” according to journalist Benedict Carey, covering the results of a four-year-long UCLA observational study of thirty-two urban families for the New York Times. A survey funded by Sleepopolis a few years back discovered that kids have an eye-popping 4,200 arguments with their parents before they turn eighteen, averaging fourteen minutes long, with parents “winning” upwards of sixty percent of the time. I’m assuming “winning” meant parents successfully cajoling their kids to complete household chores, clean up bedrooms and shared spaces, and finish homework—the most common reasons for disagreements.

Under the pandemic, it’s not just kids’ homework that parents are placed in the thankless task of overseeing, but also their entire remote learning experience. Schools in the majority of states across the country have shuttered their doors, leaving in excess of forty-three million kids in grades K-12 housebound. Earlier this spring, as families sheltered in place, parents stepped in to manage their kids’ distance-learning needs. It was thought to be a stop-gap measure, even a novelty for many involved. There was the added advantage of having the “morning rush” eliminated, allowing for more sleep and less stress. This is notwithstanding kids winning back the free time they were used to sacrificing by being overscheduled with extracurricular activities. Family members hunkered down at home. Many parents I work with confessed during Zoom therapy sessions that they enjoyed the family togetherness. Working mothers, in particular, felt released from the guilt and anxiety they often carry juggling professional demands and domestic responsibilities, never quite performing either up to their standards.

Months along, the novelty has worn off, and parents are concerned about the ramifications of prolonged virtual classrooms for the quality of education their kids are receiving. A recent poll by the FM3 Research firm found that a whopping seventy-five percent of parents believed that distance learning was inferior to in-class instruction. Parents are concerned about the learning loss their kids face as well as the social drawbacks. Socially anxious kids may be the most hard hit because they are void of the social exposure that attending school offers, which over time provides them with the interactional practice and acquisition of social skills that renders them less socially avoidant.

Overuse of screens—especially videogaming—is more the bane of parents’ existence than usual. Virtual learning leaves many kids bored and undermotivated. A perfect storm arises—kids rushing through their schoolwork to maximize their videogame time and parents feeling hamstrung, capitulating when they know they shouldn’t, because their own job responsibilities working remotely from home leave them, understandably, otherwise preoccupied. Several months ago, nearly seventy-five million residents of California, Illinois, Connecticut, and New York were ordered to sequester themselves at home. Simultaneously, videogame play during Verizon’s peak hour of internet usage increased seventy-five percent from the week before. Being lax about kids’ videogame usage may be unavoidable. But it’s an arrangement that’s unsustainable since data indicate that most parents are deeply concerned about the risks posed to their kids while playing videogames—ninety-four percent, in fact, according to a McAfee study.

For high-school and college students, the struggles imposed by the pandemic are especially pronounced. Adolescence and young adulthood are phases of life that emphasize individuating from one’s family and venturing out into the world to build greater personal assertiveness and agency. Having teachers, professors, coaches, and other supportive adults to educate and mentor them strengthens the individuation process and fosters teenagers’ and young adults’ social competence and self-confidence. Millions of teenagers and young adults are now housebound, reliant on social media to stay in contact with peers and stuck having parents as the omnipresent adults in their lives to whom they feel accountable. Time will tell to what degree stay-at-home orders and remote learning have thwarted and delayed the individuation experience of this generation of teenagers and young adults.

How are we to stay sane during these insane times? Top of the list, for me, pertains to respectfully honoring spacial and emotional boundaries. Confined at home—often in close quarters—having to locate the ideal conditions for them to stay motivated, focused, and productive, it behooves parents and kids alike to be overt with their needs. Under the best of conditions, it is extremely difficult, even for adults, to assertively ask for alone time. Kids and teens often communicate their needs for separateness—to have physical and emotional space from a parent—indirectly through their behavior, conveying grumpiness, irritation, or defiance. Having a family meeting to discuss matters such as: how closed doors signal a wish to be alone; better ways to rearrange the physical environment at home to allow each family member access to their ideal working conditions; and the acceptability of requesting alone time in kind, assertive ways are all highly relevant issues.

The way we conduct our emotional lives and relate to one another as family members even has a bearing on the health or ill-health of our immune systems. Just like viruses, emotions are contagious. Partners “catch” each other’s stress, and there are adverse health implications. The good news is that partners also “catch” each other’s happiness. Cooped up at home to protect against the transmission of COVID-19, sharing humor and goodwill gestures will not only help avert the outbreak of a parallel pandemic—more strife in family life—but keep our immune systems well-toned.

About the Author 

Enrico Gnaulati, PhD, is a nationally recognized reformer of mental health practice and policy. His latest book is Saving Talk Therapy: How Health Insurers, Big Pharma, and Slanted Science are Ruining Good Mental Health Care (Beacon Press, 2018).

A Q&A with Michael Torres

Who do we belong to? This is the question Michael Torres ponders as he explores the roles that names, hometown, language, and others’ perceptions each play on our understanding of ourselves in his debut poetry collection An Incomplete List of Names. More than a boyhood ballad or a coming-of-age story, this collection illuminates an artist’s struggle to make sense of the disparate identities others have forced upon him. Poet Raquel Salas Rivera selected it as our winner in the National Poetry Series. For Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month, he caught up with Torres to chat with him about it.

Raquel Salas Rivera: One of the things that struck me the most was your use of metaphor. You seem to be doing something akin to what I’ve long been trying to do in my own work—find metaphors in the quotidian, in your surroundings. In your opening poem, “1991,” for example, you compare “an eyelash/ resting on the fingertip” to “an empty/ teeter-totter at the park.” Each of these alone would stand its ground, but the fact that you are able to draw them together, through both movement, precarity, and intimacy, that's something else. It reminds me of Federico García Lorca's argument that Luis de Góngora was able to create island-metaphors, small solar systems around metaphors, where two things are comparable on only one point, but work at different levels. Who do you feel taught you some of what you know about metaphor, or who, I guess, influenced you?

Michael Torres: I’d have to say Larry Levis has been the biggest influence. Though, I don’t think I intentionally went to his work for metaphors. I just loved the way another, surreal world could blossom from within the real world of the poem. I’m always fascinated at the point in which an image or description sinks into a deeper space.

RSR: Who is the Pachucho? When do you decide to speak in the third person and when in the first? Talk to me about those choices.

MT: The Pachuco is based on an imagined version of my grandfather, and understanding that my speaker is the grandson, I was able to write about topics or concerns in ways that, for some reason I still can’t quite name, I couldn’t when I perceived the speaker as me. Simply put, the Pachuco gives his grandson confidence (maybe I’m speaking to lineage); the Pachuco’s grandson is a lot bolder/more daring than the speaker I’d been writing through before he came to the page.

RSR: The poem where the Pachuco's Grandson is first introduced is particularly interesting because, in a way, it is not just the generality of your multiple names, but also about institutional erasure. The speaker responds to the moment in which the teacher chooses not to call your name in roll call with “That’s how I knew/ I didn’t have to answer no more. I became absence/ in my seat, asleep.” I was also left thinking about tagging in graffiti, how the tag is more about getting your name everywhere than about being aesthetically pleasing, more about having a presence in public space. Talk to me about the importance of naming in the book. 

MT: Growing up (particularly in middle school), some of my best friends and just the funnest people to hang with at lunch were who the adults—proctors, vice principals, PE coaches—thought were only troublemakers and were often, in my opinion, mistreated. I have a distinct memory of returning with a homie to the vice principal’s office at the end of the school year to retrieve his pager. That year, I’d worked as an office assistant (insert nerd emoji here), and when the vice principal saw me walk in with my homie, he said, “You’re friends with this guy?” He seemed genuinely confused. I, on the other hand, thought: Yes, of course; he’s a wonderful friend. Needless to say, very early on, I learned not to trust what authority figures thought of people they knew only from certain angles or aspects. Naturally, this led me to want to take control of my own identity as I grew into adolescence. The homies I then made in high school were all mostly graffiti artists. Our identity, the names we gave ourselves, were the most important aspects of us. It was reputation and recognition, on our terms. 

RSR: Poems like “The Very Short Story of Your Knuckles” and “The Pachuco’s Grandson Smokes His First Cigarette After Contemplating Masculinity,” in fact most of the poems of the book, deal with masculinity and lineage directly. I’m struck by the verses, “What mean teach/ boys to be, girls witness as well.” Do you think poetry has given you the face to rethink patriarchal masculinity? If so, why? If not, when do you think that questioning began?

MT: Since poetry, for me, is explorative, I’ve been able to expand on masculinity, its various manifestations. It’s more complicated and complex than I gave it credit for growing up. (How could I fathom it, right?) It runs deep. It modulates and corrects every action and answer. I still find myself abiding by it, even as I critique it. Yes, I like to think about the harm in that but I also think it’s as important to identify/label as many parts of this creation, and its reverberations—in my community, in the greater society. There’s nothing and no one it doesn’t permeate. I think a lot of the tension in my poems stems from the speaker’s desire to simultaneously stay true to a macho masculinity while also presenting and maintaining tenderness.

RSR: In the poem, “Empties” you write, “How many hours did I spend/ inventing my childhood? And what did it look like/ to my father who never stopped to play, who instead/ crushed each stubborn can under his heavy boot?” Do you think of poetry as a kind of “play”?

MT: I think play truly happens for me in metaphor. Most of my work is narrative and elegiac in tone and execution, so metaphor is almost like a moment of excitement, or something that means shaking up that narrative. I also understand it as playful, because metaphor is also a way where I/the speaker is once removed. There’s a degree of separation (from the narrative) that opens up this space to be playful—usually that’s where I’m also dipping into being lyrical.

Also, poetry has been, for me, a place where my imagination—something I can’t separate from childhoodness—thrives. What is the imagination if not play? I never wanted to lose that part of me. Thinking about it like that, it makes sense that I ended up in the arts.

RSR: I grew up obsessed with hip hop in Puerto Rico during the early 2000s. I listened to everything from Black Star to Intifada, which back then was still called Conciencia Poética. So I was listening to 90s underground stuff I could get my hands on and early Vico C, then I was going to shows and b-boy competitions with a tape recorder doing interviews because I was an obsessed teenager. Not that many people know about how obsessed I used to be with hip hop, its history, and how it got to Puerto Rico. Then I met my first boyfriend, Edgar Vidal—may he rest in peace—and Edgar had his old crew from the Bronx who he sometimes freestyled with. With him, I learned so much more about hip hop in New York. All this to say, your book probably hit me hard also because of that background. I saw that you tagged a few copies of the book with bubble letters and I got so excited. When did hip hop enter your life and how do you see it relating to your poetry? Oh, and who is your favorite MC?

MT: Being brought up on the West Coast during the era of East Vs. West beefs, hip hop was always around. LA and Hollywood were like an hour away. Though we lived in the hood, the aura of celebrity and rappers was there. I listened to Tupac. Learned and loved The Pharcyde, Tribe Called Quest. Black Star too! So those experiences coupled with an older sister who exposed me to Shakespeare and Dickinson when I was really young really set the foundation. 

Not long after high school, I learned about a local open mic spot, A Mic and Dim Lights. Spoken word and slam poetry with a DJ to mix and play music during breaks. That’s actually where I got my first taste of performing poetry. I’d write and memorize pieces that I performed there. I even got to feature there once. Back then, a lot of what I wrote was a mix of hip hop and its rhythms and narrative storytelling that would later become the focus of my writing process. This is probably why I still love a hype, high energy reading event over a quiet-snaps, nodding-type reading. 

So many MCs to choose from! I have to say Kendrick Lamar. I have to. West Coast, represent! He was also coming up when I decided on being a poet. So I loved watching his growth and success as I began to move through the literary world.

RSR: Thank you again for taking the time to answer these questions, Michael. My final question is, how do you hope this book moves through the world? Who would you love to see reading it and why?

MT: When I started writing this book, I imagined it for my homies primarily, and I still do; but now they have kids who are getting to the age I was when who I was going to be developed through adolescent experiences. I want this book in their hands too. I want this book in the hands of anyone who uses the term “homie” or the phrase “this foo”—which to me is a masculine cariño. I hope these poems are worthy. That someone may flip through its pages and find themselves in it.

About Michael Torres 

Michael Torres was born and brought up in Pomona, CA, where he spent his adolescence as a graffiti artist. In 2019, he received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Loft Literary Center for the Mirrors & Windows Program. His writing has been featured in POETRY, Ploughshares, and other literary journals. Currently, he teaches in the MFA program at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. Connect with him at michaeltorreswriter.com.

Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

We were hoping Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would hold out through November. After serving twenty-seven years on the nation’s highest court, she passed away on September 18. She was eighty-seven. A legal, cultural, and feminist icon and champion of gender equality, she was an inspiration, a bastion of strength and courage. We asked some of our authors to reflect on her legacy and share their remembrances here.

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“FROM THE PERSONAL . . .

Justice Ginsburg showed that size doesn’t matter. Just over five feet tall, she proved that true stature does not need to come in a six-foot-tall, loud, male package. Her legacy is historic. She wielded incredible power through her words and deeds. As someone who has been routinely underestimated due to my size and gender, this is especially meaningful. She was also inspiring to older women, including my mother and her friends, proving that you can work out and do planks well into your eighties.

She also exemplified persistence, arguing numerous cases before the Supreme Court, through which she built a path toward gender equality, step by step. As only the second woman appointed to the Supreme Court, she knew that “women belong in all the places decisions are being made . . .”

. . . TO THE POLITICAL

Which brings me to health reform. Her now famous statement that “women belong in all the places decisions are being made” is one of my all-time favorite quotes. I included it in my book as the lead-in to the chapter on health reform solutions. I, too, have seen that we cannot have true fairness in our policies if women are not at the table, in seats of power where they can decide or strongly influence the outcome. Decades ago, Ruth paved the way for this to happen. And health reform proves the point. Justice Ginsburg MUST be replaced with someone who will protect the ACA, as well as a woman’s right to choose whether or not she has a child. 

Losing Ruth Bader Ginsburg at this critical moment threatens so many of the issues she fought for. In this fall’s election, we have to fight for her legacy, and our own lives. She deserves no less.”
—Rosemarie Day, Marching Toward Coverage: How Women Can Lead the Fight for Universal Health Care

“Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (aka the ‘Notorious RBG’), taught the world that women’s rights were human rights. She believed that discrimination against women harmed everyone—not just women, but also men, children, families, the economy, and the larger society. As a lawyer for the ACLU in the 1970s, she regularly convinced the nine men on the Supreme Court to see discrimination that way, too. She then served on that Court for twenty-seven years, helping to shape the law through her own opinions. But for me personally—as for many other women in law—her greatest impact was to open the door of the mostly-male legal profession to all the women that have followed in her footsteps.”
—Amanda Frost, You Are Not American: Citizenship Stripping from Dred Scott to the Dreamers

“So many thoughts swirl following Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing; some I have written down, some I have yet to write. The first was a paean to her and her influence on my generation of women lawyers. She was all I wanted to be, as I said in a Washington Post op-ed. She put her considerable legal skills at the service of social change and was successful beyond her wildest expectations. She conceived of an expansive and robust view of equality, where men and women would be freed from the stereotypes that trapped them. She applied her vision to her litigation, spoke about it in her speeches, used it in her teaching and then embodied it in her judging. At the same time, I feel an overarching sense of peril—for the rights that my generation of women won over the course of forty years, the right to choose abortion first and foremost. Justice Ginsburg viewed reproductive rights as part of a skein of rights, each dependent upon the other. In situating abortion squarely in the fight for women’s equality, she tried to reframe the debate. Not about competing interests (fetal life vs. a woman’s rights), not just about abortion, but also birth control. If a woman cannot choose when or if to be a mother, no other protections mater. And I feel rage—flat-out rage (at who? The Divine?)—that she could not have lasted just few months longer, that the Republicans, by rushing through a Ginsburg replacement—as if they could—are dancing on her grave. This beyond the trope: elections have consequences. The Court the latest nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, may join has a fundamentally premodern view of American democracy, hearkening back to the years before the New Deal. Then I swing back to profound gratitude for knowing her at all.

In 2014, I gave the Ruth Bader Ginsburg lecture for the New York City Bar Association. I ended by quoting a speech of Jill Ruckelshaus, a founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus, in the 1970s: 

‘We are in for a very, very long haul . . . . I am asking for everything you have to give. We will never give up . . . You will lose your youth, your sleep, your arches, your patience, your sense of humor, and occasionally . . . the understanding and support of the people you love very much. In return, I have nothing to offer you but . . . your pride in being a woman, all your dreams you’ve have had for your daughters, your future and the certain knowledge that at the end of your days you will be able to look back and say that once in your life you gave everything you had for justice.’   

“And I turned directly to the Justice and said, ‘Justice Ginsburg, in all of the roles you have played, role model, advocate, judge, justice, one thing is clear. You gave everything you had for justice.’”
—Nancy Gertner, In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate

“First and foremost, I will remember Justice Ginsburg with gratitude for her pathbreaking work in creating, as legal scholar Linda Greenhouse has put it, ‘a new jurisprudence of sex equality’—work that has changed the life possibilities for millions of Americans. But I will also remember her for her extraordinary deftness at combining the roles of brilliant and highly respected Supreme Court Justice and popular culture icon. I will never forget the moment when asked how she felt about her new identity as the ‘Notorious RBG,’ a name clearly based on the rapper The Notorious B.I.G., she calmly answered, ‘Well, we have something very important in common—we were both born in Brooklyn.’ Or, how she, a well-known lover of opera, actually agreed to act in one! By agreeing to be such an icon, while never sacrificing her dignity, this octogenarian reached countless people, of all ages, and inspired them with a vision of gender equality.”
—Carole Joffe, Dispatches from Abortion Wars: The Costs of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us  

“The last public event I attended was in February at Union Theological Seminary in New York where Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave the annual Women of Spirit lecture. It was evident then that her health was fragile, but it was also clear that her mind was not! Listening to her wisdom in the twilight of her life was a gift and a blessing. As we remember her legacy and consider the fight that is brewing over her replacement, I believe her own words offer us all something important to remember about the power of the Court. She said, ‘The Court is a reactive institution. If the people don’t care, nothing will change.’ Her legacy is also our responsibility to support and to defend.”
—Rebecca Todd Peters, Trust Women: A Progressive Christian Argument for Reproductive Justice

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg worked tirelessly for justice and equality, with a humility and strength that has inspired me and countless others. As a personal remembrance, Justice Ginsburg generously wrote the foreword to one of my books, a judicial biography. Judge Richard S. Arnold, she wrote, was ‘ever mindful of the people law exists to serve.’ She recognized this value in others, because it was so much a part of her judicial work. She best served people, as she put it, by helping ‘repair tears in her society, to make things a little better.’ Justice Ginsburg leaves an incredible legacy and the inspiration to continue to fight for justice and equality.”
—Polly Price, Plagues in the Nation (forthcoming)

“The death of Justice Ginsburg has been simply crushing, for all the obvious reasons. The work of pioneering advocates like Ginsburg was what inspired me to go to law school in the first place, and her most famous accomplishments are so well-known that I do not have to repeat them here. Instead, I'll write something that may be fairly unpopular: I was never a fan of the ‘Notorious RBG’ nickname. For one thing, RBG was a liberal incrementalist; she was not a radical judge (if such a thing can even exist). But more importantly, I always felt this nickname diminished her—it reduced her to a symbol, an inoffensive logo to slap on a tote-bag or t-shirt. Yet RBG was more than a symbol, more than a logo, more, even, than a judge. She was, at her best, a clear-eyed and incisive and inclusive activist, one who never failed to credit Pauli Murray and Dorothy Kenyon for the legal theories on which she drew. As an advocate, Ginsburg challenged the death penalty, forced sterilization, and racially disparate sentencing, in addition to her well-known fights for gender equality. So many of us have benefited from her advocacy. The movement of which she was a part continues to embolden and inspire me, even in our dystopian present.”
—Scott W. Stern, The Trials of Nina McCall: Sex, Surveillance, and the Decades-Long Government Plan to Imprison “Promiscuous” Women

By Paul Ortiz

Migrant workers harvest Lettuce at Lakeside Organic Gardens in Watsonville, CA. Photo credit: US Department of Agriculture

The outbreak of COVID-19 is far from the first time immigrants and the Latinx community have been taken for granted as the labor force that keeps this country running. Today, they face poverty wages, the threat of infection, white supremacist violence, and/or deportation. As Paul Ortiz shows in this selection from An African American and Latinx History of the United States, they faced poverty wages, displacement, white supremacist violence, and deportation in the past. So little has changed, including the demonizing rhetoric used against them. Sound familiar? And yet, they still thrive and resist.

***

The reconfiguration of racial capitalism in the early twentieth century hinged upon the exploitation of agricultural workers who were fired, deported, or driven into cities when they tried to organize in defense of their interests. Local governments, growers, and vigilantes in the Sunbelt counties stretching from Orange County, Florida, to Orange County, California, put the hammer down on agricultural laborers seeking to achieve independence. Employers and their enforcers ruthlessly suppressed Mexican, Chinese, Sikh, Japanese, Indian, Italian, white, and African American farmworkers seeking to organize. In 1908, a group of armed white citizens marched into a camp of farmworkers of Indian extraction in Live Oak, California, and “burned it to the ground, beat and terrorized a hundred or more Hindus in the camp, drove them out of the community, and, in doing so, robbed them of about $2,500.” For decades, politicians in California used anti-Chinese racism as bluntly as the Democratic Party used anti-Black hatred in the South to consolidate power. Leading growers in Jim Crow Florida urged their industry to look to California for a solution to the “labor problem” in agriculture.

The birth of modern agribusiness in the United States is a chronicle of dispossession. The Texas Rangers and other law enforcement agents played a key role in the bloody process of expropriating lands belonging to Mexican and Native American people. The historian Robert Perkinson writes, “From the beginning, the territory’s pioneering lawmen did less to suppress crime in any conventional sense than to force open lands for Anglo American settlement.” Mexican victims of the Texas Rangers’ furious attacks were quite often landowners with extensive holdings: “Title challenges and outright theft led to a loss of more than 187,000 acres of land for Tejanos in the lower Rio Grande Valley from 1900 to 1910.” The historian Zaragosa Vargas notes, “The eventual violent collapse of Tejano ranching society took place in the early twentieth century, when the Texas Rangers, intermediaries in the transition to capitalism, cleaned out the remaining Tejano landowners, summarily executing more than three hundred ‘suspected Mexicans.’” Over time, the pace of land theft quickened. Native Americans suffered most grievously, losing approximately ninety million acres of land in the decades after the implementation of the Dawes Act in 1887.

Agribusiness in the Sunbelt was marked by an authoritarian pattern of social control whereby racism, patriarchy, and rule by force overwhelmed democratic institutions. Writing in 1928, the Trinidadian American sociologist Oliver Cromwell Cox noted, “The Southern leadership, because of its success in disenfranchising its colored labor force, has remained a turbulent, primitive group of capitalists. It has been relatively untouched by the democratic restraints operative in other sections of the country. It can be depended upon, therefore, to throw its vast weight against organized labor and to obstruct movements to implement the democratic gains of the people as a whole.” When one extends Cox’s thesis to the entire Sunbelt, it is apparent that the disenfranchisement of farm labor lent an antidemocratic thrust to rural American politics with regressive implications for democracy that can be felt up to the present day.

In 1915, inspired by the land reforms of the Mexican Revolution, insurgent Tejanos and Mexicans promulgated the Plan de San Diego, which called for the reclaiming of land in southern Texas for Mexican people and Native Americans as well as an independent state for African Americans. The insurgents launched bloody attacks on white ranchers under banners reading “Equality and Independence,” but they were defeated, and a new reign of Ranger-led violence was initiated. It resulted in the murder of hundreds of Tejanos and “the forced displacement of thousands of Mexicans who fled for their lives across the border.”

The US Border Patrol was created in 1924, ostensibly to provide border security. However, as the historian Kelly Lytle Hernández observes, officers of the agency quickly understood immigration enforcement as labor control. Hernández quotes one Texas farmer as saying, “We tell the immigration officers if our Mexicans try to get away to the interior, and they stop them and send them back to Mexico. Then in a few days they are back here and we have good workers for another year.” Mexican laborers who regularly crossed the border between Mexico and the United States to work in Texas—for example, from Ciudad Juarez to El Paso—were sprayed with DDT, Zyklon B, and other carcinogenic chemicals by US health inspectors who used these Mexicans as unwilling subjects in experiments with different delousing treatments. Jose Burciaga, who worked as a janitor in El Paso, recalled, “At the customs bath by the bridge . . . they would spray some stuff on you. It was white and would run down your body. How horrible! And then I remember something else about it: they would shave everyone’s head . . . men, women, everybody. . . . The substance was very strong.” On January 28, 1917, Carmelita Torres, a domestic worker, organized Latinas who refused to be deloused: they shut down traffic in El Paso and protested the racial stereotype of Mexicans as disease carriers.

Employers and politicians invoked racialized stereotypes of Mexican workers to justify poverty wages and the denial of citizenship. Dr. George P. Clements, manager of the Agriculture Department of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce during the 1920s, denigrated the Mexican American worker: “He is ignorant of values; he knows nothing of time; he knows nothing of our laws; he is as primitive as we were 2,500 years ago. He does not know our language, the result being that he becomes a petty criminal through ignorant violations. . . . He rarely if ever takes out his citizenship, mixes in politics, or labor squabbles unless directed by some American group. He is the most tractable individual ever came to serve us.” Ralph H. Taylor, the executive secretary of the California Agricultural Legislative Committee, claimed, “The Mexican has no political ambitions; he does not aspire to dominate the political affairs of the community in which he lives.” Growers and state officials repeatedly emphasized that Mexican workers were preferable to any other form of labor because if they demanded rights or citizenship they could easily be deported.

About the Author 

Paul Ortiz is director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program and a professor of history at the University of Florida. He is the author of Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920, An African American and Latinx History of the United States, and coeditor of the oral history Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South. He lives in Gainesville, Florida.

Photo credit: Miguel Á. Padriñán

Be Proud of Your Past, Embrace the Future. That’s this year’s theme for Hispanic Heritage Month. In times like these, the theme is a manifesto to live by. The books in our catalog about the lives and contributions of Hispanic/Latinx communities attest to it. Whether writing about Latinx folks joining fellow Black Americans throughout history in the shared struggle for civil rights, personal stories of crossing borders and of staking a claim in a place to call home for a new beginning, or even the human condition in all its complexities in poetry, our authors highlight how important these voices are in the ongoing narrative of the United States. Take a look at these titles from our catalog! Happy Hispanic Heritage Month!

An African American and Latinx History of the United States
Paul Ortiz

“A welcome antidote to the poison of current reactionary attitudes toward people of color, their cultures, and place in the US.”
—Booklist

How Does It Feel to Be Unwanted?: True Stories of Mexicans Living in the United States
Eileen Truax

“It celebrates the tenacity and resilience of a community whose stories are, without any doubt, part of the American experience.”
—Reyna Grande, author of The Distance Between Us

A Cup of Water Under My Bed: A Memoir
Daisy Hernández

“Hernández writes with honesty, intelligence, tenderness, and love. I bow deeply in admiration and gratitude.”
—Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street

Family Sentence: The Search for My Cuban-Revolutionary, Prison-Yard, Mythic-Hero, Deadbeat Dad
Jeanine Cornillot

“As incisive as she is lyrical, funny as she is profound, Cornillot dislodges the bolero-and-palm-tree nostalgia associated with Cuban American identity, and asserts claim to a new and very real history.”
—H. G. Carillo, author of Loosing My Espanish

How to Love a Country: Poems
Richard Blanco

“A visionary hymn of love to the human beings who comprise what we call this country. Whether he speaks in the voice of an immigrant who came here long ago, or the very river an immigrant crosses to come here today, Blanco sings and sings.”
—Martín Espada, author of Vivas to Those Who Have Failed

Hunting Season: Immigration and Murder in an All-American Town
Mirta Ojito

“Compelling and complex . . . Told with the authority of a much-respected journalist, whose own experience as an immigrant lends this book the depth, insights, and poignancy that only someone of her experience can convincingly—and rightfully—convey.”
—Oscar Hijuelos, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

An Incomplete List of Names: Poems
Michael Torres

“This spectacular collection of acutely conscious poems awakens readers to our universal need to belong. . . . He speaks to the constant naming and renaming of the self and others at the intersection of multiple identities and perceptions through an arresting voice that is provocative yet vulnerable, urban yet serene, mournful yet buoyant.”
—Richard Blanco, author of How to Love a Country

The Lost Apple: Operation Pedro Pan, Cuban Children in the US, and the Promise of a Better Future
María de los Ángeles Torres

“Deeply felt and impressively researched, The Lost Apple undertakes the difficult work of reconciliation—between parents and children, exiles and revolutionaries, the Cuba of yesterday and the Cuba of today.”
—Gustavo Perez Firmat, author of Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban-American Way

The Weight of Shadows: A Memoir of Immigration & Displacement
José Orduña

“A provocative and insightful work that is destined to introduce a new form to the world of creative nonfiction...This memoir will no doubt be required reading for years to come.”
—Willie Perdomo, author of The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon

When I Walk Through That Door, I Am: An Immigrant Mother’s Quest
Jimmy Santiago Baca

“This slim, salient volume will open readers’ eyes wide to the true human stories behind blaring headlines about immigration policies and debates.”
—Booklist, Starred Review

A Q&A with Angela Chen

Author photo: Sylvie Rosokoff

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex is the first book of its kind to offer an in-depth examination of asexuality, contextualize it within the queer community, and resist characterizing aces as a monolith. Journalist Angela Chen centers Ace on the experiences of asexual people and traces a path to understanding her own asexuality through a blend of reporting, cultural criticism, and memoir. She candidly explores the misconceptions around asexuality and challenges us to rethink the meaning of pleasure and intimacy. Our intern, Priyanka Ray, caught up with Chen to chat with her about it.

Priyanka Ray: In Ace, you argue that the experiences of aces can outline the constrictive system of compulsory sexuality and reveal alternate forms of eroticism. What does a world without compulsory sexuality look like, and what steps can we take to dismantle this system?

Angela Chen: A world without compulsory sexuality doesn’t mean desexualizing everything. It means removing the “compulsory” part. It means removing pressures and presenting more ways of how to live. It means more choice. People will be able to choose what they want—a lot of sex, no sex, and so on—without pressure or shame or judgment and without feeling like they need to explain themselves to doubters. People will be encouraged to really question what pleasure is and whether it has to be sexual and find what other forms of pleasure exist in their lives. There will be many types of relationships and relationship models, both in real life and expressed in popular culture. Drug companies won’t prey on people’s fears about low desire to sell medication; there will be more equality in relationships when it comes to desire and consent; and sex ed will include the ace perspective too. 

It’s wonderful when people learn about asexuality and the ace lens and see things differently, but it’ll take so long to get anywhere if we wait for people to discover this way of thinking one by one. I really do believe that it’s important to politically organize, to lobby and campaign and work together to show that there are many ways to live a full life and we should all get to choose the way that works best for us. 

PR: You write that performing sexuality is often a prerequisite for male identity and social inclusion. How do the experiences of asexual men encourage us to deconstruct gender expectations?

AC: There is a pervasive message that “real men” have a lot of sexual desire and are supposed to be able to score with a lot of people. Especially in the cis and hetero context, men are encouraged to speak about women sexually as a bonding activity and as a way of proving their masculinity. Ace men say that this has made them feel like outcasts, encouraged them to “play along” and pretend to have crushes they don’t, encouraged them to have unwanted sex with partners, and at times made them question their gender. One trans man I interviewed said that before his transition, people were fine with what they saw as his sexual hesitancy, but afterward told him that he needed to just “get out there.”

It’s not a secret that these pressures exist, especially because there’s been a lot of discussion about incels (involuntary celibates) in the past couple of years. But the experiences of ace men show that the same pressures that affect incels affects this seemingly opposite group of ace men. In fact, ace men say that people sometimes think they’re actually incels who are just pretending to be asexual because they’re bitter that they can’t get laid. I’m not an incel apologist—plenty of people feel unattractive and excluded without becoming entitled—but this shows how just deeply the idea that men have to be sexual is ingrained. It also shows that working to reduce this pressure would help a lot of different groups of men. 

PR: With the advent of sex positivity, sex has become viewed as a way to perform feminist politics. Therefore, women who do not want or enjoy sex are seen as conservative and repressed by patriarchal control. How can we acknowledge that women’s sexual liberation is political while decentering sex from feminist politics?

AC: Sex is political, of course. Many women are shamed by double standards and don’t feel comfortable exploring their sexuality. I would never contest this. But sexual variation also exists. People are different! There are asexual women out there who simply don’t experience sexual attraction, and it’s not because of shame or repression or because they need to try more sex positions or sex toys. And there’s nothing wrong with that. (It’s also true that you can be both shamed into feeling disconnected from sex and discover that you’re ace. A lot of nuances exist.)

It’s important for people to walk the line between encouraging women to explore, which is good, while also believing them and not being pushy if they say that they’re apathetic about sex and simply not that interested. Don’t assume that, deep down, every woman has a high libido and just needs to throw off the chains of repression to discover it. In general, I advocate letting other people be the experts on themselves. 

I also think it’s important to have more representations of asexuality in popular culture, especially feminist popular culture. Very few feminists would explicitly say that not having sex makes you repressed or that having a lot of sex makes you more feminist or cool—but the message of sex as liberation and sex as cool and sex making you more fun is still present. It’s a feeling in the air and in the culture. I don’t have a problem with explicit content about desire, but I don’t think it’s good for any one message to dominate, because those messages can and do make ace women (and anyone ace-adjacent or anyone who simply isn’t that into sex) feel ashamed. We can keep those messages and also have different stories and different messages brought to prominence, too.

I always advocate for focusing on the power of organizing and collective action. Ace women can feel like they’re not “feminist enough” because they don’t fulfill this supposed requirement that feminist women personally enjoy sex a lot. But the greater potential of organizing is that you work politically to help others and to change structures around a wide variety of issues. Who cares if you don’t care about sex if you’re writing to politicians and campaigning and lobbying for better pay and domestic abuse protections and uplifting women of color? That’s the work that will change systems and do so much good for so many people. 

PR: Throughout the book you illustrate how understanding ace experiences can liberate all of us from harmful cultural narratives, particularly those surrounding consent. What new ways of thinking about and practicing consent do asexual people’s experiences with sex give us? 

AC: There are two things I’d like to highlight. One is this often unspoken belief that while nobody should have unwanted sex with strangers, within a relationship you need a “good enough reason” to say no. A good enough reason is that you’re sick or stressed or that your partner is treating you badly. “I don’t want to” is not a good enough reason. It means you’re withholding and selfish. I think this idea comes from the belief that everyone has a baseline of sexual desire; so if everyone has that baseline and nothing is wrong, why wouldn’t you want to have sex with someone if you love them? 

This kind of reasoning really makes aces feel like “no” within relationships is not okay, that they can say “no” right now but cannot say “no” forever and have to keep fending their partner off. (Well, this reasoning can make everyone feel this way, but the pressure is especially acute for aces.) My position is this: if we believe that people should never have unwanted sex with strangers, no matter how good of a person the stranger may be, we should believe that people should never have unwanted sex with their partners, no matter how good and loving their partner is. Entering a relationship should never mean giving up a measure of consent. I should add that partners are free to not date someone if sex is a dealbreaker, and that is completely their prerogative. But there’s a difference between setting your own boundaries and feeling entitled to sex without ever discussing it and then shaming the other person.

Similarly, there is also a very common narrative that the lower-desire partner is “broken” and it’s their responsibility to work on themselves to fix their libido. But there are two people in a relationship, and this is a shared problem that needs a shared solution. If one person wants to have sex just as much as the other person wants not to have sex, why is the preference of the higher-desire partner given more moral weight? Shouldn’t they be equal, because they’re equal people in the relationship? There are so many books on learning to desire again, whereas it’s rare to ask the higher-desire partner to have less sexual desire. Asking someone to work on themselves to have more sex seems reasonable, but asking someone to try to be celibate or have less sex seems like asking too much. 

Don’t get me wrong. Of course I acknowledge that most people in relationships have and enjoy sex and that having sex is “normal”—insofar as “normal” means “statistically common.” But I argue that “statistically common” is less important in a relationship than carefully considering what the two people in the relationship want and what works for them and how each can feel valued and learn to compromise. In that case, the preferences of both people should have equal weight.

PR: What insights would you want allo (non-asexual) readers to take away from your book?

AC: The questions that aces have regarding sexuality and desire are questions that almost everyone (ace or not) will deal with at some point, and a lot can be gained from the ace perspective. Learning about asexuality can encourage allos to rethink their very definitions of sexual attraction and sexuality. It can help them consider more carefully the ways that sexuality intersects with race and disability and gender; the ways we privilege romantic relationships over friendships; the invisible inequalities in relationships and consent. It can help them think through questions such as the difference between platonic and romantic feelings and the difference between “normal” low-sexual desire and asexuality and a medical condition. The ace lens really offers new ways of evaluating sexual ethics and pleasures and intimacy.

About Angela Chen 

Angela Chen is a journalist and writer in New York City. Her reporting and criticism have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Atlantic, Guardian, Paris Review, Electric Literature, Catapult, and elsewhere. Chen is a member of the ace community and has spoken about asexuality at academic conferences and events including World Pride. Find her on Twitter @chengela or at angelachen.org.

By Alan Levinovitz

Photo credit: Citizen59

This is so unfair and tragic for South African Olympic champion Caster Semenya. She lost her appeal against the restriction of testosterone in female athletes and cannot compete in the 800m because of her hyperandrogenism. She is being punished for what happens naturally in her biology. For us, she’ll always be a winner. But it’s a complicated issue—our shifty idea of what counts as “natural” in athletes and what is biologically permissible in sporting competitions. In this excerpt from Natural: How Faith in Nature’s Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science, Alan Levinovitz shows just how fraught the division between women and men in sports has been along these lines . . . and what Semenya was up against.

***

The value of inclusiveness, like fairness, is written into the International Association of Athletics Federations’ (IAAF) official constitution. One of the organization’s primary goals is “to strive to ensure that no gender, race, religious, political or other kind of unfair discrimination exists, continues to exist, or is allowed to develop in Athletics in any form, and that all may participate in Athletics regardless of their gender, race, religious or political views or any other irrelevant factor.”

That gender shouldn’t affect one’s ability to participate in athletics is now taken for granted, but only after overcoming centuries of pseudoscientific sexism arguing that women were naturally unfit to compete. In ancient Greece, women could not participate in the Olympics, and married women were prohibited from watching. They were also left out of the first modern Olympics, since, in the words of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the games, their inclusion would be “impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic, and incorrect.”

Even after women were allowed to participate, it was only in those sports believed to accord with their naturally delicate physiology: tennis, croquet, sailing, and golf. Experts warned that more strenuous events might cause women to age prematurely, their uteruses to fall out, and perhaps turn them into men. When the 800 meters was opened to women in the 1928 Olympics, scandalized journalists exaggerated or invented the fatigue experienced by the competitors. “Below us on the cinder path were 11 wretched women, 5 of whom dropped out before the finish, while 5 collapsed after reaching the tape,” claimed one account in the New York Evening Post. “It is obviously beyond women’s powers of endurance, and can only be injurious to them,” asserted another writer in the Montreal Daily Star. In fact, only nine women had run the race, all of them finished, and only one could conceivably be characterized as collapsing. But the truth didn’t matter. In accordance with an invented version of natural law, women were banned from the 800 meters until 1960.

When it comes to women’s participation in sports, there’s an important distinction to be drawn between two types of discrimination. The first type of discrimination bars women from participating in sports thought to be incompatible with women’s biology, such as ski jumping, the 800 meters, and boxing (men’s only until the 2012 Olympics). This type of discrimination has been repeatedly shown to have no basis in science. When it comes to women’s ability to participate in and excel at any sport, gender should be considered an “irrelevant factor,” as the IAAF describes it.

The second type of discrimination is that which divides men and women for the purposes of competition. With the exception of equestrian events and sailing, in every Olympic sport, and in nearly every professional sport, men compete against men and women compete against women. Some have suggested that having men’s and women’s categories also represents an unfair form of discrimination, and ought to be replaced with different classificatory categories that more accurately reflect the physical traits demanded by a given sport, a practice that already has precedent in the use of weight classes. “For example, for a 100m sprinter, the ideal athlete would perhaps be made up of muscle mass and fast-twitch fibres,” writes Roslyn Kerr, a sociologist of sport, “Therefore, rather than classifying by sex, sprinters could be classified by their level of muscle mass and fast-twitch fibres.”

Despite such critiques, advocates of female participation in sports generally recognize the need for, and benefits of, sex segregation. The exercise physiologist Ross Tucker puts it straightforwardly: “Being genetically male is the single biggest performance advantage in sport.” The advantage enjoyed by biological males exceeds that of other comparatively advantageous traits, including height and weight. A 2010 study quantified the gap between men’s and women’s top performances in eighty-two different events, from swimming to speed skating. Starting in 1896, the gap narrowed significantly over time as women were allowed to participate in sports. But by 1983 the gap stabilized “at a mean difference of 10.0% ± 2.94 between men and women for all events.” The gap depends on the sport, from 5.5 percent for 800-meter freestyle swimming to 36.8 percent for weightlifting. Nevertheless, the overall conclusion is clear: “Results suggest that women will not run, jump, swim or ride as fast as men.” Discrimination of the second type is based on good science, not pseudoscientific sexism, and there’s a very strong case to be made that it is beneficial for elite female athletes, who would not otherwise get to compete at the highest levels of their sport.

However, policing the division between men and women in sports has a long and fraught history. Since men have the biological advantage, the only athletes subject to sex testing have been women. In the 1960s, when official testing standards were first adopted by the International Olympic Committee and the IAAF, female athletes were subject to incredibly humiliating inspections, including being paraded naked in front of doctors who would inspect their genitalia and pronounce them genuine women. Widespread indignation led to the adoption of chromosome testing, but that proved equally controversial. Unlike weight and height, biological sex occasionally defies simple forms of measurement. This fact was vividly and tragically illustrated in a horrific ordeal endured by the Spanish hurdler Maria José Martínez-Patiño. In 1985, she was looking forward to competing in the World University Games in Japan as a woman, just as she always had. Now a physician, Martínez-Patiño has made public the painful details of what happened. “Our team doctor told me—in front of the teammates I sat with on the night before my race—that there was a problem with my result,” she recalls. The doctor told her to fake an injury and withdraw from the race. She agreed, devastated, not knowing what exactly had gone wrong. “Did I have AIDS? Or leukaemia, the disease that had killed my brother?”

Two months later, the official results arrived. She was 46, XY—the male karyotype. But because of a condition known as androgen insensitivity, Martínez-Patiño was insensitive to testosterone, which is why no one, including her, had any idea: “When I was conceived, my tissues never heard the hormonal messages to become male.” Eventually her story was leaked to the press, with catastrophic results:

I was expelled from our athletes’ residence, my sports scholarship was revoked, and my running times were erased from my country’s athletics records. I felt ashamed and embarrassed. I lost friends, my fiancé, hope, and energy. But I knew that I was a woman, and that my genetic difference gave me no unfair physical advantage. I could hardly pretend to be a man; I have breasts and a vagina. I never cheated.

Martínez-Patiño successfully appealed her disqualification, and after a few different attempts to standardize the testing practices, the IOC gave up and adopted a “suspicion-based” approach. If someone seemed like they might not be a woman, well, then they’d be subjected to further testing.

Unsurprisingly, this approach failed miserably. In 2009, South African runner named Caster Semenya, then eighteen years old, won gold at the Berlin World Championships, crushing her rivals in the once-forbidden-to-women 800 meters. Some of them were suspicious. “These kind[s] of people should not run with us,” stated the Italian sixth-place finisher Elisa Cusma. “For me, she’s not a woman. She’s a man.” The IAAF responded by requiring tests, and, as in Martínez-Patiño’s case, news of the testing leaked to the press. Some members of the media mocked Semenya’s “masculine” appearance and called her a hermaphrodite. She reportedly spent two hours with her legs in stirrups to facilitate examination and photographs of her genitalia, and eventually went into hiding, undergoing treatment for trauma.

In the wake of the Semenya debacle, the IAAF issued a new standard for competing as a female, this time based on testosterone. Again, there were problems. The new standard disqualified all female competitors with hyperandrogenism, a rare condition that causes women to have testosterone levels that are in the typically male range, which, some speculate, is what Semenya has. In 2014, testing revealed that the Indian sprinter Dutee Chand was also above the limit set by the IAAF for female competitors. The Sports Authority of India subsequently ruled that Chand “will still be able to compete in the female category in [the] future if she takes proper medical help and lowers her androgen [testosterone] level to the specified range.”

Appalled at the thought of having to artificially lower her naturally produced androgen level with medication, Chand appealed her case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the same administrative body that considered Pistorius’s case. The naturalness of her hyperandrogenism, as well as the potential side effects of a medical intervention, was central to her case. She argued that any advantage she enjoyed was a “natural genetic gift,” and that in no other case do natural physiological advantages disqualify an athlete. “These interventions are invasive, often irreversible and will harm my health now and into my future,” she said in a statement to the CAS. “I am unable to understand why I am asked to fix my body in a certain way simply for participation as a woman. I was born a woman, reared up as a woman, I identify as a woman and I believe I should be allowed to compete with other women, many of whom are either taller than me or come from more privileged backgrounds, things that most certainly give them an edge over me.”

Chand’s case was taken up by numerous experts, including the Stanford bioethicist Katrina Karkazis. “When a man has unusually high levels of testosterone, the next step is a carbon isotope test,” she told me. “If it’s deemed to be natural, the case is closed. But for women, if it’s natural the case is not closed, and you get ushered into more tests.” Although Chand won her appeal, the issue is far from settled. In late 2018, the IAAF issued new testosterone limits that would, once again, disqualify Chand and other hyperandrogenous female athletes. The limits sparked outrage, and Caster Semenya made a rare public statement denouncing them. “I don’t like talking about this new rule,” she said. “I just want to run naturally, the way I was born. It is not fair that I am told I must change. It is not fair that people question who I am. I am Mokgadi Caster Semenya. I am a woman and I am fast.” (As of this writing, Semenya’s fate still hangs in the balance. By the time you read these words, it may have been settled.)

The IAAF’s clarifying comments are notably unhelpful, lurching between recognition that sport “seeks to celebrate” a combination of “natural talent and sacrifice and determination” while also maintaining that high testosterone levels are a unique natural biological advantage that should be regulated.26 Part of the dilemma is that the distinct biological advantage enjoyed by men over women cannot be translated into a rule about testosterone. Hyperandrogenous women are not men. They do not exhibit the same kind of dominance in their respective sports that men would. Nevertheless, the question remains open: If testosterone levels fail to capture that advantage, how can regulatory bodies like the CAS fairly adjudicate the division between men’s and women’s sports.

About the Author 

Alan Levinovitz is associate professor of religious studies at James Madison University. In addition to academic journals, his writing has appeared in Wired, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Aeon, Vox, Slate, and elsewhere. He is the author of Natural: How Faith in Nature’s Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science. Connect with him on Twitter at @AlanLevinovitz.

A Q&A with Vicki Mayk

Author photo: Steve Husted Knot Just Any Day

Owen Thomas, star football player at Penn, took his own life when he was only twenty-one. The result of the pain and anguish was caused by chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). His landmark case demonstrated that a player didn’t need years of head bashing in the NFL, or even multiple sustained brain concussions, to cause the mind-altering, life-threatening, degenerative disease.

In her book Growing Up on the Gridiron: Football, Friendship, and the Tragic Life of Owen Thomas, award-winning journalist Vicki Mayk explores his story, the community touched by it, and the cultural allure of football. Her exploration raises a critical question: does loving a sport justify risking your life? Beacon Broadside editor Christian Coleman caught up with Mayk to chat with her about it and to ask what the impact of high schools and colleges canceling or delaying football seasons has had during the pandemic.

Christian Coleman: Tell us about what inspired you to write Growing Up on the Gridiron.

Vicki Mayk: What really drew me to the story was Owen Thomas, the young man who is at the center of my book. When he died by suicide in April 2010, I was invited to join a private memorial page that friends set up for him on Facebook. The way that everyone talked about him—from his teammates at his high school near Allentown, PA, and at the University of Pennsylvania to friends, former teachers, casual acquaintances—was mesmerizing. They told stories about him being a warrior on the field and one of the kindest humans off the field. One girl in his high school said Owen changed the energy when he entered a room. I wanted to answer the question: Who was Owen Thomas and how did someone who was so beloved by so many come to this tragic end? When it emerged that he had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, what we know as CTE, that added another important dimension to the story.

CC: How did you find out about the RIP Owen Thomas memorial page on Facebook?

VM: I actually never met Owen, but a series of events made me feel as if this story chose me. For nearly thirty years, I had lived five minutes away from Union United Church of Christ in Neffs, PA, where Owen’s father, the late Rev. Thomas N. Thomas, was pastor. One day, I decided to go to a service there and began attending somewhat regularly. I don’t know why I chose that particular time to begin attending a church I had passed almost every week for decades. It meant that, when Owen died, I was invited to join the memorial page on Facebook.

CC: His friendships are at the heart of the book. What was it like to interview his friends and teammates to learn about his story?

VM: It was an emotional experience to connect with these young men and women and hear them reminisce about Owen. I stayed in touch with his friends, family, and teammates off and on for nearly a decade after his death, and that longitudinal look at their lives is an integral part of the book. What struck me is that many still shed tears over his loss three, five, even seven years after his death. They keenly felt his loss at key milestones in their lives. One of his friends wore one of his t-shirts under his tux on his wedding day so that Owen would be present for him. I felt they had entrusted me with their memories and were relying on me to document their friendship with someone they had loved.

CC: Even though the dangers and risks of long-term harm are numerous, football matters deeply to many young men like Owen Thomas. Why is that the case?

VM: I learned that the reason young players love this game has as much to do with relationships formed on the team as it does about the game itself. In the book, I refer to this as the brotherhood of football. As human beings, we crave belonging, and football gives young men a powerful sense of belonging. Yes, they enjoy the sport. But bound up with that are the relationships they form on a football team.

CC: During the pandemic, there has been a lot of disappointment over high schools and college football conferences canceling or delaying football seasons. Does your book offer any insights about that?

VM: Football is central to American culture. That is something that has certainly been well documented over the years. Losing it is jarring. But I think my book highlights a key issue about what losing a football season during the pandemic specifically means to high school and college players. Jonathan Holloway, the president of Rutgers University, was interviewed on National Public Radio about canceling football season, and he talked about how much a student athlete’s identity is wrapped up in playing their sport. He said losing that identity is “destabilizing.” My book examines how players’ personal identity is developed by playing football and about how it defines them. Losing a season means disrupting that identity.

CC: And lastly, what would you like readers to take away from reading the book?

VM: I want readers to realize that, given the passion for football in America by players on all levels and by fans, there aren’t easy answers about the future of the sport. I also hope my book will raise awareness about head injuries. If you are a fan, be aware of the risks this game poses for the players you idolize. If you are a player, be aware of the risks you are taking in playing. And if you are a parent, be aware of the fact that research has found that the earlier boys start playing and the longer they play, the greater the risk. Make informed choices. Finally, I hope Owen’s story raises awareness about suicide. Suicide is a complicated issue. It sometimes happens despite treatment and the support of friends and family. But anyone who has lost someone to suicide will tell you: If you see a friend struggling, reach out.

About Vicki Mayk 

A former reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Vicki Mayk has enjoyed a 35-year career in journalism and public relations. Her love affair with football began at the age of nine, when her father first took her to a Steelers game. She is the author of Growing Up on the Gridiron: Football, Friendship, and the Tragic Life of Owen Thomas. Connect with her at vickimayk.com and follow her on Twitter (@VickiMayk).

By Pamela D. Toler

Mulan of Liang by He Dazi (赫達資) from “Gathering Gems of Beauty” (畫麗珠萃秀).

If you’ve been waiting with bated breath for the release of Disney’s live-action Mulan, the time to wait is over. For a price. Delayed again and again and again because of the pandemic, the film will be available to stream on Disney+ for $30. Say what? But if you’re in no mood to throw any coin at the House of Mouse, here’s another option. Read this selection from Pamela D. Toler’s Women Warriors: An Unexpected History about her. In all its variations and incarnations (Conglomoland is late to the adaptation party with its animated and live action versions), the story of the cross-dressing warrior is one of many in overlooked history, proving that women have always fought—not in spite of being women but because they are women.

***

The Chinese heroine Hua Mulan is one of the oldest and most enduring examples of a woman who becomes a warrior because of her role as a daughter¹.

Scholars have argued for centuries over whether or not Mulan was a historical figure. At some level, it doesn’t matter as far as piecing together her story is concerned. The available information about her life is scarce to nonexistent, even by the often-shaky standard of what we know about other women warriors of the ancient world.

Our oldest source for her story is the “Poem of Mulan,” which appears in a twelfth-century poetry anthology compiled by Guo Maoqian², who attributes it to a sixth-century collection that no longer exists. The poem is anonymous, undated, and three hundred words long. A few details, such as the use of the title “khan” rather than “emperor,” suggest the poem dates from the Northern dynasties period (386–581 CE)³.

For the most part, I chose not to discuss the stories of mythical women warriors, because there are plenty of historical examples to consider⁴. But Mulan is a special case. She is as well known in China as Joan of Arc is in the West. Despite the absence of biographical details in the original source, several regions of China claim her as their own folk heroine.

Mulan’s story is familiar to American audiences thanks to the 1998 Disney film Mulan⁵. But the Walt Disney Company is simply one in a long tradition of Mulan adapters, and by no means the most fanciful in its interpretation. Over a period of 1,500 years, Mulan’s story has been told in Chinese operas, plays, folk tales, and now video games.

While the versions differ in the details, the basic structure of the story remains the same: Threatened by invaders from the north, the emperor (or the khan) conscripted soldiers to defend the country. Because her father was too old to fight and her brother too young, Mulan purchased a horse, weapons, and armor; disguised herself as a man; and joined the army to fulfill the family’s conscription obligation.

The original poem gives us a brief, vivid impression of Mulan’s life as a soldier, but no details:

She did not hear her parents’ voices, calling for their daughter,
She only heard the whinnying of Crimson Mountain’s Hunnish horsemen.
Myriads of mile: she joined the thick of battle,
Crossing the mountain passes as if flying.
Winds from the north transmitted metal rattles,
A freezing light shone on her iron armor.
A hundred battles and the brass were dead;
After ten years the bravest men returned⁶.

This is war from the common soldier’s viewpoint, stripped down to misery and poetry. Later versions of the story fill this space with heroic deeds, gender-problematic romances, and, in the Disney version, a smart-mouthed dragon sidekick.

At the end of their tour of duty, Mulan and her comrades met with the emperor, who offered them honorary ranks, appointments at court, and rewards “counted in the millions.” (In one late version, the emperor discovers her gender and offers to make her his consort. She tells him she would rather die.) Mulan refused everything; all she wanted was a fast horse (or sometimes a camel) to take her home. Once there, she went into the house and put on a woman’s clothing and makeup. When she came back out, her army buddies were flabbergasted by the truth. During the ten (or sometimes twelve) years she served in the army, none of her fellow soldiers suspected she was a woman⁷.

In Mulan’s story, the link between being a daughter and becoming a soldier is direct and irrefutable. Chinese readers/listeners/viewers would understand her action as an extreme act of filial piety. In fact, in one version of the story she receives the posthumous title Filial-Staunchness. Filial piety—respect for and obedience to one’s parents—is the foundation on which Confucian society stands. Children are loyal to their parents. Wives are loyal to their husbands. Subjects are loyal to the ruler. The ruler is loyal to the kingdom itself. If everyone performs their duties to those above them in the hierarchy, society flourishes. If duties are not faithfully performed, chaos reigns, the emperor loses the mandate of heaven, and dynasties fall. It is an alien concept for those of us who grew up in a culture defined in terms of rights rather than social duties. But it is as powerful a fundamental social principle as “all men are created equal.”

Seen through this lens, Mulan became a warrior in order to protect her father, her family, and the social order as a whole. She preserved society’s norms by stepping outside them.

1. Also known as Wei Hua Hu, Fua Mulan, or Wei Mulan. Names don’t always travel well across time, space, and transliteration.
2. Who is known to history primarily for said anthology. Women aren’t the only people who leave thin trails in the dusts of time.
3. Just to make it clear how vague all this is: there are scholars who disagree and place the poem, and therefore Mulan, in the Sui dynasty (581–618 CE). Imagine how difficult it would be for future historians to write about Abigail Adams if they didn’t know whether her letters dated from 1776 or 1976.
4. No Amazons, except once or twice in passing.
5. Disney’s Mulan wasn’t the first appearance of the Chinese woman warrior in American popular culture. Under the name Fa Mu Lan, she is a central image in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. Published in 1976, Kingston’s book opened the genre of memoir to women and minority writers in the United States.
6. Quotations from “Poem of Mulan” are from Mulan: Five Versions of a Classic Chinese Legend, with Related Texts, ed. and trans. Shiamin Kwa and Wilt L. Idema (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2010), 1–3.
7. This is the major point at which the Disney version departs from the basic shape of the story. In Disney’s Mulan, her fellow soldiers discover her deception when she is wounded and reject her—at least until she saves the empire. The change is powerful and reflects the historical experience of many women who fought disguised as men (except for single-handedly saving the empire). Being wounded always brought with it the risk of exposure.

About the Author 

Pamela D. Toler goes beyond the familiar boundaries of American history to tell stories from other parts of the world, as well as history from the other side of the battlefield, the gender line, or the color bar. She is author of The Heroines of Mercy Street: The Real Nurses of the Civil War and Women Warriors: An Unexpected History, among other books. Her work has appeared in Aramco World, Calliope, History Channel Magazine, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, and on Time.com. Visit her website and follow her on Twitter at @pdtoler.

A Discussion with Thomas Norman DeWolf and Sharon Leslie Morgan

Author photo: Kristin Little

In light of our current fractured moment, Thomas Norman DeWolf and Sharon Leslie Morgan discussed the roots of our division and the forms reconciliation can take by reexamining their book Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade. The discussion took place during their Unlearning Division, Coming Together online event on July 15, moderated by the book’s editor Gayatri Patnaik.

One of the forms of reconciliation they spoke about was reparations. Amid the protests over the unending police shootings of unarmed Black people, some US cities, such as Providence, Rhode Island, and Asheville, North Carolina, have proposed ways to finally work toward reparations and to funnel more funding toward programs for Black communities. Here’s what Morgan and DeWolf had to say.

Gayatri Patnaik: How do you feel about the government doing some type of reparations for descendants whose ancestors were enslaved?

Sharon Leslie Morgan: I absolutely feel like there should be reparations. But I feel they do not have to take the form that people immediately think about, which is, “Write me a check.” Because if you write a check, you’re absconding. You’re not really engaging the process. I think that it takes many forms.

The best form would be investing money in repairing the damage, not as much to individuals as to people on a societal level. There should be scholarships. There should be changes in mortgage lending. There should be things like that to give economic benefit to individuals, but not necessarily in the form of a check. And I would urge the House Bill 40, which was presented by Congressman John Conyers for years and years and years and never got any consideration. The US government has even not wanted to look at the possibility of researching what needs to be repaired. That is actually a first step toward reparation, which is looking at what happened, what needs to be repaired, and how much that would be worth, how much should be invested in that.

Thomas Norman DeWolf: I would support writing the checks to individuals. I look at the wealth in this nation, the disparity of wealth and how much more wealth white families own and control compared to African-descended families. The GI Bill at the end of World War II was supposed to support GIs coming home. Ninety-eight percent of that money went to white GIs who then built the all-white suburbs, left the cities. Our schools are funded by property taxes, and these all-white suburbs, with all of their higher property values, built these really nice schools. And the schools in the inner cities suffer as a result. So white folks have ten or fifteen times the wealth over Black folks.

[My organization] Coming to the Table has a reparations working group. We have a twenty-three-page reparations guide on what individuals and groups can do in terms of history, healing, connecting, and action. It’s a wonderful document and it’s available on the website.

I agree with Sharon on scholarships and what have you. I just watched a documentary on Asbury Park, New Jersey, and how fifty years ago this month, race riots just decimated this town that was famous for its music primarily. Over the five decades since then, all the repair has been done on the east side of tracks where all the white people live. On the west side of the tracks, where Black folks and Italian folks and people of color have lived, it’s still just devastated. That happens that way throughout the United States, where there’s always support for people who look like me.

Look at the parallels right now, how Congress provided the additional $600 per week in unemployment because people have lost their jobs. Well, this, to me, is much longer history of people being discriminated against who should be provided direct financial support. People of color, to Black folks in particular. Legacy of slavery is a perfectly reasonable approach to dealing with the economic disparity that has been set up within the systems of this country. It doesn’t take away from me. This is white people’s biggest fear. The word ‘reparations’ strikes fear in white people.

What we’re talking about is repair. We’ve created a breach. That’s what it talks about in the Christian bible—repairing the breach, the brokenness that we have created since the founding of this nation. And it’s going to take money. It’s going to take effort. It’s going to take change. Not always easy. But how can we imagine a difference in this world where we look at repair for the sake of repair, not repair for what’s in it for me or what’s going to cause me and my family harm. Get past that. Get past living in fear and imagine a better world we all know is possible when we create a world that is more equitable financially, educationally, justice-wise.

If you weren’t able to attend their event, you can watch it here in full.

About the Authors 

Thomas Norman DeWolf is the author of Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History, and co-author of Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade, (both published by Beacon Press). His latest, The Little Book of Racial Healing, was published in January. Tom DeWolf facilitates workshops and speaks regularly about healing from the legacy of slavery and racism at colleges, conferences, and other venues throughout the United States, and serves as Executive Director for Coming to the Table. Learn more at http://tomdewolf.com/. Follow him on Twitter at @TomDeWolf and on Facebook.

Sharon Leslie Morgan is co-author of Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade (Beacon Press). She is the founder of OurBlackAncestry.com, a website devoted to African American family research.

A Q&A with Hilary Levey Friedman

Miss America contestants. Photo credit: skeeze

This year, Miss America, turns one hundred! Many predicted that pageants would disappear by the twenty-first century, yet they are still thriving. Why do they persist? In Here She Is: The Complicated Reign of the Beauty Pageant in America, Hilary Levey Friedman reveals the surprising ways they have been an empowering feminist tradition. Using her unique perspective as a NOW state president, daughter to Miss America 1970, sometimes pageant judge, and scholar, she traces their role in many of the feminist movement’s signature achievements, including bringing women into the public sphere, helping them become leaders in business and politics, providing increased educational opportunities, and giving them a voice in the age of #MeToo. In this Q&A, she tells us how she got interested in beauty pageants, how they are linked with feminism, and more. 

Q: What got you interested in beauty pageants?

A: I have never competed in a beauty pageant, but my mother was Miss America 1970, so pageants have always been a part of my life. My mom and I are different—for example, I am a bookworm and she was not the best of students—but studying pageants has been a way for me to think how our lives and generations are similar, yet different.

The way I got started studying beauty pageants was when I did a paper in a sociology class about why mothers enroll their young daughters in beauty pageants after the murder of JonBenét Ramsey. That paper turned into my senior thesis and started me down the path of writing about childhood, culture, and more!

Q: How are feminism and pageantry linked?

A: Pageants and feminism are inextricably linked. At key moments of the feminist movement, beauty contests have been right there. For example, in 1854, a few years after the Seneca Falls Convention, P. T. Barnum started the first commercial beauty contest. Even more telling, the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment and Miss America nearly share a (one hundredth!) birthday—and the pageant sash comes from the suffragist sash. Fast forward a few decades, and one of the events considered foundational to the establishment of Second Wave feminism took place outside of the Miss America pageant in 1968, selected as a site because of its cultural resonance. More recently, the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States has ignited a new wave of organized feminism and protests. Trump famously used to own Miss Universe/USA, and his behavior as owner was part of the campaign. Recall that at the end of the first presidential debate in 2016, Hillary Clinton brought up his treatment of Miss Universe 1996 Alicia Machado.

Q: I hadn’t thought about how pageants and politics are so connected! Can you tell me more?

A: Beauty contests have been a vehicle for business/showmen like Barnum and Trump, who turned to elected office later in life. But this makes sense given that there is definitely an element of pageantry in politics. Think of the elaborate ceremony of the party convention, or a State of the Union.

It used to be that many pageant winners wanted to marry a politician. Think of Miss America 1964 Donna Axum, who married the Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives; or Miss America 1971 Phyllis George, who became the First Lady of Kentucky. Now many pageant winners want to be the politician. Several former Miss Americas have recently run for office. A few examples include:

• Miss America 2000 Heather French Henry ran for Secretary of State in Kentucky in 2019
• Miss America 2013 Mallory Hagan ran for US Congress out of Alabama in 2018
• Miss America 2004 Ericka Dunlap ran for Orlando City Commission in 2017
• Miss America 2003 Erika Harold has also run for Congress and for Attorney General in Illinois in 2018.

Other state winners have won:

• Miss Nevada 2002 Teresa Benitez-Thompson is currently the Majority Floor Leader in the Nevada Assembly
• Miss Hawaii 2011 Lauren Cheape Matsumoto is the Minority Floor Leader in Hawaii’s State House of Representatives

When I have spoken to many of these women, they identify their pageant experiences as pivotal in developing political skills (like speaking to large groups or giving a media soundbite) along with civic engagement (like local parades or Rotary lunches).

Q: Wait, what is the difference between Miss America and Miss USA?

A: This is a common question! I sum up the difference between Miss America and Miss USA as the three “T”s: Talent, Tuition, and Tits (I used to say Trump). Miss America has the first two, Miss USA has the latter.

Miss USA was born from the Miss America pageant. Miss America 1951 Yolande Betbeze said that she would not do any appearances in her bathing suit, which displeased pageant sponsor Catalina, the swimsuit company. Beginning in the later 1930s, talent and education had emerged as priorities at Miss America under the aegis of the new Executive Director, Lenora Slaughter. Catalina, miffed by the change, determined to start its own event, which would place swimsuits, and hence the female form, front and center. In June 1952, the first Miss USA was crowned in Long Beach, California, followed by the first Miss Universe.

Q: How do stereotypes of beauty pageant contestants match up with reality?

A: A common stereotype of a pageant winner is that she is white, blonde, light-eyed, Christian, thin, and from a small Southern town. In my analysis of historical pageant program books, I find that most winners are, in fact, brunettes—though other stereotypes do hold up over time. One important distinction is that national pageant winners come from all over the country, while more contestants participate in Southern events. The reality is that, for most of the twentieth century, participating in a national beauty pageant, like Miss America or Miss USA, was quite simply one of the whitest and most ableist and heteronormative things a young woman could do. That profile has changed somewhat in the twenty-first century, but certain groups of women, like Latinx women and lesbians, remain underrepresented in major American beauty pageants.

Q: Do most Miss USA and Miss America contestants get their start in child beauty pageants?

A: In fact, they do not. The child beauty pageant circuit is quite separate from adult pageants, though a few child winners have gone on to win big. For example, Blaire Pancake, Miss Tennessee 2006, did many pageants as a child, as detailed in a 1994 Life article, and she also was one of the first MBAs to compete on the Miss America stage. Child pageants, in many ways, share more in common with competitive reality television shows—like So You Think You Can Dance and Dance Moms—and drag pageants, which also celebrate an exaggerated form of femininity. If you want to combine all these elements, watch some episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Pageant culture really is everywhere.

About the Author

Hilary Levey Friedman is a sociologist at Brown University, where she has taught a popular course titled “Beauty Pageants in American Society.” She is a leading researcher in pageantry, merging her mother’s past experiences as Miss America 1970 with her interests as a glitz- and glamour-loving sometime pageant judge, and a mentor to Miss America 2018. Friedman also serves as the president of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Organization for Women. Her first book, Playing to Win, focused on children’s competitive afterschool activities. Connect with her at hilaryleveyfriedman.com and on Twitter (@hleveyfriedman).

By Lori L. Tharps

Photo credit: Harshraj Gond

This essay appeared originally on My American Meltingpot.

In 2016 my book about colorism, Same Family, Different Colors: Confronting Colorism in America’s Diverse Families was released. In that book, I wrote about how colorism manifests in Asian American, African American, Latino, and Mixed-Race Families. While I have been tangentially writing and talking about colorism as long as I have been talking and writing about Black hair, writing Same Family, Different Colors forced me to deep dive into skin color politics and history on a global scale. Needless to say, I have a much deeper understanding about this insidious, discriminatory social construct we call colorism.

Colorism Isn’t a Black Thing, but It Is Rooted in Anti-Blackness

Before I started my research for the book, I knew Black Americans weren’t the only people who were “color struck.” I knew skin color mattered in Latino cultures and in Asian cultures as well, but I had no idea how globally pervasive colorism really was. What’s more, even though the path to fetishizing white skin differs in each global community, here in the United States, where all of these different cultures live together, colorism is rooted in anti-Blackness, which then prohibits any true community building between Black Americans and other communities of color. It’s depressing and complicated.

Black Lives Matter Makes South Asians Confront Their Colorism

As a person who is a firm believer in the power of coalition building, I am very encouraged by the current energy bubbling up in the South Asian community around colorism, thanks to this current iteration of the Black Lives Matter Movement. Of course, there have been activists in this community who were doing this work before George Floyd’s brutal murder, but there is a new sense of urgency and commitment to confront colorism from this community—both here in the US and in Asia—that gives me hope.

Confronting Colorism in South Asian Communities Makes the News

Here are some recent stories about the South Asian community, here and abroad, and their recent conversations and actions against colorism.

• A new Indian matchmaking show gets criticized for supporting colorism.
• In the United States, a petition is started to remove the “lightening” feature on Indian dating site.
• The Washington Post reports on how South Asian mothers are teaching the next generation to reject colorism.
• NBC Asian America provides context on how Bollywood and American immigration policies contribute to colorism and anti-Blackness in the South Asian communities here in the United States.

Embrace Blackness So We Can All Be Free

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: Racism, colorism, and anti-Blackness are inextricably linked, and we can’t attack one without encountering the other. Our antiracism work has to encompass defeating colorism and anti-Black bias as well. The resources are out there if you’re looking for help, but at the end of the day, the message is simple.

Black Lives Matter. Blackness Matters. Black Is Beautiful. Black Excellence Is All Around You.

Once the world can acknowledge these simple truths and actually believe them, then our work will be done.

Peace!

About the Author 

Lori L. Tharps is an associate professor of journalism at Temple University and the coauthor of Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America, Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love & Spain, and Same Family, Different Colors: Confronting Colorism in America’s Diverse Families. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Glamour and Essence magazines. She lives in Philadelphia with her family. Follow her on Twitter at @LoriTharps and visit her website.

A Q&A with Sumbul Ali-Karamali

Author photo: Evan Winslow Smith

Shariah is a topic that gets bandied about in public and in the news with all the bluster and stereotypes and zero substance. In Demystifying Shariah: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It’s Not Taking Over Our Country, author Sumbul Ali-Karamali draws on scholarship and her degree in Islamic law to explain how shariah operates in the lives of Muslims and what it means in terms of law. She describes the anti-shariah movement’s deliberate misinformation campaign as an appropriation of Islamic academic terms redefined to frighten non-Muslims, alienate Muslim Americans and Europeans, and portray the religion as incompatible with the Constitution. The book is an introduction to the principles, goals, and general developments of shariah—and the relevance of these topics today. Beacon Broadside editor Christian Coleman caught up with Ali-Karamali to chat with her about it.

Christian Coleman: Your first book on Islam is The Muslim Next Door. What was the difference between writing that book and writing this one?

Sumbul Ali-Karamali: Well, both books were born of my lifelong habit of answering questions about Islam. I grew up Muslim and bicultural (Indian and American) in a time and place where I happened to be the only Muslim most of my acquaintances knew. So I got saddled with answering all their questions! Not only did I become good at answering questions about Islam in a way that those around me could understand and relate to (starting in elementary school!), but I also found I really loved coming up with answers that built bridges between my religious-cultural community and theirs. The questions I got were never addressed in the media and still aren’t. So The Muslim Next Door was a book aimed at answering the kinds of questions that had been asked of me all my life. Demystifying Shariah is a little different because I was never asked about shariah until 2010, when it first came onto the scene in American public discourse; when “shariah” or “sharia law” did become generally known, its definition was so distorted and full of fearful tall tales that I knew I had to write about what shariah truly meant.

CC: In Demystifying Shariah, you write about people coming up to you and saying they’re afraid of “shariah law” taking over the country. How did the term “shariah law,” which has monstrous meanings in the West, become so prevalent in US media?

SAK: Yes! I was stunned when fellow (but quite a bit older) alumni at one of my Stanford reunions saw me standing by a pile of my books at the bookstore, ready to autograph them, before approaching me to say that they were afraid shariah was taking over the United States. “Shariah” is an Islamic term of art, with defined meanings, but in 2010, the well-documented but loosely connected Islamophobia network in this country took the term and redefined it as a “scare word.” This was a deliberate move to spread fear of Islam and Muslims. Individuals in this network urged state legislators to pass “anti-shariah” laws, even though our Constitution prohibits any religious law from taking over our country. They accomplished their purpose, though, which was to bring shariah into the public discourse. As a result, hate crimes against Muslim Americans spiked in 2010.

CC: What are one or two of the current lies and misunderstandings of shariah that you see in today’s discourse?

SAK: That it’s a rigid set of archaic, black-and-white laws! Shariah is not “law” the way we think of law—rigid and enforceable. Shariah is religious guidelines, usually containing more than one answer to a particular question, mostly concerning personal conduct, and largely not enforceable. We usually think of punishments when we think of shariah, but only about two percent of shariah concerns punishments, and—contrary to popular wisdom—most of those punishments are so legally restricted by shariah that they are nearly impossible to apply. Of course, there are countries in the world that apply these punishments anyway (such as Saudi Arabia), but that does not mean they are complying with shariah requirements.

CC: I love the Star Trek references in the book and how you weave them into your explanations and examples. What made you a fan of the show?

SAK: Star Trek showed us what humankind could be! Gene Roddenberry, who created it, wanted to create a show that addressed issues of social injustice, but because he feared the obstacle of 1960s television censors, he set it in a science fiction context. Despite only three seasons, the show became iconic for its espousal of universal values and fairness and justice. I always loved the show, but wasn’t a super-Trekkie—never attended conventions or anything—so I was utterly surprised when, during the writing of my first book, I found that episodes of Star Trek kept popping into my head as examples and similes in my explanations. It makes sense, though: my books are about universal values (in the Islamic context) and shared humanity—and so is Star Trek.

CC: At turns, humorous, ironic, and compassionate, the tone of your books is also hopeful, which I think is sorely needed as we head into another fraught election season. Why was it important for you to end with a note of optimism?

SAK: Our world is getting smaller, and we all have to learn to live with one another. That means achieving at least a rudimentary understanding of each other and dispelling xenophobic views and stereotypes of anyone who is different from us. It might be human nature to indulge in these stereotypes, but then we must fight human nature! We can achieve the goals that Captain Kirk (my first crush) and Captain Picard fought for—peace, intercultural understanding, and the recognition that aliens were not to be feared but worthy of friendship. Muslims are worthy of friendship, too. It just takes a little intercultural understanding.

CC: And one last question. After becoming a corporate lawyer, you earned an additional degree in Islamic law, and you’re a popular speaker on topics related to Muslims and Islam. How did you get interested in law.

SAK: I’m the child of Indian immigrants and, contrary to what so many people believe, my parents’ overpowering ambition for me as a Muslim girl was—wait for it—financial independence. They put great pressure on me to achieve this goal by attending medical school, but because I’m probably the most squeamish person on the planet, and because I’ve always loved writing, I applied instead to law school (thus gravely disappointing my parents). During and after law school, and especially while practicing corporate law, I continued to field questions about Islam and Muslims; but my friends also started asking me for book recommendations on Islam as well. Since there were no fun ones out there, I decided to write one myself. That’s why, when my husband’s job took us to London, I earned a degree in Islamic law at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. It was the first time in my life that I’d studied something just for fun, and I was fascinated. I’m not a cleric but an academic, and I’ve found a calling synthesizing academic material into a relatable, engaging format for the general audience. It can be challenging, educating people about Islam in today’s climate, but it’s more often rewarding to know that I’m bringing people together.

About Sumbul Ali-Karamali

Sumbul Ali-Karamali is a Muslim American who grew up in California, answering questions on Islam ever since she can remember. After becoming a corporate lawyer, she earned an additional degree in Islamic law. She specializes in synthesizing academic material for general audiences and is the author of The Muslim Next Door and Growing Up Muslim. A popular speaker on topics related to Islam and Muslims, she hopes to promote intercultural understanding with her work, at least when she’s not watching Star Trek reruns, listening to opera, or (reluctantly) white-water rafting with her husband. Connect with Sumbul on her website: sumbulalikaramali.com.

By Philip Warburg

Triple-decker homes in Boston. Photo credit: Piotrus

In his newly released $2 trillion energy and infrastructure plan, Joe Biden set a nationwide goal of 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035. Solar power figures prominently in his plan, but it’s not clear whether low-income households will share in this historic opportunity. 

With racial injustice and economic inequality gaining long-overdue attention, we need to look at the gap between established homeowners who have solar power on their homes and people living in more modest circumstances who can’t afford this climate-friendly investment. 

Anyone flying into Boston’s Logan Airport can’t help noticing the sea of triple-decker buildings that line so many neighborhood streets in and around the city. Built as multi-family worker housing more than a century ago, these hardy structures share a feature that bodes well for our region’s solar future: flat, uncluttered roofs seldom shaded by trees or adjacent buildings. 

Why are we letting this readily accessible renewable energy resource go to waste? The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, a state agency, has just issued a Triple Decker Design Challenge aimed at “transitioning these iconic New England dwellings into high-performing, low-carbon buildings.” Though the Challenge calls for deep energy retrofits, strangely missing is any reference to solar power.

More encouraging is the Mass Solar Loan program, which offers low-income borrowers a 1.5 percent interest rate discount on their solar loans plus a thirty percent reduction in loan principal once their solar arrays begin operating. Incentives such as these, if adopted on a national scale, could go a long way toward bringing solar power’s benefits to millions of low-income households.

But what about the homeowner with too low a credit rating to qualify for a commercial loan? Outright grants should be made available, allowing these households to enjoy vastly reduced electric bills while benefiting the planet with lower carbon emissions. This approach was pioneered by GRIDAlternatives, a nonprofit founded in California with generous state support. Relying heavily on volunteer crews whom they train as solar installers, GRIDAlternatives has brought free solar power to more than 16,000 financially challenged single-family and multi-family households.

Much more ambitious in scope is the District of Columbia’s Solar for All program, which aspires to bring the benefits of locally generated solar power to 100,000 low-to-moderate income families. Income-qualified households that have access to their own rooftops can apply for grants to install their own solar arrays. Renters and others lacking their own solar-suitable rooftop access can subscribe to a community solar plan that credits their monthly electric bills with a share of the output of a solar facility in the DC area.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has projected that residential and commercial rooftops could meet up to thirty-nine percent of America’s present-day electricity needs using photovoltaic (PV) panels that were standard when the study was published in 2016. Using today’s more efficient PV modules, NREL estimates that rooftop solar could supply half of our nation’s power needs.

Today, we have reached a tiny fraction of that potential: less than one percent of our electricity comes from “distributed” solar installations—rooftops, parking canopies, and moderately scaled ground-mounted arrays. Larger utility-scale solar installations supply only slightly more: about 1.8 percent of electricity sales nationwide.

Vice President Biden’s call for clean electricity by 2035 demands strong and decisive action now. He’s right to call for extending the investment tax credits that have made solar appealing to many homes and businesses, but more must be done to ensure equitable access to this transformative technology. 

Regardless of income, American homeowners should be able to tap the sun beaming down on their roofs.

About the Author 

Philip Warburg, author of Harness the Sun, is a Senior Fellow at Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy.

Photo credit: Gang Sun

This summer, the uprisings for racial justice and the marches for Black lives have been heartening. And believe me, we need something to root for during our pandemic timeline. This wake-up call to reckon with systemic racism and to dismantle it—and there have been many before—is ringing loud and clear. Now we need that same momentum to carry into the classrooms—all virtual please!—with the same gusto. Because schools are part of the system, too. From kindergarten to the lecture hall, they are a microcosm of the forces of oppression at large on the macro level. The school-to-prison pipeline and resource officers are permanent reminders of how white supremacy culture is dangerously upheld and enforced in the name of education.

With back-to-school season practically knocking at the door, we’d like to point to some select titles from our catalog on making antiracism a reality in schools.

A New York Times Bestseller

For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood . . . and the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education

“There are power dynamics, personal histories, and cultural clashes stemming from whiteness and all it encompasses that work against young people of color in traditional urban classrooms. This book highlights them, provides a framework for looking at them, and offers ways to address them in the course of improving the education of urban youth of color.”
—Christopher Emdin 

Winner of the ACE Lifetime Achievement Award

Holding Fast to Dreams: Empowering Youth, from the Civil Rights Crusade to STEM Achievement

“We now have African Americans who are placed in faculties of science and engineering departments and medical schools. We are making progress, but it is bittersweet. We are encouraged when one of our students who has recently earned the PhD becomes the first African American hire in a department, but we also need to finally, as a nation, get beyond each of these hires being ‘the first.’ We can accomplish this only by working deliberately, as a STEM community, to achieve this goal.

All of this requires culture change. Not a change in behavior alone but a change in perspective, values, and the willingness to act. Telling stories is the first step. Inspiring others is the next. Looking in the mirror comes next. Then come identifying the problem, collecting data to understand the problem, and bringing those who can enact change into the conversation and into solving and working on the problem. This is not an easy, comfortable, or brief process. It takes a community, it takes hard work, it takes time, but it can be done.”
—Dr. Freeman A. Hrabowski, III 

“Lift Us Up, Don’t Push Us Out!”: Voices from the Front Lines of the Educational Justice Movement

“Profound racial inequities and injustice in public education far predate the Trump and Obama administrations. They are rooted in deep-seated systems of white supremacy in the United States. The struggle for educational justice is part of a long-term historic struggle for freedom and liberation. We are at a new moment and must respond to new challenges.”
—Mark R. Warren with David Goodman

None of the Above: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal, Corporate Greed, and the Criminalization of Educators

“People had strong reactions to the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal because it’s true that there are real problems facing our public education system. Education is integral to a healthy democracy, so our concerns about education often illicit deeper anxieties about societal well-being. But the only way toward a public education that benefits all students, and society as a whole, entails addressing the root causes of the inequities and shortcomings that now exist. The Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal was a distraction that deferred the real reckoning that we need to have”
—Shani Robinson and Anna Simonton

Twenty-First-Century Jim Crow Schools: The Impact of Charters on Public Education
Raynard Sanders, David Stovall, Terrenda White

“The fight for publicly funded public education is a constant struggle for poor, working-class, and even middle-class families. The introduction of so-called choice and competition in the form of charters is surrounded by opportunity for the ruling class to basically extort monies from already financially strapped public schools, while shifting those funds into the hands of those who benefit the most from the opportunity gap and their friends and families.”
—Karen Lewis, foreword

Winner of 2020 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award

We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Education Freedom

“To begin the work of abolitionist teaching and fighting for justice, the idea of mattering is essential in that you must matter enough to yourself, to your students, and to your students’ community to fight. But for dark people, the very basic idea of mattering is sometimes hard to conceptualize when your country finds you disposable.”
—Bettina L. Love

By Jonathan Rosenblum

Tax Amazon Legislation Unveiling, Press Conference. Photo credit: Seattle City Council

This article appeared originally on Labor Notes.

Pressed by a relentless working class movement, the Seattle City Council on July 6 adopted a first-time-ever tax on Amazon and other big businesses that will bring in at least $214 million a year to fund affordable housing, Green New Deal projects, and union jobs.

The win was a stunning turn of events: just two years earlier, Amazon, the Chamber of Commerce, the corporate-backed mayor, and several business-oriented labor leaders forced the city council to rescind a newly adopted tax on big business of only $47 million a year.

The dramatic victory shows how workers and activists can recover from a bitter defeat and organize successfully to beat austerity.

The brutal corporate beat-down of two years earlier centered on attacking socialist Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, whose organization had led the grassroots push for the tax. Big business deployed attack ads, push polling, a tax repeal campaign that paid signature-gatherers up to $6 for each signature, and a capital strike in which Amazon threatened to stop expanding in Seattle, its main headquarters. The attack was supported by right-wing talk radio shows, pro-corporate editorials, and a building trades union leadership that openly sided with Amazon.

Emboldened by success, the Amazon-led business coalition spent an unprecedented $4.1 million in last November’s city council elections against Sawant and other progressive and socialist candidates. The brazen corporate election-buying aimed to remake city politics and teach working people an enduring lesson about corporate power.

They lost. Five out of seven business-backed candidates fell to defeat, and Sawant prevailed thanks to an unparalleled grassroots effort, with more than 1,000 campaigners knocking on 225,000 doors.

Sawant didn’t shy from what the fight was about, declaring, “What’s at stake this year is who runs Seattle—Amazon and big business, or working people.”

Conferences for Activists 

After she was re-elected, Sawant convened a series of Tax Amazon Action Conferences beginning in January, where hundreds of activists discussed, debated, and voted on a strategy and the elements of a new proposal: a $300 million per year tax on Amazon and the biggest 3 percent of businesses in Seattle, including tech companies, biotechnology firms, big international law firms, and international hotel and restaurant chains. The money would fund affordable, publicly-controlled housing and Green New Deal projects such as home weatherization, replacing oil- and gas-heating in homes with electrified systems, and installation of solar panels.

Not trusting the city council to enact the measure, they also launched a petition drive to place the measure on the ballot.

The onset of the COVID-19 crisis in late February escalated the organizing challenges for activists, as face-to-face rallies and signature gathering became difficult. Instead of collecting signatures at transit stops, farmers markets, college campuses, and busy streets, organizers were forced to mail petitions to activists, who would collect signatures from their households and immediate neighbors.

As the COVID crisis deepened, organizers set up socially-distanced signature stations in working-class neighborhoods, complete with hand sanitizer and pens cleaned after every use. But the triple crisis of COVID—the threat to health plus sweeping job loss plus threats of eviction—also stimulated tremendous public enthusiasm for the signature drive, emboldening the movement to demand that the city council act with urgency.

The Justice for George Floyd movement that exploded on the streets in late May also strengthened the drive. At the protests, speakers drew the connection between Black Lives Matter and the Amazon Tax by calling for funds to build affordable housing to counteract racist gentrification in Seattle.

As the drive approached the signature threshold to get on the ballot, and with hundreds of activists flooding city council offices with emails, phone calls, and public testimony, and with the Amazon tax demand being echoed in the street protests, the political establishment felt compelled to advance its own Amazon tax.

A Substitute Bill 

Insipidly rebranded as “Jumpstart Seattle,” the substitute legislation was intended to avert a ballot initiative. Several large businesses—notably Expedia and major hospitality corporations—sensed the movement’s momentum and embraced the establishment’s plan. “Yes, harm mitigation was part of it,” conceded one restaurant executive who fought against the Amazon tax in 2018 but came around to support the 2020 measure.

A last-minute push by the Chamber of Commerce to tar the proposal as a “tax on jobs”—as it had done successfully in 2018—fell flat this time because of the consistent organizing message over the last two years: the tax was on Amazon and Seattle’s wealthiest businesses, not workers, jobs, or small businesses.

On July 6 the city council adopted the tax ordinance, which will bring in at least $214 million a year—less than the movement’s $300 million initial demand but more than four times the tax that big business repealed in 2018. And on July 20, the Council adopted a plan for the Amazon tax money, largely along the lines that activists had ratified in the Tax Amazon Action Conferences.

Lessons 

Bosses never miss an opportunity to demand worker sacrifices to protect corporate power and profits, and the COVID-19 crisis is no exception. In state and local governments, this means not just job freezes and layoffs for public workers but also cuts in services like food, housing, child care, youth programs and recreation, worker rights enforcement, and repair of roads, bridges, and public buildings.

How should workers fight back? Seattle’s Amazon tax fight, spanning more than two years, offers lessons for activists everywhere battling against austerity and for jobs and worker rights:

1. It’s about power. 

“The reason we won was because we built a powerful, independent movement that was democratically organized,” Sawant told Jacobin magazine.

Politicians, even many who call themselves progressive, often frame political struggles as consensus-building exercises in which contending parties “come to the table” to hammer out differences and reach acceptable compromises, usually behind closed doors, away from the movement.

The Amazon Tax prevailed because organizers mobilized for a fight, continually framing the struggle as one between workers and big business. They resisted the calls from many quarters, including some progressive community leaders, to not “antagonize” Amazon, to tone down their campaign, and to negotiate a compromise.

Because the political fight is about opposing interests—just like in union negotiations—what workers win is always a function of the balance of power at the moment. The Tax Amazon activists recognized that the 2018 defeat was only a temporary setback, and by redoubling their organizing over two years, they changed the balance of power in the political arena.

2. Play offense.

Corporate executives and political leaders, reinforced by the mainstream media, continually try to tamp down worker hopes. They brand worker demands as “unrealistic” and “impractical” while insisting on austerity. The Tax Amazon organizers succeeded in electrifying working people and building a powerful movement by doing the opposite: they raised expectations, with a powerful vision of taxing Amazon to fund affordable housing, the Green New Deal, and public services.

3. Build a democratic, grassroots organization.

Building on the momentum of the massive grassroots 2019 re-election campaign, Tax Amazon built a strong, democratic movement. Sawant's organization, Socialist Alternative, and many unions, environmental groups, and other community groups helped organize the campaign and its conferences, where rank-and-file union members and community activists spent hours debating elements of the legislation and campaign strategy. And then they voted, with one vote per person, whether they were a top union officer or a first-time community volunteer.

That democratic process built a resilient campaign, able to withstand pressures and attacks from the political establishment.

4. In the political arena, as in union bargaining, you need a powerful weapon.

The Tax Amazon Action Conference made a critical strategic decision in January, one that proved decisive: rather than rely on the city council, they would simultaneously advance both legislation and a ballot initiative drive.

This was the equivalent of workers taking a strike vote: what the political establishment feared most was an expensive pitched battle in November over a ballot initiative that pitted workers against big business. They did not want to spend resources defending themselves against a popular tax measure, and they did not want to see even more focus on Seattle's glaring economic inequality, among the worst in the world.

When Tax Amazon campaigners announced that they had the critical number of signatures to file, that credible threat of going to the ballot in November placed extraordinary pressure on the political establishment to act.

5. Build movements that link our fights together.

Tax Amazon organizers recognized that racial, economic, housing, and climate justice issues are linked. The legislation and the initiative both called for the affordable housing to be built with union labor, with priority-hire and apprenticeship opportunities for people living in the neighborhoods where the homes are to be built. The new homes must meet Green New Deal standards, including a commitment to use renewable energy, and about $20 million per year is reserved for retrofitting existing working class homes to renewable energy—again, with union labor.

As thousands of people rallied against police violence during the final weeks of the Tax Amazon battle, leading Black clergy worked with Sawant to add an important detail to the bill: dedicated funds to build affordable homes in Seattle’s Central District. The Central District is a formerly thriving Black community that has seen two-thirds of its African American population driven out over the years. The city's notorious Operation Weed and Seed was set up in the 1990s explicitly to gentrify the District while fast-tracking incarceration of young Black men. Corporate developers snapped up entire blocks in recent years, evicting long-time homeowners.

Backed by 229 faith activists, Sawant’s amendment reserved a minimum of $18 million per year for the construction of affordable, publicly controlled rental homes in the Central District, with “community preference” for tenants who have been displaced from the neighborhood. It passed unanimously.

6. It’s never over.

Even after winning the legislation, Tax Amazon activists recognize that the fight is not over. Now the movement will be challenged to force Seattle’s pro-corporate mayor, who was elected with a record donation from Amazon, to fully implement the new law. That will require continued organizing and action. Just like a union contract, the Tax Amazon legislation will need to be enforced through continued collective organizing and demonstrations of worker power.

About the Author 

Jonathan Rosenblum works as a community organizer for Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant. He is the author of Beyond $15: Immigrant Workers, Faith Activists, and the Revival of the Labor Movement (Beacon Press, 2017), and a member of the National Writers Union/UAW 1981. Find him online at https://jonathanrosenblum.org/ or Twitter: @jonathan4212.

Third Annual NYC Disability Pride Parade, 2017. Photo credit: New York City Department of Transportation

The Americans with Disabilities Act has a thirtieth candle to blow out on its birthday cake this year! A little over half a century ago, zero federal laws made it illegal to discriminate against disabled people. Today’s accessibility accommodations in buildings and services were nonexistent. We have disability rights activist and supreme badass Judy Heumann to thank for sparking a national movement for the protection of disabled peoples’ rights that led to the creation of the ADA. And it benefits everyone. Take it from Heumann on her Daily Show interview: nondisabled people enjoy many accommodations originally made for disabled people without realizing those luxuries are there.

It would be complacent to assume that everyone has access to what they need. But the pandemic swooped in and reminded us with a quickness that quality of life for all disabled Americans is not a given. Just last month, a quadriplegic father in Houston, TX, was left to die of illnesses related to coronavirus because the hospital decided he would not benefit from further treatment. The 2020 elections are coming up, and many voters with disabilities still face barriers with accessibility to the voting system. Reading the below selected titles on disability stories and disability resistance from our catalog, you will see that the fight for disability rights is far from over.

Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist
Judith Heumann with Kristen Joiner

“Judy’s story has shaken me to the core. For the first time, I see myself in someone else. Her fierce advocacy and work changing the laws around disability rights have undeniably paved the way for me to achieve what I have today. . . . A must-read.”
—Ali Stroker, Tony Award–winning actress

A Disability History of the United States
Kim E. Nielsen

“A wonderful, beautifully written, remarkable achievement that will certainly become a classic within the field and should become standard reading.”
—Michael A. Rembis, Director, Center for Disability Studies, University at Buffalo

Enabling Acts: The Hidden Story of How the Americans with Disabilities Act Gave the Largest US Minority Its Rights
Lennard J. Davis

“Davis’ page-turning account puts the reader on the ground along chanting disability rights advocates and behind closed doors within the walls of Washington. An important and outstanding contribution.”
—I. King Jordan, first deaf president of Gallaudet University

Entwined: Sisters and Secrets in the Silent World of Artist Judith Scott
Joyce Wallace Scott

“Joining the worlds of outsider art and disability with startling emotional depth, Joyce Scott takes the reader on a powerful journey of loss, longing, family, false starts, resilience—and ultimately—love.”
—James W. Trent Jr., author of Inventing the Feeble Mind

In Sickness and In Health: Love, Disability, and a Quest to Understand the Perils and Pleasures of Interabled Romance
Ben Mattlin

“An urgent, deeply felt, and sometimes hilarious account of marriages that feel as obvious to those within them as they are bewildering to many people outside them. Mattlin gives us a testament to the deep humanity that can manifest in any kind of body, and to the passionate love such humanity can provoke in others.”
—Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree

Life As Jamie Knows It: An Exceptional Child Grows Up
Michael Bérubé

“In this poignant and genuine collaboration between father and son, Michael Bérubé draws from Jamie’s lived experiences in school, at work, and on the playing field to reflect on the profound philosophical dilemmas surrounding how we measure human worth.”
—Rachel Adams, author of Raising Henry: A Memoir of Motherhood, Disability, and Discovery

A Life Beyond Reason: A Disabled Boy and His Father’s Enlightenment
Chris Gabbard

“A story of enduring love, and the way that loving someone with a disability can change your world . . . . This bracingly unsentimental book is moving, illuminating, and deeply rewarding.”
—Michael Bérubé, author of Life As Jaime Knows It

Mean Little deaf Queer: A Memoir
Terry Galloway

“This is not your mother’s triumph-of-the-human-spirit memoir. Yes, Terry Galloway is resilient. But she’s also caustic, depraved, utterly disinhibited, and somehow sweetly bubbly, a beguiling raconteuse who periodically leaps onto the dinner table and stabs you with her fork. Her story will fascinate, it will hurt, and you will like it.”
—Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home

Waist-High in the World: A Life Among the Nondisabled
Nancy Mairs

“As helpful as Mairs’s book will be to disabled people, what’s most important about it is its lessons for able-bodied readers.”
—Kathi Wolfe, The Progressive

Woody Guthrie: An Intimate Life
Gustavus Stadler

“Gustavus Stadler helps Woody Guthrie down from his pedestal as dust bowl icon and helps us to see him as the three-dimensional character he really was.”
—Billy Bragg, musician and activist

By Polly Price

Photo credit: jardin

This article appeared originally on plaguesinthenation.com.

Heartening news from Alabama—Governor Kay Ivey ordered face coverings be worn in public, an emergency measure to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus there as the state reached a new record daily death toll. A recognition in the midst of a still unfolding disaster that face masks work.

Short of shelter-in-place orders or further business closures, face masks are in fact the only thing that will work. The CDC has said that “cloth face coverings are one of the most powerful weapons we have to slow and stop the spread of the virus—particularly when used universally within a community setting.” The Director of the CDC, Robert Redfield, said, “If we could get everybody to wear a mask right now, I really think in the next four, six, eight weeks, we could bring this epidemic under control.”

Nearly half of all states now have a mask mandate, and even more states allow decisions about face-coverings to be made at the local level. These are temporary measures to help a town or city beat back an outbreak hitting it disproportionately to other areas in a state.

But the biggest move is from Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer. It announced customers must wear face-coverings to enter any of its stores anywhere in the nation. The National Retail Federation endorsed Walmart’s announcement, stating “Shopping in a store is a privilege, not a right. If a customer refuses to adhere to store policies, they are putting employees and other customers at undue risk.”

We seem to be largely beyond the legal question whether an elected official can order face coverings to be worn in indoor spaces. Generally applicable face-covering requirements do not violate your constitutional rights. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote recently that wide latitude should be given to state and local officials in a pandemic: “Our Constitution principally entrusts [t]he safety and the health of the people to the politically accountable officials of the States to guard and protect. When those officials undertake to act in areas fraught with medical and scientific uncertainties, their latitude must be especially broad.”

So what to make of the Governor of Georgia’s latest move to prevent city and county governments from requiring face coverings be worn in retail establishments and other public venues? It is hard to see the harm to the state if the mayor of Savannah concludes a temporary face-covering requirement is necessary, as he has done (along with the mayor of Atlanta and other towns throughout Georgia). In a Twitter response to the Governor’s order, Savannah Mayor Van Johnson wrote “It is officially every man and woman for himself/herself. Ignore the science and survive the best you can.”

Is this just a quirk of Georgia law, that the governor can prevent public health measures a local elected official believes necessary? The question is rare nationally, and that’s a good thing for democratic government. Let’s take a look.

The declaration of a public health emergency in Georgia permits the Governor to issue executive orders imposing social-distancing measures, including temporary business closures, limitations on gathering size, and the like. Face-coverings too, should the Governor deem those necessary. But Georgia emergency law does not give the governor authority to override local face masks requirements in the name of that “emergency.” At best, the Governor may direct the Department of Public Health “to coordinate public health emergency responses between state and local authorities.”

Here is how local health authority is described by the Georgia Department of Health on its website: “Each of Georgia’s 159 County Boards of Health is also authorized to enact regulations to protect the public health in their jurisdiction, provided those county regulations do not contradict those of the Department. After looking at the Department’s regulations, you may wish to check with your County Board of Health to see if it has elected to enact supplemental regulations on a particular subject.”

Without the Governor’s executive order, Savannah’s face mask requirement would be perfectly legal under Georgia law. Local face-mask ordinances only contradict state law now because Governor Kemp says they do, to buttress his claim that he could challenge local face-mask requirements in court and win. I think the Governor would lose. But rather than force the question, why not allow local decision-making, as Texas has done, rather than waste time and resources engaging in litigation?

Governor Kemp is in the distinct minority of Republican Governors on this one. The sky has not fallen since the Texas, Arizona, and Alabama Governors reversed course on face masks. One stunning result of the Georgia Governor’s action is the world’s busiest airport, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson, is once again mask free. As I wrote previously, the FAA, the CDC, or someone at the federal level should take action to better protect interstate travelers and their destinations. Preventing the spread of COVID-19 in America’s airports should not be left up to mayors or governors, and certainly not be overridden by a governor if a mayor steps up to fill the gap.

About the Author 

Polly Price is an award-winning legal historian and professor of law and public health at Emory, and is the author of two scholarly books and numerous articles on issues related to public health. Her book Plagues in the Nation, a narrative history of America through major outbreaks, is a forthcoming title from Beacon Press. Connect with her online at plaguesinthenation.com and on Twitter at @PollyJPrice.

By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker

Photo credit: C Watts

A silver lining in the cloud of racial injustice and pandemics. The NFL announced that the Washington Redsk*ns will change their offensive name and logo. This is years after owner Dan Snyder crossed his arms and said it would never happen. We never thought this day would come as soon as it did. It was about time. As Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker reveal in this adapted selection from “All the Real Indians Died Off”: And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans, the history of Indigenous anti-mascot initiatives goes further back than you think.

***

Sociologist James O. Young writes that cultural appropriation happens when people from outside a particular culture take elements of another culture in a way that is objectionable to that group. According to Young’s definition, it is the objection that constitutes appropriation, as distinguished from cultural borrowing or exchange where there is no “moral baggage” attached. Native American cultural appropriation can be thought of as a broad range of behaviors, carried out by non-Natives, that mimic Indian cultures. Typically, they are based on deeply held stereotypes, with no basis at all in knowledge of real Native cultures. This acting out of stereotypes is commonly referred to as “playing Indian,” and, as Philip Deloria’s research so eloquently revealed, it has a long history, going at least as far back as the Boston Tea Party. Some forms of appropriation have been outlawed, as is the case with the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 (IACA). Responding to the proliferation of faux Indian art (which undermines economic opportunities for actual Native American artists), the IACA is a truth-in-advertising law that regulates what can legitimately be sold as Indian art. No such possibility exists, however, for the vast majority of appropriations American Indians endure daily.

Non-Native people play Indian whenever they don any garb that attempts to replicate Native culture (however serious or trivial their intent) or otherwise mimic what they imagine to be Indian behavior, such as the tomahawk chop, a fake Indian dance, or bogus war whoop. Native American appropriation is so ubiquitous in US society that it is completely normalized, not only rendering it invisible when it occurs, but also adding insult to injury. Native people are also shamed for being “hypersensitive” when they protest. Halloween costumes, popular fashion, and children’s clubs and activities (such as the YMCA’s Indian Guides and Princesses programs and other summer camps) are some of the more obvious ways cultural appropriation occurs through Indian play in mainstream society, but perhaps its most visible form is in school and sports team mascots. Campaigns to put an end to the turning of American Indians into mascots began in the early 1960s when the National Indian Youth Council began organizing on college campuses to remove Indian sports stereotypes. Then, in 1968, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), the largest pan-Native representational and advocacy organization in the United States, established its own anti-mascot initiative. Once obscure, the movement to eradicate Indian mascots has snowballed into mainstream awareness.

In 2013, the NCAI issued a report outlining their position on Indian mascots. It mentions numerous resolutions that have been passed by the organization over the years, including one in 1993 imploring the Washington professional football team referred to as the “Redsk*ns” to drop its name, and another in 2005 supporting the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) ban on native mascots, nicknames, and imagery.

The report summarizes the negative impacts that Indian mascots have been shown to have on Native youths, citing, for example, a study by cultural and social psychology scholar Stephanie Fryberg. Her 2004 study revealed that when exposed to stereotypical “Indian” images, the self-esteem of Native youths is harmed, eroding their self-confidence and damaging their sense of identity. This is crucial given that the suicide rate among young American Indians is epidemic at 18 percent, more than twice the rate of non-Hispanic white youth, and contextualized by the fact that Native Americans experience the highest rates of violent crimes at the hands of people from another race. Since the early 1970s, thousands of public and postsecondary schools have dropped their Indian mascots, and hundreds more professional and governmental institutions have adopted resolutions and policies opposing the use of Native imagery and names, including the American Psychological Association, the American Sociological Association, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the US Commission on Civil Rights. In 2015 California became the first state to ban “Redsk*ns” as a mascot name in public schools.

As the NCAI report indicates, the “Redsk*ns” name is particularly offensive to Native peoples. According to the report,

The term originates from a time when Native people were actively hunted and killed for bounties, and their skins were used as proof of Indian kill. Bounties were issued by European companies, colonies, and some states, most notably California. By the turn of the 20th century it had evolved to become a term meant to disparage and denote inferiority and savagery in American culture. By 1932, the word had been a term of commodification and the commentary on the color of a body part. It was not then and is not now an honorific. . . . The term has since evolved to take on further derogatory meanings. Specifically, in the 20th century [it] became a widely used derogatory term to negatively characterize Native characters in the media and popular culture, such as films and on television.

Over the last twenty-five years, at least twenty-eight high schools have abandoned the name, but the Washington football team’s owner, Dan Snyder, has stalwartly insisted that he will never change the name, despite mounting legal challenges to its trademark and public outspokenness by President Barack Obama and other political leaders about its offensiveness. A growing number of media outlets and prominent sports reporters have vowed to stop using the name, and even NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has acknowledged its insensitivity.

Although arguments to justify the usage of Native images in the world of professional sports are weak at best, there are some instances where the use of Native mascots has been deemed acceptable at the college level, according to the NCAI report. The NCAA ban, for instance, includes a “namesake exception” that allows universities to keep their Native American nicknames and logos when they are based on a specific tribe and they have been granted the permission by that tribe. Such permission was granted for Florida State University (“Seminoles”), Central Michigan University (“Chippewas”), and the University of Utah (“Utes”). The University of North Dakota, on the other hand, due to opposition of the name “Fighting Sioux” from local tribes, was not granted an exemption. At the high school level, at least one high school in New York State has successfully fought to retain its Native mascot despite a request from the state’s education commissioner to boards of education and school superintendents to end their use of American Indian mascots and team names. Salamanca Central High School (SCHS) is located within the boundaries of the Seneca Nation, 26 percent of its student body is American Indian, and the team name “Warriors” is represented by an accurate depiction of a Seneca sachem rather than the cartoonish Plains-style Indian so typical of Native mascots. A name change was opposed by the Seneca Nation of Indians Tribal Council, the SCHS administration and student body, the Salamanca school board, and the Salamanca city council in a show of cross-cultural solidarity.

Be that as it may, there is a subtle claim to ownership in the realm of mascot names and images that scholars of cultural appropriation have keenly unmasked. With university and college examples like the Florida State Seminoles, the University of Illinois Fighting Illini, and many others, non-Native mascot defenders claim such representations honor particular tribal nations and peoples. But what they really do is assert an imagined indigeneity whereby white dominant society assumes control of the meaning of Nativeness. Professor of professional sport management at Drexel University Ellen Staurowsky characterizes these kinds of fraudulent claims to Indianness as a system of sustainable racism within a “sociopolitical power structure that renders Indianness tolerable to Whites as long as it is represented on terms acceptable to them.” She also points out the inconsistency of tolerating objectionable university Indian mascots with the central mission of higher education.

The myth that Indian mascots honor Native Americans, then, appears to be little more than a carefully constructed rationale to justify the maintenance of a system of domination and control—whether intentionally or unintentionally—where white supremacy is safeguarded, what Robert F. Berkhofer Jr. famously called the “White Man’s Indian.” And particularly at the level of professional sports, the branding of Native American team names and images also serves more as a rationale to maintain financial empires (explaining the stubborn adherence to racist portrayals of Native peoples in organizations like the Washington Redsk*ns), than dubious claims to be honoring them. But the justifications for American Indian cultural appropriation don’t end with sports team mascot battles and fashion debacles. Appropriating Native cultures by playing Indian permeates US society so broadly it strikes at the very heart of Native American cultures, their spiritually based systems of belonging and identity, which we turn to next.

About the Authors 

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in rural Oklahoma, the daughter of a tenant farmer and part-Indian mother. She has been active in the international Indigenous movement for more than four decades and is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. After receiving her PhD in history at the University of California at Los Angeles, she taught in the newly established Native American Studies Program at California State University, Hayward, and helped found the Departments of Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies. Her 1977 book The Great Sioux Nation was the fundamental document at the first international conference on Indigenous peoples of the Americas, held at the United Nations’ headquarters in Geneva. Dunbar-Ortiz is the author or editor of seven other books, including Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico. She lives in San Francisco. Follow her on Twitter at @rdunbaro. 

Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes) is a lecturer of American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos, and a consultant and educator in environmental justice policy planning. Her research interests focus on Indigenous nationalism, self-determination, environmental justice, and education. She also works within the field of critical sports studies, examining the intersections of indigeneity and the sport of surfing. She is co-author with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz of Beacon Press’s “All the Real Indians Died Off” and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans, and author of As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock. Follow her on Twitter at @DinaGWhit and visit her website.

By Howard Bryant

News of police officers murdering Black civilians is on repeat, and so are TV shows like Law and Order and Cops (up until it was recently canceled). As Howard Bryant shows us in this passage from Full Dissidence, the glut of crime dramas is a form of propaganda that glorifies the police force and cosigns white supremacy. The Black community has known about the enforcement of whiteness in the name of of law all along.

***

America prefers to view itself as a civilized society and, as such, the latter is the obvious, proper, and decent response. Yet judging by its obsession with law enforcement, America acts as if the former is its natural order—that violent crime is but a bad mood away and only the shield, the Glock, and the squad car stand between life and senseless death at the hands of our neighbors. Americans cling to this contrived state of emergency despite decades of research confirming that killing as a primary instinct is extremely rare, a dystopian fantasy compared to the socioeconomic factors that drive people to violent crime. Despite a spike in mass shootings, the actual murder rate was roughly the same in 2018 as it was in 1960, according to crime statistics compiled by the New York Times. That most people have no desire to harm others is also, and should always be, unsurprising.

Where I live, a bumper sticker commonly seen around town reads “Troopers Are Your Best Protection.” It is a specious declaration at best, at worst a cynical attempt to advance the political and economic agendas that come with commodifying law enforcement and the criminal justice system. If data mean anything, prosperity and opportunity, not police, are one’s best protection—yet law enforcement in America is omnipresent. Police are a fixture of the national identity, central to its popular culture and, in post-9 / 11 America, under the guise of freedom and safety, are emboldened to only further increase their footprint. The land of the free feels occupied by the smothering, militarized presence of police. Police are encouraged—by media-manipulated juries, by a decades-long unaccountability, by supplicant, politicized judges, and, of course, by fear—to ignore or break the law while judges and legislatures endorse propolice, antidemocratic policies. All, presumably, to keep us safe. Though charged with completely different responsibilities, in order to further exploit the fear, police attempt to make themselves indistinguishable from the military, try to look like domestic agents in the War on Terror. As a public relations tactic they have taken a dangerous, divisive job and rebranded it under the reassuring, unimpeachable post-9 / 11 umbrella of a single, uncomplicated word: heroes.

The public receives these maneuverings with pride. An overpoliced America—in schools, on TV, in train stations, at ballparks—is not considered by the mainstream to be a chilling harbinger of authoritarianism but a source of strength. No other occupation in the country owns as wide a gap between its realities and its public packaging as law enforcement because quite possibly no other occupation owns such distance between its experiences with different slices of the public. For those who are white and middle-class, the police are part of the social fabric, an unquestioned ally. The image of the police diverges almost exclusively along racial and class lines. The white mainstream accepts an image of benevolence, fairness, and justice while those who are black, brown, and poor know firsthand that the police are possibly all of those things but also definitely can be brutal, oppressive, merciless, aggressive, and extralegal. As a defense against criticism and a ploy for bigger budgets and more presence, police departments around the country routinely sell more fear and maintain that ungrateful American citizens are at war with them. If it is true that no occupation in America enjoys as great a distance between fantasy and reality as law enforcement, it is also true that none has spent so much time and money constructing such an illusion of itself. Nor has any other benefited from the assistance of so many powerful enablers—in Hollywood, in the newsrooms, and now at the ballparks—who are invested in sustaining their illusion. There are, indeed, so many ways to tell a lie. Police propaganda may well be America’s favorite.

~~~

What, it must be wondered, is so valuable that these truths, fatal to virtually any other profession, are tolerated, protected, and justified when exposed regarding police? Nearly three thousand killings by police over a three-year period—several of unarmed citizens and captured on video—with a less than virtually nonexistent conviction rate of officers. Evidence that policemen are often aligned with white nationalist organizations. False confessions. Fraud. Illegal surveillance. Billions paid out in civil settlements. The National Center for Women and Policing reported in 2014 that 10 percent of American families experience domestic violence, but for police officers’ families, the number is two to four times higher, one of the highest rates in the nation, though given the issue’s national coverage a first guess would be that the highest rate involves black football players. Though steroids are largely associated with sports, there is a culture of anabolic steroid use among police, as documented in University of Texas professor John M. Hoberman’s searing book Dopers in Uniform.

This is the evidence, not conjecture or theory, of an institution facing enormous challenges, one in desperate need of reform and oversight. The reality repudiates the public relations. The transgressions, as widespread as they are disparate, explain at least in part the existence of the propaganda, for actual policework is neither clean nor often heroic. After an officer with the Cleveland Police Department killed twelve-year-old Tamir Rice within two seconds of encountering him in 2014, the department paid his family a $6 million settlement of taxpayer money (without admitting wrongdoing, of course) and then publicly and shamelessly said the family should donate the money to charity. Killing a child, then painting the survivors as greedy lottery winners, isn’t quite the appropriate selling point for Cleveland Indians Law Enforcement Appreciation Night.

In April 2019, USA Today reported that over the previous decade, eighty-five thousand police officers had been investigated or disciplined for misconduct. “Officers have beaten members of the public, planted evidence and used their badges to harass women,” the report read. “They have lied, stolen, dealt drugs, driven drunk and abused their spouses.” The report documented more than two thousand examples of “perjury, tampering with evidence or falsifying reports.” Twenty officers were the subject of at least one hundred allegations each but remained on the job.

It is not simply power that prevents the public and the corporate machine from challenging law enforcement. (The Catholic Church was an equally if not even more powerful institution and yet has not recovered from its breaking of the public trust and quite likely never will.) The critical difference, beyond the one-liners-and-ammo formula of Hollywood cop-buddy movies, beyond the Blue Lives Matter police union intimidation, and beyond all the post-9/11 hero talk, is what the idea of law enforcement means to white mainstream culture. Policing is the glue of whiteness. Like the white American identity, which has never reconciled with the bloody and murderous roots of its empire, the police propaganda smothering the culture asserts an inherent goodness. Police are good, even when they kill, even when they break or flout the law, even when they roll tanks into Ferguson or occupy minority communities dressed as if they are invading Aleppo, which makes their transgressions forgivable. The same is true of whiteness, when it first appeared on the shores of a brown nation, when it isolates and then displaces to gentrify, when it annexes land, appropriates resources, and colonizes and then leads humanitarian efforts. Its presence must always be concluded to be a positive one. The myth of police as essential to goodness and not to whiteness must be protected as vigilantly as one protects the flag. For if it is not, and law enforcement, justice and whiteness are coupled, as the black and the brown know they always have been, then neutrality crumbles. The government, the law, the Constitution, and the commitment to equality are no longer objective and they must then be seen as the black person sees them—as the enforcement arm of whiteness. Heroism falls apart. The entire idea must be reconstituted.

Conversely, if police allow themselves to be the enforcement arm of whiteness, then who is the natural target, the obvious threat? It is the nonwhite. Black people have found themselves the targets of a particular phenomenon: white people (white women primarily) across the country calling the police on them. Whether it’s a white woman calling police on a black female student napping in the Yale library, an employee calling police on two black friends awaiting another at a Starbucks in Philadelphia, or a white woman phoning police on a black family barbecuing in an Oakland park, the message is that black people do not belong in public spaces. When they are in public they are being watched not only by police but by average citizens who have chosen to aid in the policing. In 2019, a woman photographed a black Washington, DC, transit worker eating on the Metro, taking the time to tweet her bosses demanding the woman be disciplined.

Black presence suggests threat and becomes an unintended consequence of the War on Terror’s “If you see something, say something” mandate. Taking this slogan to its natural conclusion, if the public is enlisted as agents of the state, their actions will reflect their fears, and their fear is black people. If the public does not believe black people belong in common, everyday American spaces without tight monitoring, then black people, like the Boston Marathon bombers or ISIS sympathizers, become the threat. The police become the personal protectors of the white public. They will be asked and expected to remove black people from spaces that white people do not believe African Americans have a right to share.

Calling the police on black people is an extension of the public and police’s willingness to believe in black criminality, which has long been used by white perpetrators of heinous crime. In 1990, Charles Stuart infamously murdered his pregnant wife in Boston and blamed it on a black male. In 1995, Susan Smith drowned her two children and told police a black man killed her children after a carjacking. Two weeks before the 2008 election a twenty-year-old John McCain campaign volunteer named Ashley Todd claimed a black Obama supporter had attacked her and scratched the letter “B” into her face. In each case, law enforcement acted as the perpetrators had hoped, rounding up black suspects, quick to believe in black malfeasance as credible. Black people were used as the bait by the white perpetrators for one reason: they knew that at a first glance, and sometimes a first glance is all it takes, it would work. Existing while black.

Yet within this dynamic, when white people believe the law is designed to protect only them, and when they know they can act upon this belief at will, brazenly dialing 911 whenever they feel a black person has forgotten his or her place, the idea of white benevolence disintegrates as quickly as the neutrality of law enforcement. Whites can view themselves as both the conqueror and the asset that must be protected. Police are the occupiers, ready at a moment’s notice to enforce the will not of justice for all but of whiteness.

Without the pretense of fairness, the nostalgia of the self-made fantasy, of police pulling themselves up and out of the lower class through the virtue of aiding justice becomes, finally and inevitably, ridiculous. Police is so tied to whiteness because it was the pathway to the American dream. Law enforcement provided one of the earliest opportunities for so many whites, especially big-city Italians, Poles, and Irish, to rise from immigrant to American. The blue-collar police and fire departments represented their path to legitimacy, to assimilation, built their middle class. It is how the Irish graduated from disorderly to white to hero. It is how the Italians transformed from criminal to white to hero. Just as with the military, there is nostalgia in the dynastic qualities of law enforcement, of how the son followed the father who followed his father into the business, the myth of gallantry maintained, that a valuable and noble trek from the Old World to the New was being completed.

It is a story darkly revived in post-9/11 America, except the inherent goodness of police transformed from the old Officer Friendly archetype into that of vigilant superpatriot. The former offered the melting pot a chance that community belonged to all people. The latter is a snarling defense of whiteness, patriotism, and xenophobia so deeply embedded into the culture that law enforcement now is cultivated as a patriotic business partner with professional sports leagues. One must ask: If Colin Kaepernick had taken a knee for global warming or education reform, would his industry and his country have lashed out so ferociously, so permanently?

Telling a different tale—that the Irish and Italian cops in Boston and New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore (not to mention Chicago and San Francisco), joined the American middle class by beating niggers over the head, by maintaining economic dominance over them through graft, corruption, and prohibiting them from joining police and fire departments in large numbers, only to come home and beat their spouses—would not spawn many enthusiastic TV shows. If the heroes weren’t heroes, the nostalgic, self-made-immigrant story dissolves and the badge loses its appeal and becomes, as it has been for black people all along, something to fear.

About the Author 

Howard Bryant is a senior writer for ESPN the Magazine and is a correspondent for NPR’s Weekend Edition. He has won several awards for his commentary writing. His books include The Heritage, Juicing the Game, and The Last Hero. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. Connect with him at howardbryantbooks.com and on Twitter (@hbryant42).

By Ryan Lugalia-Hollon

After forty years of mass incarceration and roughly 150 years of police brutality, we are being called to imagine a public safety system without policing. But do our minds even let us go there? Do they let us dream beyond surface-level reforms? Can we envision a wildly new and just infrastructure for peace and protection?

How we hear the call to reimagine public safety is, in part, shaped by whether or not we have experienced the violence and racism of our criminal justice system.^[1] Yet there are also many subtle ways that our imagination is policed by white supremacy, the treacherous yet pervasive idea that white people are in any way superior to Black and non-Black people of color.

Across the United States, we have convinced ourselves that people of color, especially Black people, are “criminals” at levels that are unprecedented in human history. Without white supremacy, this level of widespread criminalization would not be possible. If white Americans did not harbor the belief that we are better than Black and Brown Americans, then we would never stand for shipping away Black and Brown beings by the millions. Nor would we doubt the ability of communities of color to build out their own infrastructure for community safety; as we do when we insist that each city’s safety operations needs to be centralized and controlled by an armed force with maximum immunity yet minimum ability to heal community harms. The ideas of criminalization, containment, and centralization—which are foundational to our current public safety system—are direct projections of the superiority, fear, and urge to control that we, as white Americans, all too often harbor in our hearts.

To free us from the ways white supremacy polices our ideas of safety, I propose this list of questions we ask ourselves to free up our imaginations, move past some of our fear, and help to welcome a more effective and healing safety paradigm. I offer twenty-six questions, one per year of life lived by Breonna Taylor, before she was shot and killed by police in my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. These can be used when facing a mirror, in a small group discussion, or at a family dinner.

1. Do I live in a safe community?
2. What role do jobs, housing, food, and health care play in the safety of my community?
3. Where do my ideas of safety come from?
4. Are my ideas of safety aligned with my larger beliefs about how the world works
5. Do I believe there are good and bad people in the world?
6. If so, where do bad people live?
7. What mental image do I have for people who are bad?
8. In my mind, what race / ethnicity are they?
9. Do I feel safe driving through communities that look differently than my own?
10. Do I feel safe walking driving through communities that look differently than my own?
11. If no, how does my fear shape the ways I think about these communities?
12. What do I look for in another community to determine whether or not I feel safe?
13. Do I believe that our current public safety system supports those who’ve been harmed?
14. When I have been harmed, how do I want to be cared for?
15. When someone I love is harmed, how do I want them to be cared for?
16. How important are counseling, medical care, and supportive community when healing from harm?
17. Am I aware of the ways that unhealed harm can lead to future wrongdoing?
18. Do I believe that our current system reduces future harm in our world?
19. When I have harmed someone else, how do I want to be held accountable?
20. What support would I need to keep myself from committing harm again?
21. When someone I love has harmed someone else, how do I want them to be held accountable?
22. What support would they need to keep from committing harm again?
23. Am I willing to help build an approach to public safety that works for all communities?
24. If yes, what role or roles would I be willing to play?
25. Can I see myself as a peacemaker, healer, connector, or responder in my own community?
26. What supports do I need to find to keep imagining a new and more just public safety system?

^[1] For white Americans, like myself, who have never been profiled, harassed, detained, or imprisoned—and never had loved ones endure any of these experiences—the need for a new reality can seem strange and foreign. Conversely, for Black Americans across the country, no matter their level of wealth or achievement, the deep flaws and bias that govern our country’s criminal justice practices are all too familiar, though their full extent can still be difficult to acknowledge.

About the Author 

Ryan Lugalia-Hollon is the coauthor of The War on Neighborhoods: Policing, Prison, and Punishment in a Divided City and one of the creators of chicagosmilliondollarblocks.com. He is a long-term champion of restorative justice and has been a part of multiple successful community-based safety projects. He is the Executive Director of UP Partnership in San Antonio, Texas.

There is no other way to put it. The start of this year’s Pride Month was painful. We can’t stop thinking of the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and of too many before and after them. Witnessing modern-day lynch mobs during a pandemic is soul-crushing. Do not be tempted to say the upheaval happening now is “unique” or “unprecedented.” Because it is not. The US has centuries of history inflicting violence and death on Black bodies. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his “The Other America” speech, “the riot is the language of the unheard.” And the US has not listened since the days of slavery and settler colonialism. So the protests and riots rage on. As we continue to fight against white supremacy and the carceral state, we must repeat: Black lives matter.

Again: Black lives matter.

Black lives, of course, include Black queer lives. Like the life of Black trans man Tony McDade. That’s why this Pride Month, we’re giving special attention to our titles by and/or about Black queer folks. Any of these would be a perfect choice to Black out the New York Times bestseller list.

Get your Black queer read on!

***

How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide

“One of the very best reasons to listen to Black women is the fact that doing so will better equip you to understand the complexity of oppression—and what we can do to challenge it.”
—Crystal Marie Fleming

Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color

“There is no question that the shroud of invisibility around Black women’s and women of color’s experiences of police violence has been irrevocably lifted in the post-Ferguson moment and movement. We can no longer be complicit in the notion that we can achieve safety through policing.”
—Andrea J. Ritchie

Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry

“She was a Black lesbian woman born into the established Black middle class who became a Greenwich Village bohemian leftist married to a man, a Jewish communist songwriter. She cast her lot with the working classes and became a wildly famous writer. She drank too much, died early of cancer, loved some wonderful women, and yet lived with an unrelenting loneliness. She was intoxicated by beauty and enraged by injustice. I could tell these stories as gossip. But I hope they will unfold here as something much more than that.”
—Imani Perry

Notes of a Native Son

“The idea of white supremacy rests simply on the fact that white men are the creators of civilization (the present civilizatioin, which is the only one that matters; all previous civilizations are simply ‘contributions’ to our own) and are therefore civilization’s guardians and defenders.”
—James Baldwin

Soul Serenade: Rhythm, Blues & Coming of Age Through Vinyl

“This burning curiosity about other boys, I figured, would pass . . . . Whatever it was, I didn’t know what to do with it, and I told myself that the feelings would all fade away. The dashikis and clumsy Afrocentric rhetoric would disguise the desire, distract me from it, or maybe erase it altogether.”
—Rashod Ollison

Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements

“Unapologetic is a call to queer our movement practices, and honor the contributions of Black feminist and LGBT movements to the Black radical tradition.”
—Charlene A. Carruthers

Black Lives Matter protestors. Photo credit: Patrick Behn

We support our authors, Black communities, and all those fighting against racial injustice and police violence. We can’t stop thinking of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and of too many Black lives before and after them, and as such, we recognize this is an extremely traumatic time for many. This is exacerbated by the fact that the coronavirus pandemic rages on, disproportionately affecting communities of color. We remain committed to publishing resources to help expose and dismantle the systems of white supremacy and the carceral state. With this in mind, we put together this list of racial justice resources.

Antiracism is a lifelong commitment. These resources are a good starting point, but remember that BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) have been suffering in this country for centuries before you decided it was time to get involved. Don’t expect your Black friends, colleagues, or acquaintances to do the emotional labor for you, or to instruct you on how to behave. Channel your grief and outrage beyond the internet. Educate yourself. Read Black authors. Support Black communities. And if you are white, get uncomfortable with your privilege. There is a lot of work to be done.

***

Donate

• George Floyd Memorial Fund
• Minnesota Freedom Fund
• I Run With Maud 
• National Bail Out Fund: Free Black Mamas
• Color of Change
• Reclaim the Block
• Campaign Zero 
• Justice for Breonna Taylor 
• Black Visions Collective 
• The National Lawyers Guild 
• The NAACP Legal Defense Fund
• Black Lives Matter
• The Equal Justice Initiative

Check Your Privilege

This is a collection of resources for white people to educate themselves and to further deepen their commitment to antiracist work.

Reach Out to Your Elected Officials

This public database lists contact information to help you connect with your political representatives to demand action and accountability.

Support Protestors

These websites allow you to find a local chapter or organization to work with, be it virtually, monetarily, or in person.

Support Black-Owned Bookstores

You can show support for the ongoing protests against police violence by buying books from any of these Black-owned bookstores.

Listen to Others Doing the Work

This is a small collection of work from Beacon authors writing about systemic injustice, racial inequity and police violence in this country. Use these pieces as a starting point to do your own research, and to find other authors and activists who are doing anti-racist work that resonates with you.

• The Case For More Radical Movements, by Charlene Carruthers

• What I’ve Learned About Mothering Black Boys in America – 'No matter how many say so, my sons, you are not a problem', by Imani Perry

• White people are speaking up at protests. How do we know they mean what they say? by Stacey Patton 

• A Warrant to Search Your Vagina, Andrea Ritchie’s New York Times op-ed, exposes the ways women of color are targeted in drug cases and subject to abuse or assault by police officers

• White people assume niceness is the answer to racial inequality. It’s not, Robin DiAngelo’s op-ed in the Guardian, urges white people to move away from niceness to active antiracist action for racial equality

• Zach Norris lays out a radical way to shift the conversation about public safety away from anxiety and punishment and toward growth and support

• Living in a Racist Society Is Making Us Stupid, by Crystal Marie Fleming

• Fourteen Steps Forward Together for America’s Third Reconstruction, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove outline fourteen steps to mobilize in the streets, at the polls, and in the courtroom to build a social justice movement

• When Police Stand Their Ground by Caroline Light, explains the robust legal immunities that 'Stand Your Ground' grant to law enforcement professionals

Educate Yourself

We have collected a list of titles from our catalog that amplify Black voices, examine this country’s history of systemic racism, and show us how we must work to dismantle these systems.

By Philip Warburg

Photo credit: Ty Yang

Despite its momentous impact on global warming, air travel continues to fly beneath our environmental radar. Plastic straws and idling cars draw righteous ire, but how many of us take to the skies with unthinking abandon?

Left unabated, commercial aviation by mid-century may produce up to a quarter of the carbon emissions that our planet can tolerate if we are to avert the more devastating impacts of climate change.

In a recent Beacon Broadside post, I pointed to the current lull in plane flights as a time to reflect on air travel’s place in a post-pandemic world. Responses to this article were passionate and widely varied.

One friend, Michelle Graham, is the administrator of a large commercial wind farm in Cloud County, Kansas. Though she took her son on a salmon-fishing trip to Alaska to celebrate his high school graduation several years ago, she and her husband Bruce seldom venture far from the family farm, Bruce’s childhood home and the place where he and Michelle raised their three kids. “We are willing to never fly again🙂,” she wrote, perhaps only half in jest. 

At the other end of the spectrum is Lakshmi Reddy Bloom, born in Bangalore, India, a friend I met in graduate school here in the United States. “It hit me with a loud, ‘jumbo-jet-sized’ thud that I am a person whose entire life has been defined by movements across the globe,” she admits. Aside from her husband and two adult children in America, her closest family members “are scattered across the globe and are only embraceable after a long plane journey.” Her greatest sadness these past months came with the cancelation of a planned visit to Bangalore for her mother’s ninety-first birthday. “The smells, the sounds, the joy of that physical togetherness . . . I do not believe there is a virtual substitute.”

Lakshmi makes it clear, though, that her devotion to plane travel goes beyond maintaining family ties. “It has also enabled me to become the person I truly am, someone who deeply believes in the goodness of people and in their fundamental similarities. I have had the privilege of traveling to far corners of the world and eating, drinking, talking, and laughing with people of all walks of life.” She recalls the young mother in Beijing whom the Communist Party assigned to her family as a guide while her husband David, an economist and demographer, attended a health policy conference. Three days passed before the guide revealed her distress at being separated from her newborn child. “Her pain is with me to this day,” Lakshmi acknowledges.

Then there was Lakshmi’s visit to the Vatican. “I shook hands with the Pope! I found myself in tears, trying to summon up something to say to him after his moving speech about the importance of education that can transform the work of the hands, the heart, and the mind.”

Next Lakshmi recalls a family in Mexico, hosts to her daughter, Sonali, on a study trip abroad. The visits continued in both directions, and the family, Lakshmi says, has become “our family.” She owes these bonds to jet travel. “I couldn’t have come to truly know them—so that I hold them close to my heart—without this.”

The Blooms’ son, Sahil, has a less idyllic view of jet travel, at least as it relates to his work as vice president of Altamont Capital Partners, a private equity firm in Palo Alto, California. Before COVID-19, his travel schedule was relentless. “Last year, I made twelve separate trips to Europe, as well as countless domestic trips, generally spending three to four days per week on planes to different locations,” he says. “I accumulated something like 400,000 miles on United [Airlines] last year alone.”

Sahil readily tallies the monetary and human toll of his European trips. “Each of these trips would cost about $20,000 (flights, hotels, food, etc.) and take a week of my life. I had twelve such trips last year for a total cost of about $240,000 and twelve weeks of life.” The wasted time and money were enormous.

This changed radically once COVID-19 brought domestic and international travel to a near-halt. “During the lockdowns, I have been able to accomplish the same such meetings in a virtual context in the span of a single day (albeit a tiring one). While it might be perhaps eighty to ninety percent as effective—being in person is always a bit better, on the margin—that is a massive savings of time and expense.”

Even once a vaccine is developed and travel constraints ease, Sahil anticipates that his long-distance journeys will be cut by about half. “As an industry, we have realized that many of the meetings we forced ourselves to fly to were perhaps unnecessary and could be handled virtually, so I do expect there to be a reset.”

For some, air travel is the glue that holds far-flung families together. To others, it offers outdoor adventure, natural exploration, a window onto history, and an opportunity to reach across national, cultural, and religious boundaries in search of greater human understanding. To others still, it can be a useful but time-consuming cost of doing business. Whatever the motivation, scaling back air travel will take conscious and conscientious recalibration, aided by our growing awareness that climate change poses a global menace, to be ignored at our collective peril.

Lakshmi framed this challenge beautifully. “Maybe what you are asking me to do is to commit to love the earth and its inhabitants more, through an investment in their environmental future. And out of love, yes, I can embrace and commit to this . . . . And also work for a future with my nuclear family where we are able to stay in close proximity!”

About the Author 

Philip Warburg, a Senior Fellow at Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy, is the author of two books published by Beacon Press: Harvest the Wind and Harness the Sun.

By Crystal Marie Fleming

Black Lives Matter protest. Photo credit: Orna Wachman

While each person’s individual path will differ, here are ten suggestions for steps we can all take, right now, to build a less racist—and racially stupid—society. Most of these recommendations can also be implemented by organizations, communities of faith, businesses, and other groups that are ready to begin the hard work of undoing racism.

1. RELINQUISH MAGICAL THINKING.

This one’s hard. Really hard. But it’s so important that I’m listing it first. People often tell me things like “You’d think our society would be over racism by now!” I want to respond, “Why? Because you’ve been personally working to end it? Or because you thought someone else would do the work you’re not doing?” Listen. I know it’s tempting to wish racism away—to just sort of assume that there’s an inevitability to progress. But if you want to be less stupid about race, you need to let that shit go right now. There is no quick fix for racism. Go back and read that sentence. Then tell a friend. There’s! No! Quick! Fix! None.

Racial oppression is so intrinsically violent, so ghastly and inhumane, that facing it in its full, catastrophic splendor is almost more than the mind can handle. And so, given that it’s human nature to avoid what’s unpleasant, many minds do not handle it at all. And then there are those who cling to the fantasy that racism can be easily eradicated simply because they’ve never studied it—and so they are unfamiliar with the scope of its historical, economic, psychological, sociological, environmental, and health dynamics.

If you want to pursue the cause of social justice, give up the need for quick fixes and gird your loins for a long struggle. To sustain your work for the long haul, you’ll have to build up your reserves of resilience, self-care, community care, and courage. You’ll have to nurture your capacity for hope, humor, love, and connection, even, and especially, in the midst of oppression. What keeps me going, personally, is a deep and abiding commitment to spiritual practice and my experience of God’s presence—not in a specific church, temple, or other place of worship but in every face and every situation I encounter in this life. Laughter helps too. As does friendship. And meditation. And spending time in nature. And really good wine.

2. CRITICALLY ASSESS YOUR RACIAL SOCIALIZATION.

If you want to be an antiracist change agent, you’re going to have to think long and hard about your own racial socialization. Most of us were not taught to acknowledge the impact of racial ideas, scripts, and behavior on our upbringing and values, but that’s the kind of internal work that’s required for addressing racism. It’s easier to pretend that racism is someone else’s problem, but the truth is that none of us is immune. I like to joke that many whites, perhaps especially liberals, are prone to believing this myth: I am magically untouched by the racist society that socialized me. But there are also minorities who pretend to be exempt from the dynamics of internalized oppression or the scourge of colorism and prejudice. We have all been in the sunken place, and it does us no good to claim otherwise.

Although these questions are primarily geared toward white women’s racial consciousness-raising, I think they could be useful to folks from a wide variety of backgrounds—including people of color. Examples include

• When were you first aware that there was such a thing as race and racial differences? How old were you? Recall an incident if you can.
• What kind of contact did you have with people of different races?
• How did you first experience racism? From whom did you learn it? How did it function in your perception of yourself?
• When were you first aware that there was such a thing as anti-Semitism?
• What kind of messages did you get about race as you entered adolescence? Did your group of friends change?  
• When you were growing up, what kind of information did you get about Black people through the media? How much of it was specifically about Black men?

The more aware we are of our racial socialization, the more empowered we are to challenge our biases and our conditioning. This is life-long work, and I recommend using the tools of mindfulness and meditation to cultivate compassion for yourself and others as you embark on this journey.

3. START OR JOIN AN ANTIRACIST STUDY GROUP AND SHARE WHAT YOU LEARN ABOUT SYSTEMIC RACISM.

Making a long-term commitment to challenging racism also requires a lifetime of learning. Even as an educator and an expert on racism, I am constantly seeking out new information to address gaps in my knowledge and am humbled by how much more I have to learn. Just the other day I learned that the first Europeans were brown-skinned Africans who arrived from the motherland forty thousand years ago and that “white” or pale skin did not become widespread among Europeans until about eight thousand years ago. This completely upends our conventional thinking about whiteness and Europeanness. Recent DNA analysis also indicates that the first British settlers had dark skin, dark curly hair—and blue eyes. I mean, damn. The more you know.

If you have a leadership role in an organization, institution, or corporation you can help by investing in educational resources. As part of your antiracism curriculum, be sure to integrate an intersectional approach. Antiracists must draw connections between systemic racism and other axes of domination (e.g., class oppression, (hetero)sexism, and ableism to name a few). As you commit to learning about systemic racism, you should also think critically about the links between racial injustice, capitalist oppression, and sexism.

Look into your local histories of slavery and abolitionism to get a sense of whether and to what extent racist violence, segregation, or restrictive covenants favored whites and excluded people of color in your town. Just as important? The history of antiracist struggles and mobilizations in your locality. Were there activists or rebellions that stood up against the racial power structure? Take a trip to your neighborhood library or bookstore (assuming it has not yet been put out of business by Amazon) and see what you can find out.

As you learn about systemic racism, you can begin to take an active role in combating racial denial by raising racial awareness (and most importantly, racism-awareness). Think about your own community and social connections and look for opportunities to share resources.

Consider bringing in antiracist experts and activists to educate members of organizations to which you belong. Through consciousness-raising, we can collectively move from an epistemology of racial ignorance to an epistemology of racial awareness.

4. EMPOWER YOUNG PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND SYSTEMIC RACISM.

The question of whether and when to address the harsh realities of racism with children is a tricky matter, but many experts agree that it is important to provide young people with age-appropriate information about the existence of racism. In part, this is because research has demonstrated, time and time again, that children begin to pick up society’s harmful prejudices at an early age. An actionable step might include seeking out educational resources for addressing racism with children. (Hint: Ask them questions about their own experiences and observations before launching into a history lesson!) And, perhaps most importantly, help ensure that children and adolescents in your sphere of influence understand that race is not just about “skin color” or “seeing race.” It’s a systemic problem that’s going to require collective mobilization to bring about enduring change—and youth have an important role to play in dismantling white supremacy.

5. RECOGNIZE AND REJECT FALSE EQUIVALENCIES.

The myth of color blindness, which rose to prominence after the civil rights movement, relies on erasing the difference between those who benefit from white supremacy and those who suffer from its pathological effects. The most prominent form of this false equivalency is the dumbass idea of “reverse racism,” the notion that people of color who hold prejudiced views or even behave in a discriminatory manner are “racist” in the same way that white people are racist.

Of course, anyone can be prejudiced. Anyone can be a jackass. But in a white supremacist society, only people socially defined as white—those who benefit from white supremacy—can occupy the structural position of a racist. With that said, it is absolutely true that nonwhites can perpetuate racist ideas, can cooperate with white supremacy, and can express prejudiced beliefs. Nonwhites can also exercise dominance and oppression along related axes of oppression (e.g., class, gender, sexuality, and ability). But nonwhites, at the present time, do not have the economic or political power to exercise or collectively benefit from systemic racism in the United States, and this, after all, is what it means to be racist. In order to promote the cause of racial justice, antiracists need to recognize and actively reject false equivalencies between dominant and dominated groups.

6. DISRUPT RACIST PRACTICES. GET COMFORTABLE CALLING SHIT OUT.

If you’re not making powerful white people uncomfortable, you’re doing antiracism wrong. Many people of color are already accustomed to not only experiencing racism but also bearing the burden of calling the shit out. And quite frankly, we’re tired of this shit. This is particularly true for those of us who study or work in predominately white institutions. Let the record reflect: white supremacy persists, to a great degree, because of white folks’ refusal to aggressively challenge other whites on their racism. Because most whites live highly segregated lives, they typically face great social pressure to maintain smooth relations with white friends, family members, and coworkers—including those who routinely express racist views and behave in a discriminatory manner.

So, white people: y’all need to team up with your antiracist homies, leverage your social influence, stand up against racist behavior, and be willing to make your racist family members, friends, and/or colleagues uncomfortable. Even more to the point: white folks need to make a proactive decision to do this work, rather than rely on people of color (who are already subject to the terror of racial violence) to pick up your slack and carry the burden of dismantling oppression. Make heroes out of antiracists.

7. GET ORGANIZED! SUPPORT THE WORK OF ANTIRACIST ORGANIZATIONS, EDUCATORS, AND ACTIVISTS.

The most intelligent way to address a systemic problem is to approach it systematically, which involves organizing and mobilizing collective action. It’s important to know that we cannot effectively bring about racial transformation through individual action alone—we have to work together with like-minded people. Even if you aren’t a big fan of joining groups, you can certainly learn about and support their work. I recommend identifying organizations that draw intersectional connections between racial oppression, class inequality, and other axes of domination, such as Project NIA (which works to radically reduce the detention and incarceration of young people), Black Lives Matter, the African American Policy Forum, and the Transgender Law Center.

White readers may want to specifically seek out a white antiracist organization, such as SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice). You might support the intellectual and political labor of freedom fighters and radical dreamers organizing to abolish capitalist oppression, prisons, and even the police. If all of this sounds extreme or naive to you (as it did to me, initially), at least take the time to learn more about why imagining a way of relating to each other and solving our social problems without economic parasitism, prisons, state violence, or policing is valuable.

8. AMPLIFY THE VOICES OF BLACK WOMEN, INDIGENOUS WOMEN, AND WOMEN OF COLOR.

You may be wondering why I didn’t just say “Amplify the voices of black people and people of color.” Well, the reality is that men’s voices are (still) amplified over women as a matter of course. If we’re going to get serious about disrupting racism, we’re going to need to center intersectionality. This means lifting up and learning from nonwhite women and femmes, particularly disabled women, queer women, trans women, and working-class and poor women of color. We can no longer afford to collectively treat the unique oppression of black women and women of color as a side issue or keep on crowning an uninterrupted series of black and brown men as the spokespeople for the Race Problem.

Read and support the work of a wide variety of racially marginalized women like Shailja Patel, Sara Ahmed, Janet Mock, Audre Lorde, Lorraine Hansberry, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Ijeoma Oluo, Issa Rae, Mona Eltahawy, and Rokhaya Diallo. Stop treating black women and women of color like afterthoughts. You can challenge a great deal of racial stupidity today simply by centering women’s experiences in discussions about racial oppression. Say our names.

9. SHIFT RESOURCES TO MARGINALIZED PEOPLE.

Institutions, organizations, politicians, and everyday citizens can all make it a regular, ongoing practice to look for ways of disrupting the status quo by investing material, cultural, social, and political resources into vulnerable communities. This kind of transformation might take the form of reparations or innovative policy proposals like baby bonds. But it can also look like creating opportunities to hire and increase the salaries of minorities, rolling back the excess greed that drives neoliberalism, expanding the safety net, providing Medicare for all, and ensuring that we invest more in education and our collective well-being than in warfare, policing, and mass incarceration. All too often, businesses, universities, and political groups content themselves with diversity at the lowest levels of power and normalize the continued dominance of white men at the top. This needs to change. Political and economic resources should be redistributed throughout our society—and this includes shifting away from the norm of white male hegemony to a new norm of shared prosperity and diverse leadership.

10. CHOOSE AN AREA OF IMPACT THAT LEVERAGES YOUR UNIQUE TALENTS.

When students ask me for direction, I try to convey to them the importance of choosing an area of impact that bridges their interests with their unique talents. But in order to do this, you have to invest some time and energy in self-exploration. Perhaps you have a knack for artistic expression, a facility with numbers, a photographic memory, or an interest in history. How can you leverage your set of skills and talents to help improve society? Answering this question can help you figure out what piece of the social justice puzzle you want to focus on, knowing that you can’t do everything. You should also remember that your answer to this question can change over time. Maybe you get involved with political activism for a while and then move on to empowering communities of color through education or health-care advocacy. You don’t have to be a “single-issue” antiracist, but I do recommend selecting a few areas to build your knowledge and maximize your impact.

***

Want to learn more about taking down white supremacy and becoming more racially literate? Get yourself a copy of Crystal Marie Fleming’s How to Be Less Stupid About Race and read on!

About the Author 

Crystal Marie Fleming, PhD, is a writer and sociologist who researches racism in the United States and abroad. She earned degrees from Wellesley College and Harvard University and is associate professor of sociology and Africana studies at Stony Brook University. Fleming writes about race, sexuality, and politics for publications including The Root, Black Agenda Report, Vox, and Everyday Feminism, and she has tens of thousands of followers on social media. She is the author of Resurrecting Slavery: Racial Legacies and White Supremacy in France and How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide. Connect with her at crystalfleming.com and follow her on Twitter at @alwaystheself.

By Philip Warburg

Photo credit: Sofia Papageorge

Before the age of COVID-19, a steady drone of jets could be heard on a typical spring morning outside our home, a dozen miles from Boston’s Logan Airport. Today, we hear a chorus of birds. 

With air travel down ninety-four percent and half the US commercial plane fleet grounded, members of my family—like millions of other Americans—have sought new ways to communicate and connect. Once the pall of this pandemic has lifted, will we resort less readily to the hypermobility that, until recently, was so integral to our lives?

Zoom and other online platforms have their frustrating aspects, to be sure, but they have shown us how much we can do without flying across the country or halfway around the world to meetings and conferences. My wife, director of sustainability at an architecture firm, now spends her workdays in a succession of online meetings with coworkers and clients near and far. 

Would she benefit psychically and professionally if some of those meetings were face-to-face? Certainly. Along with closely observing project sites, she would find it easier to bond informally with her colleagues. At the same time, she appreciates not having to cope with plane trips, jet lag, and all those idle hours in airport lines and hotel lobbies.

Our family has logged more than its fair share of air miles for personal travel, too. Last year, one of our daughters traveled to Mexico City for a long weekend with a friend. A highlight of that short trip was her visit to Frida Kahlo’s Blue House—an intimate museum featuring the flamboyant artist’s life and work. On Mother’s Day, she treated our whole family to a Blue House tour. Zooming in from a rented cabin in New Hampshire, our virtual docent led us through the rooms and courtyards of Kahlo’s iconic villa while describing the artist’s polio affliction, her love affairs, and the intensely autobiographical focus of her paintings. 

Was this the same as experiencing all the sounds, sights, and smells of Kahlo’s Mexico City neighborhood? No, but it was its own kind of informed adventure—a mode of tourism that may grow increasingly common as we search for ways to explore this extraordinary planet without racking up thousands of air miles.

Reducing air travel has a major benefit beyond cost-cutting and time-saving: it will help rein in our out-of-control greenhouse gas emissions. Commercial aviation in 2018 generated 2.4 percent of global CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels, with eighty-one percent of those emissions coming from passenger transport. We Americans accounted for nearly a quarter of air miles traveled that year, mainly for domestic flights.

Extrapolating from recent trends, carbon emissions from commercial aviation are expected to triple by mid-century, consuming twenty-five percent of the global carbon budget that we must not exceed if we are to keep global average temperatures within 1.5°C of pre-industrial levels. That’s the internationally accepted threshold for slowing sea level rise and averting other potentially catastrophic impacts of climate change.

In an effort to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a UN agency, has focused on boosting aircraft energy efficiency and switching to biofuels. An all-out conversion to biofuels might cut aircraft carbon emissions by as much as sixty-three percent, the ICAO estimates, but thousands of industrial-scale biofuel refineries would have to be built to bring about this transformation, and vast farm acreage would have to be converted to produce the necessary crops.

What the ICAO has failed to consider are the prospects for reducing, or at least stabilizing, airline ridership as a means of curbing carbon pollution. Instead, it has assumed that global air travel will continue growing at roughly five percent per year, fueled substantially by upward economic mobility and urbanization in many of the world’s less affluent nations.

Here in the US, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has similarly shunned any discussion of reduced air travel in its future planning. Will that change in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic?

In the coming months, politicians will bicker over how much federal money should be spent salvaging the US airline industry. Ultimately, though, it will be up to us, the millions whose lives are newly grounded, to set a saner pace for air travel’s future.

About the Author 

Philip Warburg, a Senior Fellow at Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy, is the author of two books published by Beacon Press: Harvest the Wind and Harness the Sun.

A Q&A with Dan C. Goldberg

Recently commissioned black officers: front row (left to right): Ensigns George Cooper, Graham Martin, Jesse Arbor, John Reagan, and Reginald Goodwin; back row (left to right): Dennis Nelson, Phillip Barnes, Sam Barnes, Dalton Baugh, James Hair, Frank Sublett, and Warrant Officer Charles Lear. William Sylvester White was commissioned but is not pictured in this photo. February 1944.

At the start of World War II, Black men in the Navy could only hold menial jobs as cooks and cleaners. A relentless civil rights campaign forced the Navy in 1942 to reconsider a Black man’s role. It would take another two years before the Navy would reluctantly select the first Black men to undergo officer training. Facing prejudice and discrimination as civilians and on duty, thirteen courageous men broke the color barrier and set an example that would inspire generations to come. But they were given little accord once commissioned, and their story has too often been overlooked when recounting the saga of World War II and the coming civil rights movement. Until now.

Award-winning journalist Dan C. Goldberg brings these thirteen forgotten heroes out from the margins of history in The Golden Thirteen: How Black Men Won the Right to Wear Navy Gold. Isabella Sanchez, our assistant to the director of sales and marketing, caught up with Goldberg to chat with him about it and to ask what we can learn today from this hidden history.

Isabella Sanchez: How did you initially come across the Golden Thirteen?

Dan C. Goldberg: I stumbled upon an obituary for one of the men, and it mentioned the Golden Thirteen. It was not something I had ever heard of before, and I was curious. I had passing familiarity with the Tuskegee Airmen and the Buffalo soldiers but never heard of the Golden Thirteen. I looked for a book on the subject and realized that the only substantive work was Paul Stillwell’s oral history. That’s a fascinating book but it didn’t answer the question that gnawed at me. Namely, how did the Navy go from only allowing Black men as messmen in March 1942 to commissioning Black ensigns in March 1944? The president was the same, the Navy secretary was the same. What changed? And why? I wanted to answer those questions so that these men could be placed in the context of their time.

IS: You researched the Golden Thirteen for eight years, digging through military records and newspaper clippings. What was that process like? Were there any roadblocks along the way?

DCG: I often liken the process to making whiskey: there is a lot of distilling. I would spend days researching an event, a conversation, a moment, so that it could turn into one paragraph, or maybe even one sentence in the book. Sometimes it was cut entirely. The biggest roadblock was often my own ignorance. I didn’t always know where to look but kept trying different approaches, and one opened door led to another and, hopefully, that led to a worthwhile finished product.

IS: You write about how many Black Americans found the role of the US in World War II incredibly hypocritical, considering the racism, violence, and discrimination they faced at home. Tell me more about that.

DCG: In the course of my research, I came across Lee Finkle’s Forum for Protest, in which he describes a survey of Harlem residents that found most African Americans said they’d be treated better or the same under Japanese rule while only eleven percent believed conditions would improve for Blacks if the US won the war. These sentiments have been reported on and written about before, but it was distinct from the history I, a white kid from New York, was taught in school. We learned that everyone rallied around the flag, because the Nazis were so evil and the Japanese so treacherous. Well, that popular history isn’t the whole truth.

James Baldwin, in Notes From a Native Son, spoke of the “peculiar relief” Black families felt when their sons went overseas, because it meant that if they died, it would be by the hands of the enemy instead of from being lynched by their own countrymen.

I really wanted to explore that theme and remind readers that segregation and humiliation were having real effects on morale, which pushed the question of equality in the Navy to the fore. This wasn’t an academic debate. Black men burned draft cards and wondered why they should care all that much who won the war and why they should fight for a country that treated them as inferior. These were the arguments made by civil rights leaders and white liberals, which eventually persuaded the Navy to change its course.

IS: The Golden Thirteen had to fight an uphill battle in order to become commissioned officers. What discrimination did they face in training, and how did their experience differ from those of white recruits?

DCG: Discrimination, of course, didn’t start when they enlisted. Many of these men had lived with it their whole lives. James Hair’s brother-in-law was lynched in Florida, beaten to death by a white mob. The FBI told Syl White that they had no need for Black agents. Graham Martin grew up in segregated Indianapolis. When they first enlisted, they were segregated during boot training and during their service school training. The uniform gave them no protection from racism. Racial slurs were common.

Even after the Navy decided to send them to officer candidate school, they were segregated. The Navy wasn’t ready to integrate the station where they trained. George Cooper described it as a “letdown off the bat.” Then, they had to deal with instructors who, in the eyes of Graham Martin and Frank Sublett, seemed certain that training Black men was a waste of time. The racism they faced came in many forms. There was even physical abuse but often it was far more subtle. George Cooper said it best: “There are so many subtle ways of demonstrating prejudice, but as a black person, you just have antennas out, and you sense it and you feel it instinctively.”

IS: After these men became officers, their treatment didn’t change overnight. They were still disrespected on a daily basis, and white men refused to acknowledge their authority. Describe what the Golden Thirteen faced once they completed their training.

DCG: The Navy, at first, didn’t know what to do with these Black officers. Commanding white men in battle still seemed too radical. So, for the first few months, they were given menial chores. They ran drills, lectured on venereal diseases, patrolled the coast in a converted yacht. They were denied housing on base and prohibited from entering officers’ clubs. White men would cross the street to avoid saluting. Through it all, these thirteen officers never lost their cool. They knew that they were being watched. Excelling during officer candidate school was only the first step.

IS: The Golden Thirteen recognized their position in history and felt a personal responsibility to be successful in order to integrate the Navy. You describe the camaraderie these men felt toward each other, and their mission to succeed as a group. What were their relationships like and how did they support each other?

DCG: They decided the very first night that they would work together and swore off any competition. They figured that the only way to succeed was to help one another, so they took turns sharing their backgrounds and determining who was most fit in every discipline. And that person volunteered to help the others. In a sense, they were fortunate the Navy chose such a variety of men. White was a lawyer, Sublett a mechanic, Baugh an engineer. Martin, Cooper, and Barnes were natural teachers. Yes, they pushed each other to study hard, but the real benefit was in how they were there for one another when times got tough, when the pressure seemed too intense to bear. That’s when Jesse Arbor or James Hair might tell an off-color joke to break the tension. The bond they forged remained strong until the day they died.

IS: The United States Armed Forces is still an organization that is frequently criticized for their lack of inclusion and unequal treatment of its members based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and other factors. How have things changed or not changed today? What lessons can we learn from this hidden history?

DCG: Every generation has a version of this fight. Blacks, women, gays, and transgender people are told that their inclusion in the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the military, will hamper efficiency and morale. It just can’t be done, they are told. Time and again, that’s been proven false. There are a couple lessons I take away from the Golden Thirteen. The first is that the nation is only as democratic as its least democratic institution. The second is that capability and honor aren’t limited by color. The third, and my favorite, is that, in the midst of struggle, the road can seem impossibly long and arduous, but if you keep pushing and fighting you can change the world.

About Dan C. Goldberg

Dan C. Goldberg is an award-winning journalist for Politico. Goldberg has researched the Golden Thirteen for eight years to restore these men to their rightful place in history. Follow him on Twitter at @DanCGoldberg.

By S. Brent Plate

Geraldine Weichman, handprint Passover towel, 1981. Los Angeles. Photo credit: Jodi Eichler-Levine.

“Let’s get in touch.”

“I feel like I’m losing touch with you.”

“That was a touching tribute.”

The English language is littered with metaphors of touch that tend to revolve around connection between people. Such word use creates an almost psychic understanding that communication, even when conducted over Wi-Fi and satellite transmissions, can still allow us, as the old AT&T commercial had it, to “reach out and touch someone.” We “touch” each other even when we are a thousand miles away.

Many of us have rediscovered this during the coronavirus lockdown, reconnecting with friends and family over the phone, Skype, and Zoom. We see and hear those we love through a screen, and we are touched. Of course, this experience has also shown us the limitations of communication, that ultimately, our metaphors are not reality.

We’ve been craving touch. And we want more than what AT&T promised. We want actual physical touch: a hug, a hand held, a kiss on the cheek, a casual brush of the finger on the back of the hand. Touch begs us to move beyond the metaphorical. It is a sense that needs to be fed, and when there is a shortage, we get what researchers refer to as “skin hunger,” while lack of touch in infancy has dramatic effects on human development. If touch only remains in the symbolic, linguistic realm, we eventually get out of touch and go hungry.

Touching Things

Even so, human touch is not the only touch we need. Human-human touch, in one form or other, is crucial to human flourishing, yet we also touch objects, things that are seemingly inanimate, and those experiences shape our spiritual and social lives.

In an essay on Medium, my colleague Jodi Eichler-Levine points to the new activities many of us have taken up during the coronavirus lockdown—baking bread, gardening, crocheting, playing guitar. She makes the astute observation that these activities directly relate to our hunger for touch. Since we can’t physically touch so many of our loved ones, we are turning to other practices that get us back in touch. She says, “we are re-learning touch, buildings nests of soft blankets, clutching our warm coffee mugs.”

In a brilliant new book to be released this fall called Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis, Eichler-Levine has explored contemporary Jewish life in the United States, and the ways Jewish identities are “crafted,” through quilting, paper collage, carving, knitting, amulet making, as well as the communities that often form around the physical activities. In a discussion of the importance of handmade gifts, she says, “Objects are not just objects; they are objects that have touched other hands, carrying with them the essence of another living being.”

Touching Stones

I, too, have long been impressed by the ways human senses are enacted in, by, and through religious traditions. In my book A History of Religion in 5½ Objects: Bringing the Spiritual to Its Senses (Beacon Press, 2014), I look at the role of various objects—stones, incense, drums, crosses, bread—and how humans sensually engage them in spiritual ways. In reference to touch, at the start of the chapter “Stones,” I suggest:

Stones are set, cut, clutched, chiseled, and hurled. They ride in our pockets for luck on journeys, or climb into our boots turning travels into travails . . . . Stones solicit attention, usually subtly, almost inaudibly. Among the vast number of stones, rocks, pebbles, and gravel on the planet earth and beyond, a handful are occasionally selected, unearthed, transported, and repurposed for sacred means, becoming talismans, amulets, altars, or memorials . . . . In each case, stones are objects sensed, felt with fingertips, seen with the eyes, and felt deeply within. Stones show us the way.

Touching a stone might strike one as contrary to what we need when we have a hunger for touch, as if stones could begin to speak and respond. Yet, history tells us a different story, and across time and tradition stones have rooted people in memory, stood as markers of our sacred spaces, and connected us with others.

Buddhists set stones in meditation gardens. Jews place them on gravestones. At the geographic center of Christianity, in Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is the “Stone of Anointing,” and the faithful travel to touch and kiss this stone. At the geographic center of Islam is the Black Stone, in the eastern corner of the ka’ba in Mecca, and during the hajj, Muslims aim to touch and kiss it as they walk around in the Great Mosque.

Stones, and our endemic need to touch them, has become a vital, if often overlooked, component to religious life across the world. As I note in the book, “People feel connections with stones; they fondle them, touch them, kiss them, and tell stories by them.”

Touching Keys

From human hands to knitting needles to stones, humans crave touch. There’s a time to touch the plush fur of our cat, a time for a warm hand of another, a time to feel the soil as we plant tomatoes, and a time to hold firm our stones. We clutch and caress and carry as we reach out and touch something, reaffirming our interconnection with the world.

Which brings me back here, and now, alone in a room in rural Central New York. As I write this, I touch keys on a keyboard, a familiar feeling at the edge of my fingertips. For me, writing has always been a profoundly physical sensation: sitting in a particular position, at my desk, fumbling for words and sensing the location of keys on the keyboard, from eye to screen to brain to muscles to fingers to keyboard and back again through cycles of stroke, sensation, and significance. Writing keeps me in touch.

About the Author

S. Brent Plate is a writer, editor, and part-time college professor at Hamilton College. Recent books include A History of Religion in 5½ Objects: Bringing the Spiritual to Its Senses (Beacon Press) and Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-creation of the World (Columbia University Press). His essays have appeared at Salon, the Los Angeles Review of Books, America, the Christian Century, and the Islamic Monthly. More at www.sbrentplate.net or on Twitter @splate1.

A Q&A with M. V. Lee Badgett

What if production in factories, shops, restaurants, and other services suddenly sank by one percent? If the downturn lasted long enough, economists would call it a recession, and policymakers would rush to course correct. But what happens when the economy is dragged down for decades, caused by society’s prejudices and hostilities toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people? Not much. And that needs to change.

In The Economic Case for LGBT Equality: Why Fair and Equal Treatment Benefits Us All, economist M. V. Lee Badgett asserts that homophobia and transphobia not only harm individuals in many aspects of their lives—education, health, employment—but also damage economies in costly and often invisible ways. She presents data and real stories to show that the exclusion of LGBT people from full and equal participation in society reduces everyone’s well-being and that it is in all our interests to fix it. Beacon Broadside editor Christian Coleman caught up with Badgett to chat about her book and what we can learn from it during our current administration.

Christian Coleman: What was the inspiration behind writing The Economic Case for LGBT Equality?

M. V. Lee Badgett: The inspiration came from the many LGBT activists I’ve met and worked with who wanted to use the economic case to promote human rights. I have been making that economic case for LGBT equality for a long time and have seen the argument also appeal to policymakers, businesses, development agencies, and other groups. I decided to write this book to reach all of these audiences with the evidence and stories that show how stigma and discrimination against LGBT people hold back economies. The book gave me room to present a wide range of evidence about those links, and I could show how this idea is helping to expand rights for LGBT people.

CC: You’re a professor of economics and co-direct the Center for Employment Equity at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Tell us a little about your background and what interested you in focusing on economic inequality for LGBT people.

MVLB: My main professional identity is being a feminist labor economist, and I mostly study inequality and discrimination against LGBT people. The roots of my choice of profession and research are in my own experiences. As a cisgender white woman, I’ve experienced discrimination and seen race and gender segregation in the workforce—even today in my male-dominated profession. As a lesbian, I had some on-the-ground knowledge that made me question economic stereotypes about LGBT people as affluent, educated elites. Those experiences led me to study what happens to LGBT people in our economies and to learn how we can move toward equality.

CC: You write that human rights declarations and compliance processes haven’t been enough to stop discrimination and violence against LGBT people. Do you get any pushback from people who resistant to thinking about LGBT rights in the context of business and the economy? I can imagine some would be turned off by the idea that fair and equal treatment is dependent on businesses thinking about their bottom line.

MVLB: Some people prefer to make human rights arguments for LGBT rights, and those are excellent arguments for change. In my view, though, the economic case makes the human rights argument stronger. It adds up the harms of human rights violations in concrete terms and shows how our economy suffers as a result. The economic case can start conversations and open doors in places that aren’t likely to be motivated by human rights concerns, like businesses or economic development banks.

CC: Was there any research that took you by surprise as you were writing the book?

MVLB: The volume of research on LGBT people available now is much broader and deeper than I realized! The academic study of LGBT people has really blossomed over the last decade or two, especially in North America and Europe. In addition, many LGBT organizations in a wider range of countries have started collecting data about the LGBT people they work with. Those studies sometimes use different methods than academic researchers do, but they produce incredibly important insights into the lives of LGBT people in those countries.

CC: You cover not only the effects of homophobia and transphobia on our economy, but also on economies outside the US, including Canada, Australia, India, and Philippines, and the UK. Why was it important for you to bring in a global perspective?

MVLB: I think globally about this issue for several reasons. For one thing, every country has a lot of work to do to ensure full inclusion of LGBT people, including the US. Many of the people I talk with about using the economic case live in countries with little protection of LGBT human rights; they often live in low-income countries where economic development is crucial. Furthermore, we are all connected to each other globally, as we’ve learned with the COVID-19 pandemic. So positive news about one country allowing same-sex couples to marry might be seen in another country as an inspiration (to LGBT people) or a threat (to opponents of LGBT rights). Finally, LGBT issues are on the agendas of multilateral bodies, such as the UN and World Bank and multinational companies.  

CC: What are some business organizations taking a stand against anti-LGBT policies, locally or globally, that have caught your attention?

MVLB: Some large multinational businesses, like IBM, are speaking out on LGBT issues in multiple countries against anti-LGBT policies. Businesses are also coming together in coalitions to push for change, as in the Open for Business initiative or Out Leadership. For example, marriage equality is an issue that has been supported by both multinational and local businesses in countries like Australia, Ireland, Taiwan, and the US.

CC: What would you like readers to take from the book, especially as we continue to learn about how the current administration tries to axe nondiscrimination protections for LGBT Americans?

MVLB: While we’ve made big strides on some LGBT issues in the US, like marriage equality, we’ve been slow to enact explicit laws protecting LGBT people from discrimination. Among other anti-LGBT actions, the current administration has been trying to weaken and dismantle nondiscrimination protections policies that protect LGBT people in schools, health care settings, public housing, employment, and other areas. This political moment is a good reminder that the economic case for LGBT equality does not mean that change is inevitable or permanent. As the book shows, the economic case can be used to argue that inclusive policies will be good for our economy, but the converse also works: regressive changes that enhance inequality will be bad for our economy. We have to keep making the case.

About M. V. Lee Badgett 

M. V. Lee Badgett is a professor of economics and the former director of the School of Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is also a Williams Distinguished Scholar at the Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law & Public Policy (UCLA School of Law), where she was a co-founder and the first research director. She has also taught at Yale University and the University of Maryland. Connect with Lee Badgett at leebadgett.com and follow her on Twitter at @LeeBadgett.

Who says books are not essential? Where would we be without them during the pandemic? In the fallout of all but “essential” businesses being shutdown or closed to the public, books were deemed “nonessential.” So. Not. True. Along with the shows and movies we binge-watch, books are helping us keep our sanity. They are a lifeline as we continue to shelter in place. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. Not to mention, we cannot forget all the bookstores working hard to make sure we get the books we order delivered to our homes or ready to collect at curb-side pickups. The COVID-19 pandemic may have curbed our contact with the outside world, but it won’t curb the importance of reading.

We want to thank Publishers Weekly for starting their #BooksAreEssential campaign to drive this point home. Hopefully, as businesses start to reopen, bookstores will be ranked as the essential businesses they have always been. Some of our staff members took part in the campaign. Here’s what they had to say. Yes, we’re obviously biased.

***

“Today, more than ever, we need great books to console and inspire us. There’s a good reason that Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning has sold sixteen million copies, and why 65,000 Americans have turned to it since the pandemic began. We’re so lucky to have Yes to Life, this newly discovered work, out right now.”
—Helene Atwan, director

“[H]uman beings are able to give meaning to their existence, firstly, by doing something, by acting, by creating—by bringing a work into being; secondly, by experiencing something—nature, art—or loving people; and thirdly, human beings are able to find meaning even where finding value in life is not possible for them in either the first or the second way—namely, precisely when they take a stance toward the unalterable, fated, inevitable, and unavoidable limitation of their possibilities: how they adapt to this limitation, react toward it, how they accept this fate . . .”
—Marcy Barnes reading an excerpt from Viktor E Frankl’s Yes to Life

“The timing of this book coming out at the moment we all began to quarantine is almost a divine level of intervention. She makes me laugh harder and longer—and shed a few tears too—more than any other writer. Yes, thank you, Sam Irby.”
—Marcy Barnes, production director

“Since early childhood, I’ve always considered books essential. Books have made me smarter, more inquisitive, and more open-minded to other perspectives and worlds outside my own lived experience. Without them, I would not be the constantly curious and verbosely inquiring person I am today. My quarantine read right now is schooling me on the history of a river that I’m also currently writing about in my own fiction, and every time I crack open this book, I’m transported to another era and another land entirely that I find fascinating. Thank you, Caroline Crampton and Granta Books!”
—Nicole-Anne Keyton, editorial assistant

“We learn from those who persevered through hard times.”
—Cliff Manko, chief financial officer

“Publishers Weekly launched their #BooksAreEssential campaign. So grab a book and post!”
—Gayatri Patnaik, associate director and editorial director 

By Rosemarie Day

This piece appeared originally on MomsRising.org.

As Mother’s Day approaches, this year feels different. In a time of coronavirus, we need more than flowers and a day off. We need more than traditional self-care. We need recognition, deep and lasting recognition, that the work we do as caregivers is invaluable. We need recognition from society as a whole, not just our families. The pandemic has shown everyone that we are essential—women make up over half of the workforce deemed “essential,” including 77% of healthcare workers. Our lives are on the line as frontline healthcare workers: the CDC reports that 73% of healthcare workers who have contracted coronavirus are women. On top of all of this, our stress is through the roof with the roles we play at home: women were already making 80% of the healthcare decisions in families, and now, as at-home caregivers, we are juggling even more, with home-schooling added to our paying jobs. 

Read more at MomsRising.org.

About the Author 

Rosemarie Day is the founder and CEO of Day Health Strategies, which helps to implement national health reform. She’s been working in healthcare and related fields for more than 25 years, including as the founding deputy director and chief operating officer of the Health Connector in Massachusetts, where she helped launch the award-winning organization that established the first state-run health insurance exchange in the state. She also served as the chief operating officer for the Massachusetts Medicaid program. Rosemarie lives in Somerville, MA; Marching Toward Coverage: How Women Can Lead the Fight for Universal Healthcare is her first book. Connect with her @Rosemarie_Day1 or at rosemarieday.com.

In these times when readers are responding to our books “more than ever,” when our authors—including Richard Blanco, Imani Perry, Robin DiAngelo, Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Daina Ramey Berry, and Kali Nicole Gross—are appearing in the media, their ideas going viral on social media, their voices being heard on so many platforms, we thought it might be good to take a break to focus on some of the staff who work hard to find, shape, edit, produce, and promote those works. Our blog series “Beacon Behind the Books” introduces to you a member of our staff and gives you a behind-the-scenes look, department by department, at what goes on at our office.

For the month of May, we introduce you to our editorial assistant, Alison Rodriguez! 

What drew you to publishing, Alison? How did you find your way to Beacon?

Like many people in publishing, I’ve just always loved reading and have always been interested in the entire book publishing process. I had my first internship in publishing when I studied abroad in college. That solidified my interest, and it became what I actively wanted to pursue. While that internship was in children’s editorial, I also worked as a publicity and editorial intern at PublicAffairs and was able to learn a lot more about the different sides of publishing, specifically in serious nonfiction. This led me to Beacon when I noticed an opening for an editorial assistant position last fall and applied. The timing ended up working out perfectly for me to start right after I finished school in January.

How much of what you learned in college have you found vital to your work?

I know a lot of publishing consists of English majors, but I actually majored in journalism. I think it has helped me in anything I have to write, including any type of copy that needs to be clear and concise. Also, the importance of deadlines has been drilled into me in all my courses, which helps me prioritize certain tasks and manage my time at work—even if they are self-made deadlines that I make for myself throughout the day!

What upcoming projects are you excited about?

I’m excited about Ace by Angela Chen coming out in the fall. It was the first full manuscript I read when I started at Beacon, and I think it will be an important resource that everyone can learn something from. I’m also excited for What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon. I also learned a lot from this book, and I think it will spark a lot of important conversations that are long overdue.

What helps you focus when you’re at work?

I like to listen to music whenever I really need to focus and get something done. I’ve also found that taking a break by either walking outside at lunch or even just getting up from my desk to get coffee at the office can really help whenever I’ve been staring at something for too long.

What are you reading right now?

I just started reading Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng. I’m also reading We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and listening to Normal People by Sally Rooney on audio. Enjoying all three so far!

Favorite book ever?

It really always changes, but one of them is Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. I bought this book in the UK and read it on my plane ride home. It had me laughing and crying and always reminds me of that trip!

Favorite podcasts?

I really enjoy true crime podcasts. Recently, I’ve listened to Dr. Death and To Live and Die in LA. I also love listening to The Daily every morning.

About Alison Rodriguez 

Alison Rodriguez joined Beacon Press in January 2020 after graduating from Boston University with a Bachelor of Science in Journalism and a focus in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Prior to joining Beacon, Alison interned at Hachette Book Group and Simon & Schuster UK.

Can you taste it? The taste of joy when quarantine ends, the panic shopping eases up, and we can get on with the new reality of civilian life. The coronavirus pandemic will change the way we live. However the new reality takes shape, we’ll be ready and eager to get back outside. Not to mention delirious with relief. Until then, safety first. But at least we have plenty of books to turn to as resources and for escape during quarantine!

We pulled together a list of titles from our catalog that speak to our homebound times. Whatever your fancy, there are three categories to choose from. Inspiring books to help find meaning and solace during this period of stress and despair. Books on remaking society to show how the pandemic affects many aspects of our day-to-day living and what we want to make better when this whole situation is behind us. And books to get lost in, because we could use a breather from the COVID-19 craziness, right? Scroll down to take a look! You can check out our website to see more titles as well.

***

Inspiring Reads

Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything
Viktor E. Frankl
Introduction by Daniel Goleman

“This slim, powerful collection from Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning) attests to life’s meaning, even in desperate circumstances.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Man’s Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl

“This is a book I reread a lot . . . it gives me hope . . . it gives me a sense of strength.”
—Anderson Cooper, Anderson Cooper 360/CNN

The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
Thich Nhat Hanh

“Thich Nhat Hanh’s ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.”
—Martin Luther King Jr.

The Stars in Our Pockets: Getting Lost and Sometimes Found in the Digital Age
Howard Axelrod

“Poetic, ruminative, and never preachy, this book is a game changer for readers who yearn to see beyond 240 characters.”
—Booklist, Starred Review

Remaking Society 

Marching Toward Coverage: How Women Can Lead the Fight for Universal Health Care
Rosemarie Day

“Day makes the case for why activism by women for our health and healthcare is the path forward for a resilient nation.”
—Juliette Kayyem, former assistant secretary, Department of Homeland Security, author of Security Mom

Natural: How Faith in Nature’s Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science
Alan Levinovitz

“Explores the power of that word and the often highly consequential ways in which it has been appreciated, appropriated, distorted, hyped, commodified, consecrated, and weaponized.”
—Robert M. Sapolsky, John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of Neurology and of Neurosurgery, Stanford University, and author of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination
Alexandra Minna Stern

“An important study that extends the knowledge from other recent books that have demonstrated a stubbornly pervasive network of white nationalists.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Don’t Knock the Hustle: Young Creatives, Tech Ingenuity, and the Making of a New Innovation Economy
S. Craig Watkins

“An insightful guide to the humane potential of new ways of working and sharing. Ignore this book at your peril.”
—Juliet Schor, professor of sociology, Boston College

Books to Get Lost In 

Why I Wake Early
Mary Oliver

“The gift of Oliver’s poetry is that she communicates the beauty she finds in the world and makes it unforgettable.”
—Miami Herald

Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest
Ian Zack

“A thoughtful portrait of an artist who never quite became as famous as she deserved to be . . . A much needed biography of a crucial American artist and activist.”
—Booklist, Starred Review

Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist
Judith Heumann and Kristen Joiner

“Judy’s vision of a society that embraces all aspects of the human condition and where we face adversity with wisdom is truly transformative. . . . All who read her book will be better for it.”
—Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, author of Lean In

Me Dying Trial
Patricia Powell

“Powell shows us the living within the dying, the foreigner within the native born, the male within the female. Her tales unfold like dreams spread out on a table.”
—Danzy Senna, author of Caucasia

And then COVID-19 shut the classroom doors. Nationwide, many schools are closed for the rest of the academic school year for in-person classes. Who knows what the new reality of education will look like when the pandemic is behind us? As teaching has moved online and as parents have taken up the role of at-home educators for little ones, one thing awaits at the end of quarantine: our appreciation for all educators who help guide the new generation to their futures. This Teacher Appreciation Week, we asked some of our authors to tell us about the teachers who made a difference in their lives. Here’s what they had to say.

***

“A high school English teacher, Mrs. Fryzel, was the one who got me to think that I could be a writer. As she walked me through a very imperfect essay I’d written, she paused at one sentence. Looking me in the eye, she told me that someone who could write that sentence should think about being a journalist. It’s not the career I ended up with, but I am definitely a writer.”
—M. V. Lee Badgett, The Economic Case for LGBT Equality: Why Fair and Equal Treatment Benefits Us All 

“The great teacher of my life was an acting teacher, Tracy Trevett, that I had at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. She was the very best kind of instructor. I’d watch her, and as each student got up to perform in class, she would completely modulate her teaching style and feedback to fit exactly what she could see that student needed—be it tough, coddling, pushing, inspirational, etc. She had a nearly preternatural ability to see right through to the core of people. I think she was the first person who ever really saw me for all of who I am.”
—Naomi McDougall Jones, The Wrong Kind of Women: Inside Our Revolution to Dismantle the Gods of Hollywood

“One teacher who I am especially appreciative of is Mr. Lawrence Puck. He consistently engaged us to think differently, as he would have us breakdown movies that were popular at the time. He is tremendously funny and insightful. He encouraged me to run for student body president and apply to colleges I would not have dreamed of attending. I am thankful for the paths that I might not have seen without his wit, insight, guidance, and belief in me as a student.”
—Zach Norris, We Keep Us Safe: Building Secure, Just, and Inclusive Communities

“In the very beginning of first grade, my teacher firmly taught us to write the following four words: ‘Written and Illustrated by.’ Ms. Zive conveyed to us, right from the start, to take ownership of our writing. I’ve never forgotten that lesson, and after I published my first book, I embarked on a years-long odyssey to track down Ms. Zive. Even if we can’t all find our early teachers, we owe them a collective debt, because they set us down the pathway that defined our lives.”
—Danielle Ofri, When We Do Harm: A Doctor Confronts Medical Error

“In eleventh grade, books lit a fire in my beleaguered belly. Words became, suddenly, as thrilling as roller coasters, as palpable as flesh, as infinite as space-time. Thank you, Mr. Macekura, for Joyce, and Eliot, and Pound, and for standing up from your too tiny desk to deliver your mustachioed, bespectacled incantation: ‘Isn’t that cool?’ It was. And here I am.”
—Ian Zack, Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest

As we spend more time indoors at the behest of shelter-in-place advisories, we find ourselves renegotiating and rediscovering our personal space in the company of others—often loved ones—or finding a new sense of solitude. Thus, in the best of circumstances, intimacy invites itself in moments of silence, of stillness, of understanding, of passion, of tenderness, of inner reflection. When we are at a loss for words to express how it makes us feel, we turn to the poets. In our fourth installment of this year’s National Poetry Month series, cocoon yourself in the poetry of Sonia Sanchez, Mary Oliver, and Sasha Pimentel.

***

Sonia Sanchez’s “5 love haiku” from Morning Haiku

1.
Under
a sexual sky you
coughed swords

2.
your smell
slides under my
fingernails

3.
love
walking backwards
towards assassinations

4.
locust man
eating the grain
of women

5.
your tongue
jelly on my
lips.

***

Mary Oliver’s “In the Evening, in the Pinewoods” from Red Bird

Who knows the sorrows of the heart?
God, of course, and the private self.
But who else? Anyone or anything else?
Not the trees, in their windy independence.
Nor the roving clouds, nor, even, the dearest of friends.

Yet maybe the thrush, who sings
by himself, at the edge of the green woods,
to each of us
out of his mortal body, his own feathered limits,
of every estrangement, exile, rejection—their
    death-dealing weight.

And then, so sweetly, of every goodness also to be remembered.

***

Sasha Pimentel’s “While My Lover Rests” from For Want of Water

Night divides from my pillow
as a man and a woman, one taking

breath, and the other, moving
to the pattern of his sleep. The soft

palate clicks as measure, and the dead
drip through the window. Here,

the plates of our women’s hips surface
from memory with my nakedness, like a body

and its reflection meeting at the point
of water, and I watch the man alone

in my bed curl, returning. In sleep
we are always aware of the presence

and absence of bodies, and he swims
in delicate ballet to the sheeted

center, knowing the lack of my weight
there. The wind buries herself

against the pane in this lovely, terrible
hour, and all the immigrants I know

of evening are coming to
gather themselves around. Tonight

I am swimming in this
inhalation—exhalation—and the wind,

larger than ever, is wailing, and his
throat relaxes, his uvula aquiver,

and I am listening now and learning
how little my need, in night, to speak.

It’ll be a while before we can go back to bookshops in person to browse the shelves, but that doesn’t mean we still can’t get exciting about the next book to dive into! Our editors came together to assemble a list of titles they’ve worked on that have been released this season and ones lined up later this year. Biography, history, criminal justice reform, queer equality . . . take your pick! We can’t wait for you to read them!

Jonathan Rapping’s Gideon’s Promise: A Public Defender Movement to Transform Criminal Justice  (August 2020)

Jonathan Rapping’s book on the key role of public defenders in criminal justice, Gideon’s Promise, is one I inherited from our recently departed and much mourned senior editor Rakia Clark. (I don’t mean she departed this world; she's hard at work at Houghton Harcourt these days. Hi, Rakia!) Rap is one of a kind, and his ideas are game changers. I don’t take credit for helping him make the book as sharp as it is, but I did do the blurber part with him. That consisted of my saying, “Would any of the big thinkers in the field maybe want to read the book for possible comment, do you think?” And then my receiving glowing endorsements from Paul Butler, James Forman, Ben Crump . . . and then Michelle Alexander, and then Bryan Stevenson, and then--hoping she wasn’t too late to the party—Stacey Abrams. But I’m also hearing from people he trained, and now from people his organization saved from the maw of the beast of our current system. Did I say I feel lucky that we're publishing this book? I’m humbled to be working with this guy. And adding this book to one we just published, Zach Norris’s We Keep Us Safe, feels like we’re really in the conversation about recognizing the humanity of all people and creating safer communities by ensuring justice and opportunity for all.
—Helene Atwan, Director

M. V. Lee Badgett’s The Economic Case for LGBT Equality: Why Fair and Equal Treatment Benefits Us All (May 2020)

I’m excited about this book because it’s doing something fresh and urgent. As we know, the human rights argument for queer equality is often made, including in books we publish at Beacon. And that’s important. Badgett agrees that, first and foremost, LGBTI equality is a human rights issue. But Badgett is also an economist who’s been working on issues of LGBTI equality for twenty years and she realized there are spaces where the human rights argument isn’t seen as persuasive or respected. In those spaces, what matters is the bottom line. What Badgett has found is that fair and equal treatment of LGBTI people is not only good for them and the ethical thing to do—it's also good for the bottom line.

The three things Badgett covers in the book are: first, that LGBT discrimination hurts individual incomes. In short, there are financial costs to not having the same opportunities as cisgender people. Secondly, discrimination hurts companies. More and more companies, including Fortune 500 ones and global companies, now recognize this. And finally, homophobia and transphobia are harmful to economies. Did you know that countries with more rights for LGBT people also have higher GDP per capita than other countries with similar economic characteristics?

Part of what’s effective about Badgett’s argument is that in addition to the US, she has conducted research in a number of other countries—including Canada, the UK, Australia, India, and the Philippines—so this is a global argument. 

The Economic Case for LGBT Equality will be in Beacon’s “Queer Ideas” series, which we’ve had for over fifteen years ago now, with Michael Bronski as the series editor. Michael and I are thrilled with this groundbreaking new addition to the series.
—Gayatri Patnaik, Associate Director and Editorial Director

Daniel S. Lucks’s Reconsidering Reagan: Racism, Republicans, and the Road to Trump (August 2020)

In 1980, Reagan ran for president, and his campaign slogan was “Let’s Make America Great Again.” Sounds familiar, right?! Trump took much more than that from Reagan’s playbook, and Daniel Lucks gets into some of that in this book.

I’ve been wanting to sign a book on Reagan and race for about twenty years now. Of course, there are many books on Reagan, including a number of hagiographies, and it’s striking that none of them focus on his views and policies on race, which were devastating.

We know Reagan had this cheerful and upbeat persona, but this book brings out an observation that Anthony Lewis once made about Reagan. He said, “. . . beneath the affability, there is a void.” This book is about that. Lucks’s goal is to help create dialogue around a new and sober reckoning of Reagan’s legacy which is long overdue.

This biography covers Reagan’s childhood and his surprising early liberalism. He traces Reagan’s gradual embrace of conservatism, his opposition to landmark civil rights legislation, his coziness with segregationists, and his skill in tapping into white anxiety about race. And using words like “welfare queen,” “law and order,” and “states rights” for political gain. Lucks argues that Reagan rode the wave of the “white backlash” all the way to the Presidency and was what we might call a polite racist. Never overt, but effective because he had this sunny demeanor and charm.

As president, Lucks argues Reagan had the worst civil rights record of any president since the 1920s. He supported the South African apartheid regime, packed the courts with conservatives, targeted laws prohibiting discrimination in education and housing. This book covers a number of Republicans, including Newt Gingerich, Jeff Sessions, Trent Lott, Rehnquist, and others, so there’s a lot of rich historical context.

Lucks feels that one important reason we need to have this reckoning about Reagan is because we’re still facing the effects of his presidency today. Reagan’s policies established the foundation for the current attacks on voting rights, assaults on Affirmative Action, and the demonization of poverty. And, of course, Reagan launched the war on drugs that targeted African Americans, Latinos, and the poor, leading to the carceral state.

The last point I want to make is that Lucks notes that Trump’s election caused many conservatives to lament Trump’s takeover of the Party of Reagan, and claim he is an aberration. But Lucks shows that Trump is not an anomaly but in fact the logical continuum of where the Republican Party has been trending since Reagan. I think this is a worthwhile and urgent book and hope it’ll find the large readership it deserves.
—Gayatri Patnaik, Associate Director and Editorial Director

Judith Heumann and Kristen Joiner’s Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist (February 2020)

Every editor will recall humbling moments of receiving a proposal that promises to profoundly impact peoples’ lives. For me, one of those moments was receiving a proposal by Judy Heumann and Kristen Joiner, which became Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist. Candid, poignant, and written in her unforgettable cheeky voice, it recounts Judy’s remarkable and lifelong fight for equal access—from education to the workplace to inclusion in society. One climactic moment in Judy’s life, when she and other people with disabilities took over a governmental building, is portrayed in Comedy Central’s “Drunk History,” starring Ali Stroker as Judy. It was powerful and set an example not only because it presented a relatively unknown yet significant piece of US history that should be widely taught, but also because it featured disabled performers. Later, Ali Stroker would make history as the first wheelchair user to win a Tony. When searching for a voice actor for the audiobook, we were delighted and honored when Ali Stroker agreed to once again play Judy. Upon reading the book, Stroker endorsed it, writing, “Judy’s story has shaken me to the core. For the first time, I see myself in someone else.” We hope others will, too.
—Joanna Greene, Senior Editor

Ian Zack’s Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest (April 2020)

We’re so excited about Odetta, an inspiring biography of the well-known and beloved singer. The book follows her humble beginnings on the west coast to her shy entry into entertainment through her activism and emergence as the “Voice of the Civil Rights Movement,” all the way to her tumultuous later years. It’s the first definitive biography of the singer, and the book feels that way. Lots of interviews, lots of information revealed from her personal papers (housed at the New York Public Library), etc. Ian Zack has written a narrative book that rightly uplifts this iconic figure. Originally acquired and edited by former Beacon Press senior editor, Rakia Clark, this book fills a gap in our historical understanding and appreciation for the folk singer who inspired so many others, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples, and Janis Joplin.
—Maya Fernandez, Assistant Editor

Shelter-in-place advisories may be restricting the time we spend outdoors, but that doesn’t mean we still can’t enjoy it. With a face mask and a good six feet of distance, we can luxuriate in walks along the river, afternoons in the park, hikes in the woods—even if it’s only for a few hours. For the rest of the time indoors, the words of poets bring us back outside in the mind’s eye, revealing corners of the natural world we may have missed. In our third installment of this year’s National Poetry Month series, marvel at the beauty of nature in the poetry of Melissa Range, Jay Parini, and Mary Oliver!

***

Melissa Range’s “Cento: Natural Theology” from Scriptorium 

Partly like the sun and partly like the air,
the earth—just like a body
if it had no bones. As if by veins
it is held together so it does not crumble.
Like a lamb sucking milk, the plants
suck up the green; place the emerald
in their mouth and the spirit will revive,
a fire of burning mountains
which is difficult to put out,
like the thunder’s eye. It cannot be caught.
It ministers to those who bear it,
coming from the mystery of God
like limestone from stone, one drop
of dew found on clean grass. All its matter
is from the fresh greenness of the air,
the sharpness of the water, flame
in the heavens. God does not wish to cure it.

***

Jay Parini’s “A Night in the Field” from New and Collected Poems: 1975-2015

I didn’t mean to stay so late
or lie there in the grass
all summer afternoon and thoughtless
as the kite of sun caught in the tree-limbs
and the crimson field began to burn,
then tilt way.
                  I hung on
handily as night lit up the sky’s black skull
and star-flakes fell as if forever—
fat white petals of a far-off flower
like manna on the plains.

A ripe moon lifted in the east,
its eye so focused,
knowing what I knew but had forgotten
of the only death I’ll ever really need
to keep me going.

Did I sleep to wake or wake to sleep?

I slipped in seams through many layers,
soil and subsoil, rooting
in the loamy depths of my creation,
where at last I almost felt at home.

But rose at dawn in rosy light,
beginning in the dew-sop long-haired grass,
having been taken, tossed,
having gone down, a blackened tooth
in sugary old gums, that ground
where innocence is found, unfound,
making my way toward the barn,
its beams alight,
its rafters blazing in the red-ball sun.

***

Mary Oliver’s “When I Am Among the Trees” from Thirst 

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
      but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

Walter Brister as Armmah Sotanki, leader of the Sotanki’s troupe of “Hindoo” fakirs starting in 1898.

Once upon a Gilded Age, Americans once treated Islam and Muslims with both fascination and respect. Hard to believe in our post-9/11 timeline, but it’s true. Swept by romanticized images of Muslims found in most popular entertainment at the time and Arabian Nights, thousands of Americans were enthralled by the Islamic Orient. Some, in fact, saw Islam as a global antiracist movement uniquely suited to people of African descent living in an era of European imperialism, Jim Crow segregation, and officially sanctioned racism. Some, like enigmatic circus performer John Walter Brister, who would found the Moorish Science Temple of America in 1925, the prequel to the Black Muslims of the Nation of Islam. By then, he was known as Prophet Noble Drew Ali. Thus, at this moment in US history, the Black Muslim movement in America began.

The story of Brister’s transformations from the first Black child star on Broadway in 1893 to Noble Drew Ali is staggering, and historian Jacob S. Dorman vividly brings it to life in The Princess and the Prophet: The Secret History of Magic, Race and Moorish Muslims in America. Dorman traces Brister’s winding path through the world of Arabian acrobats and equestrians, Muslim Fakirs, Wild West shows, and eventually, Chicago politics. Working as a “Hindoo” magician, Brister traveled across the country to perform feats of strength and escape magic. This is how he met his wife Eva, who performed as Princess Sotanki. Famous as the first Black woman lion tamer and for her “Sacred Indian Snake Dance,” she would play a vital role in helping him found the Moorish Science Temple. Throw in a faked death, a new identity, and the anti-immigrant “America First” politics of the time—sound familiar?—to the mix of circus acts, and you have a life story that has to be read to be believed.

The Princess and the Prophet also features photos and poster art from the era. One curious thing becomes clear while looking them. Dorman writes, “As the first Black child star on Broadway, and then the founder of the first Muslim mass movement in America, Walter Brister was incongruously both the forerunner of the blond tap-dancing cherub Shirley Temple and of the militant Black Nationalist icon Malcolm X.” Take a gander at the life and times of Noble Drew Ali!

The Woodlawn Wangdoodles, the Black juvenile band that starred in the hit Broadway show In Old Kentucky starting in 1893. Note diminutive bandleader Walter Brister holding a cornet.

A photo of Walter Brister as “Armmah Sotanki,” a “Hindoo Magician,” used for the Pawnee Bill Wild West Show and the John Robinson Circus 1900-1902.

Princess Sotanki, aka Eva Brister, from the 1902 route book of the John Robinson Circus. The picture is the same as the one that ran in the 1900 Pawnee Bill Wild West Show route book, which identified her as E. Brister. This one is notable in that the book identifies her as a “Hindoo lion tamer.”

The five Ali Brothers, members of the Pawnee Bill Wild West Show of 1899, and a typical group of Arab acrobats and equestrians commonly found in American and European circuses near the turn of the twentieth century.

Prophet Noble Drew Ali (back row) seated between leading South Side politicians Louis B. Anderson (left) and Oscar DePriest (right). Aaron Payne is seated at bottom right. First Annual Convention, October 1928.

About Jacob S. Dorman

Jacob S. Dorman is a professor of History and Core Humanities at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is the author of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Chosen People: The Rise of American Black Israelite Religions (Oxford University Press, 2013), which won numerous book prizes. Dorman has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and many others.

Now this is how you round off a year and a decade. Just look at all these books on all these Best-Of lists! Our authors absolutely killed it. And they’ll kill it again in 2020. Let’s give them a round of applause into the new year! And while we’re doing so, let’s take a look at some highlights of the lists their books appeared on. (Someone pop open a bottle of bubbly while we’re applauding here. This calls for celebration!)

Memes to Movements: How the World’s Most Viral Media Is Changing Social Protest and Power
An Xiao Mina

“Essential reading. . . . An’s work demonstrates why we should be taking [memes] seriously.”
—Jonny Sun, author and illustrator of everyone’s a aliebn when ur a aliebn too

• Hyperallergic, “Best of 2019: Our Top 25 Books”

Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets
Feminista Jones

“If you want to understand the rising preeminence of black women in our modern day sociopolitical landscape, you would be smart to start with Feminista Jones.”
—Ijeoma Oluo, author of the New York Times bestseller So You Want To Talk About Race

• Mashable, included in “Books to give activists as they prepare for the upcoming election”
• Mashable, “17 books every activist should read in 2019”
• Bustle, “9 Books About Beyoncé, Feminism, And Music To Read After You Finish ‘Queen Bey’”

As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock
Dina Gilio-Whitaker

“A masterpiece and a vital road map for the ongoing fight for Indigenous sovereignty.”
—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

• Mashable, included in “Books to give activists as they prepare for the upcoming election”

Superior: The Return of Race Science
Angela Saini

“Angela Saini’s Superior: The Return of Race Science is nothing short of a remarkable, brilliant, and erudite exploration of what we believe about the racialized differences among our human bodies..”
—Jonathan Metzl, author of Dying of Whiteness

• Nature, “Top Ten Books of 2019”
• Smithsonian, “Ten Best Science Books of 2019”
• NPR’s Science Friday, “The Best Science Books of 2019”
• The Guardian, “Best science, nature, and ideas books of 2019”
• Library Journal, “Best Science & Technology Books 2019”
• Vanity Fair London, “The Best Books of the Year”
• BBC Science Focus (UK), “The 10 Best Science Books of 2019”
• Prospect Magazine (UK), “The best science books of 2019”
• Physics World, “Top Ten Books of 2019”
• New Statesmen (UK), “Books of the Year”
• The Telegraph (UK), “The 50 Best Books of 2019”
• Sunday Times (UK), “The Sunday Times Best Books of the Year 2019”

A Queer History of the United States for Young People
Michael Bronski, adapted by Richie Chevat

“A touchstone for LGBTQ readers seeking proof of the greatness that preceded them and confidence in the success that awaits in their future.”
—Shelf Awareness

• School Library Journal, “Best Nonfiction 2019”
• Mombian: Sustenance for Lesbian Moms, “2019 Holiday Gift Guide to LGBTQ Children’s Books”

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, adapted by Debbie Reese and Jean Mendoza

“An important corrective to conventional narratives of our nation’s history.”
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

• Chicago Public Library: one of the “Best Informational Books for Older Readers of 2019”
• New York Public Library: a “Best Books for Teens”
• Kirkus Reviews: “Best of YA Nonfiction 2019”
• School Library Journal, “Best Nonfiction 2019”

Breathe: A Letter to My Sons
Imani Perry

“Combines rigor and heart, and the result is a magic mirror showing us who we are, how we got here, and who we may become.”
—Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage

• The Undefeated, “25 Can’t-Miss Books of 2019”
• BuzzFeed, “68 Books For Every Person On Your Holiday List”
• Kirkus Reviews, “Best Nonfiction of 2019”
• Kirkus Reviews, “Best Books of 2019 to Fight Racism and Xenophobia”
• The Atlantic, featured as one of “Twenty-One Books to Read After Becoming”

Unashamed: Musings of a Fat, Black Muslim
Leah Vernon

“I laughed and cried and read this book in awe of Leah Vernon’s brave, bold, and beautiful voice.”
—Randa Abdel-Fattah, author of The Lines We Cross and Does My Head Look Big in This?

• The Oakland Press, listed as #3 indie bestseller in Michigan during the month of October
• The Atlantic, featured as one of “Twenty-One Books to Read After Becoming”

White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue . . . and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation
Lauren Michele Jackson

“Incisive and richly detailed. A vital text—one that offers new ways of seeing, hearing, and consuming.”
—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us

• The Atlantic, featured as one of “Twenty-One Books to Read After Becoming”
• BuzzFeed, “68 Books For Every Person On Your Holiday List”
• Chicago Reader, “2019 Reader Gift Guide”
• The Undefeated, “25 Can’t-Miss Books of 2019”
• Chicago Tribune: “Books of 2019: 11 Notable Reads”

You won’t find corny-ass statements here proclaiming that the year 2020 will usher a time of clearer vision. Puh-lease. That’s tired. What’s worth saying here, however, is we need to keep our eyes on the issues that matter to us as we begin a new decade. Now that’s wired. We can get a picture of what matters by looking back at some of the top read blog posts on the Broadside in 2019. Clearly, we’re still coming to terms with our cultural identity as it pertains to race and injustice and the chokehold of whiteness on liberation, among other issues. And as always, we’re grateful to our authors for giving us the context and critique to understand these issues and where to go from here.

So here are the highlights of the Broadside this year. See you in the new decade with more insightful blog posts from our authors!

“Before Passing Away, Carol Channing Passed for White”
Lisa Page

“Americans like stories like [Carol Channing’s], because racial and ethnic passing is ubiquitous inside a culture known for self-invention. But being Black is about more than biology, one drop rule be damned. Being Black is not just about singing and dancing, and shucking and jiving. Being Black goes beyond complexion—it’s a cultural thing.”

“Robin DiAngelo Talking White Fragility in My Town, with Security Guards”
Thomas Norman DeWolf

“Let me be as clear with my readers as Dr. DiAngelo was with us that night. It is up to white people to understand that our ancestors created racism. We have inherited it. Our denial and deflection and fragility perpetuate it. It is on us to eradicate it.”

“For CaShawn Thompson, Black Girl Magic Was Always the Truth”
Feminista Jones

“Black Feminism can be a protection and a guide, and as more of us become parents, we have a responsibility to change the narrative, minimize the harm, and shift our culture and communities toward appreciation and respect for Black women and girls everywhere. Bringing our daughters up believing in and never questioning the existence of their own ‘magic’ is restorative and promising, electrifying and declarative, radical and hopeful.”

“Cutting to the Chase of the Covington Catholic Fiasco”
Dina Gilio-Whitaker

“The entire incident is a classic display of settler privilege and fragility. Only in a society that systematically and simultaneously denies and justifies its genocidal foundation can an elderly Native man singing and playing a drum surrounded by hundreds of frenzied white males dressed in attire that to American Indians represents the colonial wrecking ball be construed as menacing.”

“Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘The Other America’ Still Radical 50 Years Later”

“The fact is that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed—that’s the long, sometimes tragic and turbulent story of history. And if people who are enslaved sit around and feel that freedom is some kind of lavish dish that will be passed out on a silver platter by the federal government or by the white man while the Negro merely furnishes the appetite, he will never get his freedom.” (Originally posted in March 2018)

“Breaking Up Families of Color, an American Tradition as Old as the Slave Trade”
Daina Ramey Berry

“The sounds, sights, and smells of slave auctions contributed to the horror of enslaved children’s lives. Loud, rhythmic bid calls echoing from the mouths of auctioneers competed with chatter from potential buyers, the rattling of chains, and the everyday noises of a town center. Joining these audible oddities was another unpleasant sound that could be heard above all others at the end of a sale: the cries of wailing mothers, overcome with grief after being separated from their children.” (Originally posted in June 2018).

“Getting to We: Ten Points for Understanding Racism in the Trump Era”
Deborah L. Plummer

“We, as Americans, do not have a shared understanding of the definition of racism. We live segregated lives and are deeply divided along political lines. Relying on politicians and the media to unravel racial dynamics does not serve us well. Fully understanding racism requires deep understanding of history and the social sciences, and a lot of multiracial living, which most of us do not engage in.”

“In the Wake of El Paso and Dayton, Beacon Press Offers Free eBook Resources”
Helene Atwan

“Like most of us living in the US, I was sickened by this weekend’s news of shootings in El Paso and Dayton. Coming into work, feeling so stricken by these events, I was heartened by the fact that I could turn to a group of colleagues and immediately begin talking about what kind of resources we could offer in the wake of these senseless tragedies. I feel, as I often do, heartened to be working in an environment where it is our job to try to create these resources.”

“White Fragility and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’”
Linda Schlossberg

“There’s a reason Mockingbird is assigned to thirteen-year-olds. The moral message of the novel is a simplistic one: Racism is bad. Very, very bad.  Also, bad people are racists. Good people, the reader is assured, are not racists . . . As readers, we are aligned with Scout and by extension Atticus, who embodies rational, educated “racial tolerance,” in sharp contrast to the novel’s depiction of an angry, ignorant, racist mob. Everything in the reading experience of the novel confirms a white reader’s sense of herself as open-minded, tolerant, woke. ‘If I lived in 1930s Alabama, I would never do that,’ the white reader thinks. ‘I am one of the good white people.’” (Originally posted in December 2018)

Well, that was fast. Can you believe the holiday season (and snow) is here again? Time to go on the hunt for gifts to inspire someone in your life! Save 30% on everything at beacon.org through December 31 using code HOLIDAY30.

By the way, orders must be submitted by 1 PM, EST, December 16, if you want them to be shipped before the holidays. USPS media mail takes 7-10 business days. To ensure delivery by December 24, choose one of our expedited shipping options.

Oh, and we’ll be closed Monday, December 23, 2019 through Thursday, January 2, 2020. Orders placed during this time will be fulfilled when we are back in the office on Thursday, January 2, 2020.

And now, without further ado, for our inspirational holiday picks, the categories are . . .

Radical Women

Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets
Feminista Jones

“A godsend that will inform not only how we are approached and regarded by others through social media platforms but how we interact with each other and value ourselves.”
—CaShawn Thompson, creator of #BlackGirlMagic

The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls
Mona Eltahawy

“Reading it will free you, and acting on it will free us all.”
—Gloria Steinem, writer and feminist activist

Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements
Charlene A. Carruthers

“She reminds us that bringing all of ourselves and our people with us is the only way any of us will get free.”
—Janet Mock, author of Redefining Realness and Surpassing Certainty 

Unashamed: Musings of a Fat, Black Muslim
Leah Vernon

“Unashamed is everything Leah Vernon embodies on a daily basis: authenticity, resiliency, and, most of all . . . unquestionable courage.”
—Jes Baker, author of Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls and Landwhale 

Indigenous Resistance

“All the Real Indians Died Off”: And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker

“A much-needed and excellent introduction to American Indian history and contemporary life for a broad audience.”
—Against the Current 

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

“This may well be the most important US history book you will read in your lifetime. Spoiler alert: the colonial era is still here, and so are the Indians.”
—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams 

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, adapted by Debbie Reese and Jean Mendoza

“An important corrective to conventional narratives of our nation’s history.”
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock
Dina Gilio-Whitaker

“Not only does Gilio-Whitaker look at the history of Indigenous resistance to environmental colonization, but she points to a way forward beyond Western conceptions of environmental justice—toward decolonization as the only viable solution.”
—Nick Estes, author of Our History Is the Future

Cultural Realness

Breathe: A Letter to My Sons
Imani Perry

“Deeply cathartic and resonant for parents attempting to raise their children with intention and integrity.”
—Tarana Burke

Me Dying Trial
Patricia Powell

“One of the most exciting writers living and writing on the island that is the Caribbean-American hyphen.”
—Edwidge Danticat, author of Breath, Eyes, Memory 

A Treasury of African American Christmas Stories
Ed. Bettye Collier-Thomas

“Gives us all the gift of engaging our hearts and minds in the true stories of Christmas.”
—Nikki Giovanni

White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue . . . and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation
Lauren Michele Jackson

“Miraculously, Lauren Michele Jackson is able to write about cultural appropriation in a way that doesn’t make you want to drink a glass of sand.”
—Eve L. Ewing, author of Electric Arches and Ghosts in the Schoolyard

A Q&A with Patricia Powell

Patricia Powell

Patricia Powell made a splash, in 1993, as a major voice in Caribbean literature with her debut novel Me Dying Trial. Her protagonist, Gwennie Glaspole, a schoolteacher trapped in an unhappy marriage, fights to resist Jamaican cultural expectations and for her independence. Now in the new century, we saw it was time to introduce her masterful story and signature voice to a new generation of readers. So we’ve reissued her novel in our Celebrating Black Women Writers series! Our assistant editor, Maya Fernandez, caught up with Powell to chat with her about it. 

Maya Fernandez: Is it true the you originally wrote Me Dying Trial while you were in undergrad? What inspired you to write it?

Patricia Powell: It is indeed true. I was initially an economics major but when I took my first creative writing class, everything changed. All my bottled-up feelings of loss came undone. I was twenty at the time and had only been in the States for four years. Writing had already stirred up so many feelings about home and the people I had left behind, those I had loved with all my heart and would never see again—my great aunt who raised me, for example, and who died shortly after I left. Writing then became a way to bring her back to life—her laughter, her stories, her larger than life love. As long as I was writing, there she was, close to me, filling my imagination, and this was the case, too, for many of the other characters: the men at the shop talking and drinking and smoking; the people in the village; the village itself. Writing was a way, too, of knitting myself back together with all these memories that I could then carry forever. 

MF: One of the reasons I personally love this book is that the characters feel full and actualized. Complicated in that good, human way. Are any of them based on people in your own life?

PP: Yes, some of the characters are based on real people and some on a number of people folded into one. But Me Dying Trial was really a story I made up about my origins since no one in my family would confirm the truth of where I had come from. A new place, a new country often requires a new identity. But even in the old place, I didn’t know who I was. I had always heard stories that my father wasn’t really my father, and that was why I was given away. My mother had one story, my great aunt had another, my grandmother had yet a third. Not to mention my cousins and their many speculations. It was impossible to know what was true, and in those days when you were a child that asked too many difficult questions, the adults were always quick to tell you, Don’t stir that up now, that was a long time ago, leave it, or even worst, Why are you asking about things that don’t concern you! Me Dying Trial was a way to invent an origin story for myself. With each word, I was weaving my own tale. I don’t know if it is the truth of my birth—my mother still won’t say—but it is a truth I created from bits of stories I overheard and a version I have chosen to live with.

MF: Though Gwennie is the central character of the book, Me Dying Trial also focuses on her daughter, Peppy, and her aunt, Cora, and the tumultuous relationships the exists between the three of them. Why did you choose to share these three different women’s stories together?

PP: Peppy, Gwennie, and Cora represent three generations of Jamaican women. I was curious to know what values, what gifts, what insights about life each could impart to the other. Peppy, of course, the youngest, had the most to learn. From her mother, she would learn both bravery and perseverance. Gwennie was brave in so many ways. For one, she went outside of her loveless marriage to seek affection. The consequences, of course, were grave, as women are not often expected to self-realize; but for a moment she allowed herself a little joy and a little intimacy. Then she not only left her marriage, she moved with her children to an entirely new country to start her life over, which is no small accomplishment. And though she had lived a middle-class existence in Jamaica as a teacher, she took the housekeeping jobs that were available to her to provide food and housing for her children. In many ways, Gwennie had gone further than the women in her lineage. None had moved away to seek their fortune in another country. Leaving her marriage had given her this freedom. From Aunt Cora, Peppy learned the true meaning of love and security. These were attributes her mother could not provide, but Cora could. She believed in the fullness and richness of all life. She had already adopted several children, providing them a home and love and abundance. Clearly, she had room to raise one more child. Cora was also a woman of the land. She owned a farm. She was an independent businesswoman and ran a successful store. She served her community in various ways, even building them a place for worship with her own funds. She was generous to everyone. Neither Cora nor Gwennie is without flaws, but together they will have given Peppy invaluable resources to make her own way into the world. 

MF: This book touches on important topics such as identity, sexuality, immigration, gender expectations, and abuse. When writing the book, did you imagine that the issues the characters face would remain relevant more than twenty years later?  

PP: I had no idea these topics would be relevant today. But the truth is they’ve been relevant for a long time. When I think of some of my favorite writers who have now passed—Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Michelle Cliff, Paule Marshall, among others—these were also some of the topics they explored. I think each generation adds not only a new perspective to the conversation but also contributes to the evolution of the topic. I don’t think Jimmy Baldwin could ever have imagined gay marriage in the US when he was writing Giovanni’s Room, but just by writing the story of their love, he was already infusing the world consciousness with that possibility. I doubt he could have imagined a Black president, but I also believe that his fiery essays were already making room for a Barack Obama to happen. I believe that when we write the truth of our experiences we are already weaving the possibility for a new and different outcome.

MF: How do you feel about the reissue of Me Dying Trial?

PP: I’m excited that a whole new generation of readers will get to read it and experience the characters and develop their own relationships with them. And I hope, too, that they’ll be inspired to write their own stories, adding new insights to the conversations about identity and abuse and immigration and sexuality. I’m also excited about up-and-coming literary scholars who will read the novel with new eyes and offer even newer interpretations of the material.

MF: What would you like to say about the Celebrating Black Women Writers series? How do you feel about having your book included in it?

PP: OMG! What an honor! To be celebrated amongst writers such as Gayl Jones, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Octavia Butler, Sindiwe Magona, Alina Troyano … I have no words. These writers are my literary ancestors and mentors. They taught me how to read, how to think, how to listen, how to write, how to dream. They taught me how to love. Their books are like old friends. I return to them again and again for inspiration, for comfort, for guidance, for renewal.

MF: Why do you think it’s important to read Black women’s work, stories, books, words, etc.?

PP: For Black people who might not often see ourselves reflected in literature, Black women’s work can be a mirror, an evaluation, and a celebration of our experiences. And their work can offer us alternate ways of seeing and interpreting those experiences as well as new possibilities for living and loving. Black women’s stories are important for all readers, as they can illuminate all those places where our shared humanness overlaps, no matter race, gender, religion, economic class, or sexual orientation, and also where our shared humanness diverges based on those very same categories. Because we don’t often occupy seats of power, at least in North America, Black women’s writings can reflect back to those at the center what life is often like on the outskirts, and whether or not social policies are effective in improving living and social conditions. Black women’s voices and perspectives are also vital to our ongoing national conversations about wealth redistribution, environmental health, racial and gender equality, food and housing and employment justice, safety and freedom of movement through the streets, and so much more. They are also vital to the way we think about our bodies and our relationships to each other and to the Earth. In Balm Yard, the new book I am writing about healing practices in rural Jamaica rooted in older West African religions, I explore the spiritual worldviews of Black women that are grounded in nature and in the realms of spirit. I am learning that Black women’s spiritualities have much to teach us about how to respond to our present moment. Because we are living through such chaotic times, where everything we have taken for granted is being upended and reevaluated, the very earth is shifting underneath us, my hope is that our work can continue to offer new ways of thinking, alternate ways of being in this changing world, medicine to soothe our aching hearts and minds, and new dreams that can birth new possibilities and realities.   

MF: What would you like readers, especially those just being introduced to Me Dying Trial, to take away from your book?

PP: I would like new readers to enjoy the book, to appreciate the details, the humor, the intricate ways the characters are portrayed. My hope, too, is that new readers might be able to see themselves or their families’ stories reflected here, and that this resonance brings new insights and deepens curiosity. I would like readers new to Caribbean or women’s literature to allow themselves to be enriched by these new perspectives so that their own lives might be transformed by the reading experience.

About Patricia Powell 

Novelist Patricia Powell was born in Jamaica and moved with her family to the United States in 1982. Powell has taught creative writing at Harvard University, Wellesley College, MIT, and Standford University, and is currently Professor of English at Mills College in California. She is the author of A Small Gathering of Bones, The Pagoda, and The Fullness of Everything.

In these times when readers are responding to our books “more than ever,” when our authors—including Richard Blanco, Imani Perry, Robin DiAngelo, Dina Gilio-Whitaker, and Bettina Love—are appearing in the media, their ideas going viral on social media, their voices being heard on so many platforms, we thought it might be good to take a break to focus on some of the staff who work hard to find, shape, edit, produce, and promote those works. Our blog series “Beacon Behind the Books” introduces to you a member of our staff and gives you a behind-the-scenes look, department by department, at what goes on at our office.

To wrap up 2019, we introduce you to our business operations assistant, Isabel Tehan!

What drew you to publishing, Isabel? How did you find your way to Beacon?

Like many people who work at Beacon, I have always loved books and reading, and I studied English as my major in college. Though my mother worked as an editor for a number of years, I did not consider a job in publishing for myself until later in school. I was worried that a lack of publishing-specific internships might make it more difficult to get a job in this industry but figured it was worth a shot! I found the listing for my position at Beacon during one of many frantic late-night job searches as a second-semester senior. As I looked further into the job, I realized Beacon published several books I had already read and found meaningful. I was lucky that timing worked out for me to begin at Beacon right after graduation.

What’s your advice to someone interested in entering the publishing field?

Be open to roles outside of departments that don’t immediately jump to mind when thinking about publishing. Since Beacon is a small press, I am able to learn about what people in other departments do on a day-to-day basis. 

What other departments does your department interact with? And how?

I work with the sales department regularly by helping to fulfill orders from different organizations and individuals. I enjoy this part of my job, because it is fascinating to see the different groups and people who are buying our books.

What are you reading right now?

I’m behind the times on this but I’m finally reading Educated by Tara Westover. I love memoirs and reading about others’ real-life experiences, and this is a really incredible story. I’m also strongly considering rereading the Twilight saga if I can manage to find my old copies anywhere.

Hobbies outside of work?

When it’s not freezing outside and dark at 4 p.m., I love most outdoor activities, especially any that bring me close to the beach. This winter, though, I am working on getting more advanced with my knitting. I’m hoping to make myself a sweater before it’s too warm outside to wear it.

Favorite thing about Boston?

Walking/running/biking along the Charles never gets old. I love the views from the Cambridge side of the river. In general, I love a waterfront view. The one down the street from the Beacon office in the Seaport is pretty great, too!

About Isabel Tehan 

Isabel Tehan earned a BA in English Literature and Spanish Language from the College of the Holy Cross. Before joining Beacon in June 2019, she worked as a research assistant at the Digital Transgender Archive and served as the Editorial Intern at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

By Raj Kumar

Bill and Melinda Gates. Photo credit: Kjetil Ree

If you saw the latest episode of the Netflix show Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, you heard Minhaj say we have to tax that ass . . . of the ultra-rich, that is. Minhaj asked if billionaires and big philanthropy can save us. He doesn’t think so, and nor does writer Anand Giridharadas. They believe billionaires’ wealth needs to be taxed. Devex founding president Raj Kumar doesn’t see it that way. In this passage from his book The Business of Changing the World: How Billionaires, Tech Disrupters, and Social Entrepreneurs Are Transforming the Global Aid Industry, Kumar argues that the debate on taxing the rich is shallow, that there are more factors to consider. Instead, we should have results-oriented metrics in place in addition to laws to keep Richie Rich donors accountable and transparent about their investments.

***

As much as billionaires might like to think of their giving as an unalloyed good, their philanthropy will increasingly be a subject of controversy and a political issue itself.

In the United States, where more than half of all billionaires live, even our president among them, there is growing concern that our political system is being undermined by the divide between the billionaire class and everyone else. That has, in turn, put major US philanthropy in the spotlight, as three recent books make clear.

In his book The Givers, David Callahan, a philanthropy critic, worries that massive private philanthropy is diminishing the role of government when it comes to public policy. Rich donors shaping society the way they like through tax-deductible political campaigning in the guise of charity and direct provision of social services runs counter to a democratic American society making its own choices. Similarly, Robert Reich, a Stanford University professor and author of Just Giving, sees the fast growth in private philanthropy as a subversion of government: the charitable-giving tax deduction reduced government revenue in the US by $50 billion in 2016. All that philanthropic giving could have been directed by government according to the democratic wishes of citizens. Finally, Anand Giridharadas’s book Winners Take All examines how billionaire giving is part of a pernicious elitism that stops questions about inequality in their tracks. Writing big checks to good causes can take attention away from problems elites themselves are causing, he worries.

~~~

As we face a coming wave of billionaire philanthropy, what’s required are rules for the road, an example of which would be an admonition against anonymous giving. This is a historic opportunity to fundamentally change the world for the better, but we can only seize that opportunity if billionaire philanthropy is held to high standards of transparency and effectiveness. Those standards might need to be enshrined in law if billionaire philanthropists don’t act quickly to demonstrate they are engaged in responsible giving.

Those seeking solutions to broader inequality are on the right track. Left unchecked, inequality can lead to “state capture”—a situation where a few wealthy people or interest groups effectively control the government. That can happen even in countries that hold elections and are technically democracies. As a result, there are tax, regulatory, and campaign finance reforms that may be required to mitigate the worst aspects of our current “gilded age.”

But even if, for example, funds could be raised from a billionaire tax, governments would certainly not deploy the money entirely to end extreme poverty or achieve other critical zero goals. Already we face the problem of governments in rich countries dedicating too little funding to foreign aid—in the United States, it makes up just 1 percent of the federal budget. Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan have pledged their massive future giving to education and human health. If more of their money were to be taxed by the US government, according to its current budget priorities most of it would be spent on defense, entitlement programs, and interest on the debt.

That’s why the debate about billionaires paying more taxes versus donating more to charity is important, but too shallow on its own. We can’t focus only on the amounts. Just as there is scrutiny of what governments spend tax revenues on, there needs to be scrutiny of what billionaires do with their philanthropic investments. What kind of impact are they actually having?

Zuckerberg and Chan’s initiative is a case in point. Organized as a limited liability corporation, CZI is able to operate with little transparency, even though it is growing to become one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the world and could one day even eclipse the Gates Foundation.

The operating model Zuckerberg and Chan have in mind is also unusual and potentially problematic: they don’t focus on giving grants to achieve their objectives—as nearly all other foundations would. Instead, they want to launch and operate programs themselves. This means that rather than maintain a small staff for grantmaking and advocacy, they will need to build a large in-house implementation team. Already CZI has a staff of 250, two and a half times the staff size at Bloomberg Philanthropies, even though the funding levels are nearly identical. That team includes 125 engineers, as CZI aims to build technology tools to advance scientific discovery in the medical field and improve learning outcomes in education.

As CZI scales to an organization that spends billions of dollars per year, its staff size could end up in the thousands. Funds that could have gone to social entrepreneurs and NGOs competing against each other to present the best ideas and results may instead end up building a massive institution that faces no competitive pressures and can’t easily be scrutinized by the public. The approach might be practical, given CZI’s central focus on technological innovation and the unique skill sets of its founders, but it could also be a mistake that distorts the aid market. Ultimately the public will need to be able to have an open and transparent debate about CZI’s approach, even though CZI is organized as a private corporation.

The debate over whether billionaires should spend more on philanthropy or taxes isn’t restricted to the rich countries where most of them live. A big part of the global development challenge is increasing the tax base in low-income countries, improving the capabilities of governments there, and pushing those governments to spend more of their limited resources on health, education, and infrastructure. Part of this agenda entails better tax enforcement, especially for the richest citizens of the poorest countries. But that’s hard to achieve, and alone won’t close the gap. And there are some foreign aid programs that have these goals, but private philanthropy has the most flexibility to attempt to influence and incentivize the governments of countries where most extreme poverty exists.

Mo Ibrahim’s foundation does something no government aid program could: the African billionaire offers a $5 million prize to any African president or prime minister who leaves office when his or her term ends. It’s an incentive to prioritize democracy and the rule of law, and just this year it was awarded to the outgoing president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Like the Gates Foundation’s funding of FAO and WHO and Ibrahim’s prize, private philanthropy might just be able to make United Nations agencies, international organizations, and governments more effective in a way that just increasing taxes on billionaires can’t.

The idea that trillions of dollars in new funding could soon become available to end extreme poverty, eliminate disease, and improve our planet and our lives strikes me as a good problem to have. That some of the most talented new economy leaders like Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, and Mark Zuckerberg would use their credibility, political clout, and expertise to move the needle on polio, smoking eradication, and education is a good thing. We need to both push more billionaires into that column and hold accountable those who don’t act. We need to call out billionaires who give just to popular causes or pet projects and encourage those who instead fund proven, cost-effective interventions that maximize impact.

It won’t be enough to sit back and watch more billionaires slowly sign up to the Giving Pledge and make their mark against the issues they care about. We’ll need a highly engaged public encouraging results-oriented philanthropy and holding billionaires accountable when their giving isn’t generating or even targeting the results the world needs. And we may well need laws and rules around transparency that allow us to do that. In the quest to end poverty, nearly eight hundred million ultrapoor adults and children are urgently counting on our ensuring their lives are on top of the global agenda.

About the Author 

Raj Kumar is the founding president and editor in chief of Devex, which the Washington Post compared to a “Bloomberg-style” media platform for the aid industry. A media leader for the World Economic Forum, Kumar is a noted commentator on global development. He lives in Washington, DC. Follow him on Twitter at @raj_devex and visit his website.

By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker

Jennie A. Brownscombe’s “The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth” (1914). Ugh! See how the artist centered the colonists to push the settler-centric mythos of Thanksgiving? This has settler-colonial Hallmark nonsense written all over it.

Editor’s Note: I don’t know about you, but what you’re about to read is not what I was taught about Thanksgiving—and I wish it was. In school, I got the Hallmark card mythos. The following excerpt from “All the Real Indians Died Off”: And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker busts the myth of this holiday. Spoiler alert: the history is much more complicated.

***

Second only to the Columbus discovery story, the Thanksgiving tale is the United States’ quintessential origin narrative. Like the Columbus myth, the story of Thanksgiving has morphed into an easily digestible narrative that, despite its actual underlying truths, is designed to reinforce a sense of collective patriotic pride. The truths are, however, quite well documented. Their concealment within a simplistic story inevitably depicts a convoluted reality about the Indigenous peoples who played crucial roles in both events, and it presents an exaggerated valorization about the settlers’ roles. The result is a collective amnesia that fuels the perpetuation of Native American stereotypes, playing out over and over again in the classrooms and textbooks of American schoolchildren, generation after generation. This only masks the complexities of the relationships between settlers and Indians, and thus the founding of the United States.

The Thanksgiving story as we know it is a story of unconditional welcome by the Indigenous peoples, a feel-good narrative that rationalizes and justifies the uninvited settlement of a foreign people by painting a picture of an organic friendship. A more accurate telling of the story, however, describes the forming of political alliances built on a mutual need for survival and an Indigenous struggle for power in the vacuum left by a destructive century of foreign settlement.

The Backstory

The offenses of the Thanksgiving story stem from lack of historical context. For example, it often gives the impression that the Mayflower pilgrims were the first Europeans to settle on the land today known as the United States. But by the time the Mayflower arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in December 1620, Europeans had been traveling to the North American continent, and founding colonies there, for well over a century. Armed with information about the region—made available by the knowledge and mapping of predecessors like Samuel de Champlain—the Eastern Seaboard was dotted with numerous European enclaves and towns. Jamestown, for example, was founded in 1607, while Florida had been populated by the Spanish since the founding of St. Augustine, in 1565. Some colonies, such as the one in Roanoke, Virginia, had failed. The Mayflower immigrants, who came to be known as the Pilgrims, were thus, in December 1620, only the latest newcomers to the land, all of which was known at the time to the English as Virginia. Exposure to European diseases had resulted in pandemics among the Natives up and down the coast from Florida to New England throughout the sixteenth century, exacerbated by the Indian slave trade started by Columbus. Between 1616 and 1619 the region that would soon become Plymouth Colony underwent an unknown epidemic that decimated the Indigenous population by at least one third to as much as 90 percent—a fact the Pilgrims knew and exploited.

The settlement the Pilgrims called New Plymouth was the ancestral land of the Wampanoag (Pokanoket) people, who called the place Patuxet. Contrary to the popular myth that the Pilgrims arrived to an unoccupied “wilderness,” it had for untold generations been a well-managed landscape, cleared and maintained for cornfields and crops like beans and squash, as well as for game. Also contrary to popular mythology, the Wampanoags, like most eastern Indians, were farmers, not nomads. Up until the epidemic, the Wampanoag nation had been large and powerful, organized into sixty-nine villages in what is today southeastern Massachusetts and eastern Rhode Island. Their exact population is unknown, but estimates range from twenty-four thousand to upwards of one hundred thousand. The epidemic decimated their population, however, and destabilized relations with their traditional enemies, the neighboring Narragansett, Mohegan, and Pequot peoples, among others. In 1620 the Wampanoags were in a state of military tension, if not full-scale war with the Narragansetts.

When the Pilgrims arrived at New Plymouth in the depth of winter, food was the first concern. From colonists’ journal entries we know that right after their arrival Native homes and graves were robbed of food and other items. Written accounts describe taking “things” for which they “intended” to pay later. Ever pious and believing in divine predestination, the religious separatists attributed their good fortune to God, “for how else could we have done it without meeting some Indians who might trouble us.” Thus, the Pilgrims’ survival that first winter can be attributed to Indians both alive and dead.

Before the epidemic, Patuxet had been a village with around two thousand people. Months after their arrival, the colonists had their first serious encounter with an Indian. In March 1621 they came face to face with Samoset, a Wampanoag sachem (leader) of a confederation of about twenty villages. In rudimentary English learned from English fisherman and trappers, Samoset explained about the plague that had just swept through the area. He also told them about Massasoit, who was considered the head Wampanoag sachem, also known as a sagamore. Within a few days, Massasoit appeared at the Plymouth colony accompanied by Tisquantum (Squanto), eager to form an alliance with the colonists in light of the shifting balance of power in the Indigenous world due to the plague. A formal treaty was immediately negotiated, outlining relationships of peace and mutual protection. Massasoit sent Squanto as a liaison between the Native confederation and the colonists, and Squanto taught them Native planting techniques that ensured the bountiful harvest they would enjoy in the fall. Squanto had been kidnapped as a child, sold into slavery, and sent to England, where he learned how to speak English. Having escaped under extraordinary circumstances, he found passage back to Patuxet in 1619 only to find himself the sole male survivor of his village.

The First Thanksgiving

The facts about the first Thanksgiving come from two primary written sources, Edward Winslow’s Mourt’s Relation and William Bradford’s Of Plimouth Plantation. Neither of the accounts are detailed enough to surmise the familiar tale of Pilgrims hosting a feast to thank the Indians for their help, certainly not enough to imagine Englishmen teaching the Indians about thanksgiving as we are sometimes led to believe. The English had an ancient custom of harvest festivals that had been secular, not religious affairs. Spiritual ceremonials of gratitude had always been central cultural attributes among Indigenous peoples who believed in relationships of reciprocity, so the concept of thanksgiving was not new to either group.

Only Winslow’s account, written several weeks after the event, mentions the Indians’ participation. He wrote:

Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week, at which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five Deer, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed on our Governor, and upon the Captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.

Not all historians agree as to what actually happened that day. It is clear that the colonists decided to have a harvest celebration (note that nowhere is the word “thanksgiving” used). As can be deduced from the account, one widely espoused interpretation holds that the Indians were not initially invited to share in the celebration. They came when they heard in the distance the discharge of guns, fired in the exuberance of the festivities. Wondering if there was trouble, the Wampanoags entered the English village with around ninety men. It was only after arriving well-intentioned but uninvited that an invitation to stay was extended. Since there wasn’t enough food to go around, the Indians went out and caught some deer, which they ceremonially presented to the English.

Throughout Mourt’s Relation (written over a period of one year from November 1620 to November of 1621) references are made to the affection and camaraderie between the Plymouth colonists and Massasoit and Squanto, but the tenuous peace was to be short-lived. Acting independently, Squanto had developed rogue tendencies in an apparent power struggle with Massasoit. He increasingly undermined the authority of Massasoit and other sachems, eventually driving a fatal wedge between himself and Massasoit and straining the relations between Massasoit and the colony. By the spring of 1622, Massasoit had ended trade between the confederation and the English, and the colony held on desperately to their relationship with Squanto. In October Squanto died under mysterious conditions. Nataniel Philbrick wrote that although it is difficult to document, he may have been poisoned in an assassination plot masterminded by Massasoit.

Within a few months Massasoit had reestablished diplomatic relations with the colony. He appointed Hobamok as his intermediary, and an uneasy alliance was maintained with the colony until Massasoit’s death around 1661. He would be succeeded by his son Wamsutta, and by 1662 his second son, Metacom, known to the English as King Philip, was in charge. Because of the unrelenting pressure of the English demands for land, relations would deteriorate so severely between the English and the Wampanoags that by 1675, war broke out. Called King Philip’s War, it has come to be seen as the bloodiest, most violent conflict ever fought on American soil. Thus, in light of the larger history, the simplistic idea that Thanksgiving proves that the Indians welcomed the Pilgrims can be more accurately seen as a temporary chapter characterized by maximized political self-interest on all sides.

***

The sooner we disabuse the next generations of the settler-centric mythos of Thanksgiving, the better. For that, we have the young-adult adaptation of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People, adapted by Debbie Reese and Jean Mendoza. For middle-school teachers, we have a complementary lesson plan about Thanksgiving.

About the Authors 

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in rural Oklahoma, the daughter of a tenant farmer and part-Indian mother. She has been active in the international Indigenous movement for more than four decades and is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. After receiving her PhD in history at the University of California at Los Angeles, she taught in the newly established Native American Studies Program at California State University, Hayward, and helped found the Departments of Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies. Her 1977 book The Great Sioux Nation was the fundamental document at the first international conference on Indigenous peoples of the Americas, held at the United Nations’ headquarters in Geneva. Dunbar-Ortiz is the author or editor of seven other books, including Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico. She lives in San Francisco. Follow her on Twitter at @rdunbaro. 

Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes) is a lecturer of American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos, and a consultant and educator in environmental justice policy planning. Her research interests focus on Indigenous nationalism, self-determination, environmental justice, and education. She also works within the field of critical sports studies, examining the intersections of indigeneity and the sport of surfing. She is co-author with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz of Beacon Press’s “All the Real Indians Died Off” and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans, and author of As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock. Follow her on Twitter at @DinaGWhit and visit her website.

A Q&A with Carlos A. Ball

Walmart at Fresno Rainbow Pride Parade and Festival, June 2015. Photo credit: David Prasad

Nowadays, it’s commonplace to see Apple, Facebook, Google, Walmart, and other big businesses marching in Pride parades. You wouldn’t see them there several decades ago. In fact, you wouldn’t see them cosigning domestic partnerships benefits, marriage equality, or LGBTQ rights either. Corporations were openly hostile or indifferent to sexual minorities and transgender people until years’ worth of LGBTQ activism changed their understanding and treatment of queer people. Legal scholar Carlos A. Ball wrote about this little-known history in The Queering of Corporate America: How Big Business Went from LGBTQ Adversary to Ally. Beacon Broadside editor Christian Coleman caught up with Ball to chat with him about it.

Christian Coleman: What was the inspiration behind writing The Queering of Corporate America?

Carlos A. Ball: I was struck, a few years ago, by the ways in which large corporations were coming out (no pun intended) against the passage of anti-LGBTQ laws, such as so-called religious freedom laws and transgender bathroom laws. Partly in response to strong criticism by corporate America, several states, including Arizona, Indiana, and North Carolina, rescinded the anti-LGBTQ laws. That made me start wondering why corporations were taking such public stances in favor of LGBTQ equality, while remaining generally neutral on other so-called hot button social issues. What I uncovered was a long history of LGBTQ activism aimed at corporations that began shortly after the Stonewall riots and that played an instrumental role in pushing large companies to embrace policy positions favoring equality for sexual minorities and transgender individuals. 

CC: You’re a law professor at Rutgers University and an expert in constitutional law. How did your background inform and determine the way you approached the subject matter and wrote the book?

 CAB: I’ve written several books on the history of the LGBTQ movement. Before this project, I had focused, like most commentators, on the movement’s demands of the government, either to stop discriminating itself or to prohibit the private sector from discriminating. But as I started doing my research for this book, I realized my focus up until then had been too narrow, and that I had not paid sufficient attention to the ways in which early activists in the 1970s and 1980s sought to apply pressure directly on large companies to stop discriminating and to support LGBTQ equality positions. So I would say that I was already attuned to the effective pressure tactics of LGBTQ activists; what I did with this project was to expand the lens to cover activism aimed at the corporate sector.

CC: Would you say the 1990s were a watershed moment of big business, by and large, changing its attitude toward the queer community? It seems from this point on and through the 2000s that corporations were pretty much publicly on board with supporting LGBTQ equality.

CAB: Yes, I would say the 1990s were a tipping point of sorts. By then, LGBTQ activists already had spent about two decades pressuring large companies and educating them about the importance of LGBTQ equality for their employees. It was in the 1990s, especially with the adoption by many Fortune 500 companies of domestic partnership benefits, that many big businesses accepted the basic proposition that the relationships and families of their LGBTQ employees were as worthy of recognition and respect as those of their married heterosexual employees. And once large companies embraced that basic point, it became natural for them to care about not only how their LGBTQ employees were treated inside corporate walls, but outside of them as well.

CC: Do you think the stories in The Queering of Corporate America will help those who feel skeptical about corporate representation at Pride parades?

CAB: My book is not aimed at trying to reduce progressives’ skepticism of large corporations. I think it is important, for example, that Pride parades do not become simply a vehicle for corporate marketing. So I think it is healthy for activists to question excessive participation by corporations in the parades. I also think that progressive activists of all stripes should criticize corporations when they pursue or defend policies that harm society. For example, it is commendable that many large energy companies have LGBTQ-friendly policies, but that should not immunize them from forceful criticism when they pursue profits in ways that endanger the future well-being of the planet. The bottom line is that it is difficult to generalize. Sometimes corporations act responsibly and correctly, and they should be praised for that. My book praises large corporations for their general embrace of LGBTQ equality policies. But corporations should also be questioned and criticized when they pursue harmful policies in the name of maximizing profits.

CC: I was so touched reading about your daughter in the acknowledgments. You wrote that she was in the process of socially transitioning genders when you were working on the book and that she deepened your understanding of some of the transgender issues you address. What were some of those issues?

CAB: It is one thing to understand an issue politically and intellectually; it is another to live it. Over the last few years, I have seen my teenage daughter make her way in a world that repeatedly tries to put people in boxes depending on their assigned gender. Resisting those efforts by living according to one’s own definition and understanding of gender, rather than society’s, takes time, energy, commitment, and courage. Viewing that process from the inside, so to speak, has given me a new appreciation for what transgender individuals go through on a daily basis and has confirmed for me just how morally wrong and harmful discrimination on the basis of gender identity can be. 

CC: The publication of your book couldn’t be more timely. Seeing the news of the Trump administration erasing civil rights protections for LGBTQ health programs, what would you like readers to take away from it?

CAB: I agree with Martin Luther King, Jr., that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” The struggles for civil rights in this country have always entailed some steps forward and some steps backwards. While it is important to resist the Trump administration’s rollbacks in civil rights in every way that we can, we should take solace from the progress that we have made over the last few decades. My book provides part of that story of progress. I think that activists in the 1970s could have never imagined that, for example, hundreds of large American businesses would file a brief with the US Supreme Court in 2015 supporting marriage equality. That was a socially transformative change that resulted from decades of effective and committed LGBTQ activism. Change is possible, but it takes both time and hard work. In the end, I have little doubt that the Trump administration will be on the losing side of history when it comes to LGBTQ civil rights issues. 

About Carlos A. Ball 

Carlos A. Ball is Distinguished Professor of Law and the Judge Frederick Lacey Scholar at Rutgers University. An expert on LGBTQ rights, he is the author of several books, including The First Amendment and LGBT Equality and From the Closet to the Courtroom. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York.

By Peter Jan Honigsberg

A soldier stands guard on a cell block inside Camp Five at Guantánamo Bay. Photo credit: Staff Sgt. Jon Soucy, National Guard Bureau

University Press Week runs each year in November and was first established in 1978 by President Jimmy Carter to recognize “the impact, both here and abroad, of American university presses on culture and scholarship.” This year’s theme is Read. Act. Think., which emphasizes the role that scholarly publishers can play in moving national and international conversations forward on critical and complex issues. As a member of the Association of University Presses, Beacon Press is proud to participate in this year’s blog tour. In our contribution, we are sharing two selections from Peter Jan Honigsberg’s A Place Outside the Law: Forgotten Voices from Guantánamo about Guantánamo Bay prison guards who went off script and saw the humanity in the detainees.

The content of A Place Outside the Law comes from the interviews filmed by Witness to Guantánamo, an organization Hongisberg founded in 2008 to collect and preserve the personal stories from Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. The full-length interviews are held in perpetuity at the Duke University Human Rights Archive in Durham, North Carolina. Clips of them appear on the Witness to Guantánamo website.

***

Brandon Neely’s Story: Facebook Friends

When Brandon Neely sat down to interview with us in Houston, Texas, he brought his wife. She knew much of his story, but it seemed that he wanted her to hear him share his story with us. Maybe he would recall something new, something he had not told her before.

Neely had signed up with the military before the events of 9/11. “When I joined, it was quiet. There was nothing going on around the world. I wasn’t doing much. I was stocking groceries forty hours a week and I knew I needed change. I wanted really to go to college. I’ve been out of school almost two years. Because, you know, I grew up in a military household, so I figured I’d go get some training, something I want to do.”

Neely received his military training. But everything changed after 9/11. As a private, he was assigned to be a prison guard in Guantánamo. (Later, he was elevated to private first class.) Neely was part of the first wave of soldiers to arrive at the detention center before it opened on January 11, 2002. His job was to escort the second detainee off the bus.

One of Neely’s duties during the six months he was in Guantánamo was to walk through the cellblock each day and check on the prisoners. Military officials instructed the guards not to speak to the men. But when Neely heard several detainees speaking English, he could not resist. Perhaps conversing with the men would reduce his boredom. In his conversations, he discovered that the young men in the cells were similar in age and “were doing the same thing I was doing just two weeks ago.”

“I spoke to Ruhal [Ahmed, a detainee from Tipton, a town outside London]. We were talking about girls, nightclubs, music and that we had listened to a lot of the same music. I mean, this could be a guy that I would probably hang out with back in the States, but here he is in Guantánamo. At the time I thought everybody was guilty, so I was just like, he just had to do something to get here. Here we were at Guantánamo, but on opposite sides of the cage.”

Neely also conversed with several other English-speaking detainees, including Shafiq Rasul, who was also from Tipton.

Two years after he had completed his military service, Neely returned home and joined the Houston police force. Because he continued to be interested in Guantánamo, he noticed a story in the media about the Tipton Three. Neely turned to his Facebook account.

“I was like, yeah, I remember those guys. Just for kicks, I put in Shafiq [Rasul’s] name, and there it was. It just popped up with his picture and I said, man, no way this guy is on Facebook. So, I sent one message and we just started talking through [Facebook]. It was just weird.” Neely said, “You find everybody on Facebook now.”

I asked him whether he still communicated with them.

“I talk to Ruhal [Ahmed] and Shafiq [Rasul] through Facebook and text message, you know, maybe a couple of times a week, and we exchange photos of the kids, just normal conversation. Since we’re past the whole awkward stage, I would say that we’re friends.”

Neely flew to London in January 2010 for what he described as a reunion with the men he used to guard. That meeting is memorialized on YouTube.

When I asked Brandon Neely whether he was surprised in how he had once been a prison guard and had now become a good friend of the former detainees, he replied, “I used to be very close-minded. I’ve always said if I could change—anybody could change. I now look at stuff differently. I try to look at the whole picture instead of just one side of it. I really realized like not everything that the media says is what it is, and I’ve kind of opened myself up to different ways of life, ’cause not everything was the way they do it in Texas or any other place. I don’t know anything about their religion or kind of people. But now I’m just open to it all. I guess I’m more open to change and different cultures and different people and that part of it was positive. . . . I just look at it all different.”

Watch a clip of Brandon Neely’s interview from Witness to Guantánamo.

~~~

Terry Holdbrook’s Story: Convert

Before arriving in Guantánamo, Terry Holdbrooks’s military police unit went to visit Ground Zero in New York City, where the towers fell.

“I can only imagine that the purpose behind that was for propaganda, you know. Take us to the place where 9/11 happened, then tell us that Islam and Muslims are to blame. Take us to Guantánamo, obviously everyone is going to be riled up and it’s going to be an effective means of getting the job done,” he told us.

When Private Holdbrooks became a Guantánamo prison guard in summer 2003, the military described the prisoners as “the worst of the worst and a bunch of towel heads and dirt farmers and such.” He explained why the military used such phrases.

“They didn’t want us to trust them or develop any kind of friendship or relationship with them whatsoever. . . . Don’t have conversations with them. Don’t befriend them.”

However, many of the detainees were friendly to Holdbrooks, and he was encouraged by their openness to strike up conversations.

“I spent most of my time talking with detainees. If I was ever going to have an intelligent conversation, it was with a detainee. So, you know, talking about their lives, about where they came from, what society, education, and religion is like in the rest of the world. How often are you going to be in a place where you can meet people from forty some-odd different countries? It just wasn’t something I was going to pass up. I had to, you know, I had to take use of the opportunity,” he said.

Similar to the realizations of prison guard Brandon Neely, Holdbrooks recognized that “these individuals maybe listen to some of the same music that I do or they’ve watched the same movies, you know, we speak the same language, we’re really not all that different. So, I don’t understand why everything the military has told me is not equally up here.”

Becoming friendly with some of the detainees, observing their practices and learning about their lives and their Muslim faith had a powerful effect on Holdbrooks. He began to limit his drinking, changed his diet by eliminating pork and greasy foods, and cut down on the number of cigarettes he had each day. His health improved. He also tried to change his speech, using more descriptive words and eliminating profanity. And he worked on being more positive about others. “These are important in Islam,” he added.

At the time he was becoming more interested in the lives of the detainees and in their faith, it was also “right about that time my wife and I had truly hit our lowest point in our marriage.” It caused him to wonder what he was missing in life, and how other people dealt with life-affecting and life-transforming issues. He was feeling miserable during this period in his life, he told us.

But while feeling miserable, he would look at the detainees and observe that they were “always smiling and happy despite the interrogation, the abuse, and the being away from their families. They are still happy.”

Holdbrooks would wonder, “What are you guys so happy about? What do you have to be happy about? You have the same food, seven days a week. It’s awful. It’s hot out here, you don’t have any air-conditioning. What are you happy about?”

And he would answer his questions: “They got faith. It’s just a test. It’s all it was for them—a test. and seeing them have that cohesion, that brotherhood, that unity, that I didn’t even have with the military.”

Islam began to “make sense” to him. It felt right. “so, I should really just go with this wholeheartedly,” he thought.

He talked with a man known as the “General,” one of the leaders of the detainees in the prison, about converting to Islam. “He blew me off the first time,” Holdbrooks said. Holdbrooks persisted, and ultimately the General consented.

It happened on a midnight shift in December 2003, six months after Holdbrooks had arrived in Guantánamo. The prison was quiet and no other guards were around. Holdbrooks stood in the hallway outside the General’s darkened cell and said his Muslim statement of faith, his Shahada.

Holdbrooks was in Guantánamo for another six months. During that time, many of the detainees knew of his conversion. He kept it secret from the military, but he did reveal it to two of his closest friends. Holdbrooks left the military with the rank of specialist.

Holdbrooks wrote to me in spring 2019 that he is still practicing his Muslim faith.

Watch a clip of Terry Holdbrooks’ interview from Witness to Guantánamo.

About the Author 

Peter Jan Honigsberg is a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law and the founder and director of Witness to Guantánamo. His research and teaching focuses on the rule of law and human rights violations that occurred in the detention center in Guantánamo, as well as on the study of terrorism and post-9/11 issues. His books include Our Nation Unhinged and A Place Outside the Law. Honigsberg lives in Berkeley, CA.

By Kyle T. Mays

This Native American Heritage month, I want to bring a moment of historical clarity to the topics of solidarity and tension as they play out in the contemporary connection between African American and Native American peoples. I am Black American and Saginaw Chippewa. My mother’s side of the family is from Cleveland, my dad’s side of the family from Detroit. I am the descendant of Indigenous peoples in North America and Indigenous peoples from Africa. I know the former; I have yet to find out about the latter. Coming to terms with the relationship between these peoples, their histories in the US—and recovering these histories—is important to me and surely to Native people committed to ending antiblackness and uplifting the voices of their relatives. 

From the moment the first Indigenous Africans were brought to a settler colony to work in lands that Europeans were taking from Native peoples, their futures would be embroiled in the ongoing twin oppressions of dispossession and enslavement. As we celebrate Native American Heritage Month, we should at least recall an important point: that the Africans kidnapped from their homelands were and remained Indigenous peoples. They had their own cultures, languages, spiritual beliefs, and above all, a deep tie to their lands. If that ain’t Indigenous, then I don’t know what is!  

In our telling of mainstream colonial history, we assume that African (Indigenous) selves were completely shattered during the Middle Passage. Yes, lives were changed, in some fundamental ways, but not in every way. As the saying in the Black Oral Tradition goes, they made a “way outta no way.” They still remembered their homelands. We know from numerous accounts, including the posthumously published Barracoon, written by Black literary genius, Zora Neale Hurston, which has become a New York Times best-seller, that Indigenous Africans kept the remnants of their languages, which still remain in, for instance, as Geneva Smitherman taught us, the form of US Black English. Moreover, as Black radical theorist Cedric Robinson argues in Black Marxism, Africans, though forced by Europeans to toil in dispossessed lands, maintained their humanity in the form of  “African cultures, critical mixes and admixtures of language thought . . . of habits, beliefs, and morality.” These African forms of language did not disappear. I now want to discuss the pits of linguistic solidarity.

Solidarity in general is fleeting, and Black and Indigenous solidarity has been up and down since the era of Black and Red Power. Since at least the Resistance at Standing Rock and the formation of Black Lives Matter, there have been numerous demonstrations of Black and Indigenous solidarity. Over the last year, I’ve seen numerous Native people comment on non-Black-Indigenous people using the N-word. The social media version goes something like this: if you’re not Afro-Indigenous (here meaning someone who is African American and Native American), then you should not be using the term. Here is a good example that resurfaced from 2015, during Indigenous Peoples’ Day (formerly Columbus Day; The only Christopher we now acknowledge is Wallace).

On November 26, 2015, The Daily Mail, a United Kingdom online news source, did a series of short videos featuring a variety of Native Americans on the topics of Christopher Columbus, Thanksgiving, and the term r*dsk*n (hereafter the ‘R-word). While the point of the videos was to offer Indigenous voices on these issues, perhaps the most intriguing one was on the R-word.

The interviewer asked one person about the use of the R-word. Here is the dialogue:

Offensive. Whenever you use the term nigger or redskin or whitey or ch*nk, it’s definitely not a good thing to use.

Interviewer: Has anyone ever called you a “redskin” or anything else insulting?

Respondent: “A river n****r.” I’ve been called that all throughout high school. I was like, 1 out of 4 Native Americans. So, I experienced a lot of racism. And I still do. I definitely speak up. I definitely, in a good way, let people know that using offensive words is not something that will help us progress as a nation.”

The issue that people had was her use of the N-word. She is correct in being offended. Both R-word and the N-word are steeped in white supremacy. Arguably, Black folks have more sway in the public sphere in getting attention on issues (from white people?), and so the comparison makes sense. The R-word is racist, demeaning, and, as far as I can tell, in general, Indigenous people don’t use it as a term of endearment. However, the missing part of the analysis is that, while both are steeped in white supremacy, the N-word is slightly more complicated.

Black people use the N-word in a variety of contexts. Black people don’t “call” each other the N-word. As Smitherman points out, to “call implies name-calling, a linguistic offense.” It can be used positively, negatively, or neutrally. The N-word is used, as Smitherman notes, “to address another African American, as a greeting, or to refer to a Brotha or Sista.” We hear the word in hip-hop music. And it’s a fact that some Black people allow for non-Black people to use it. However, Kendrick Lamar didn’t allow this white woman to use it last year. So, we can’t say that hip-hop is to blame for why non-Black people want to use it.

What we can learn from these lessons is that context matters. The question people should ask is this: Who can say what to whom and with what consequences? Another question we should ask, is should we even compare the two words in the first place? If we do, who benefits and who does not? Native people have been fighting racist epithets and mascots for a long time, most recently in the documentary More Than A Word, by Standing Rock Sioux brothers, John and Kenn Little.

The words we use matter. How and why we make comparisons matter. Most importantly, it is not simply the use of the comparison, but it is important for solidarity. The discourse we use and how we talk about racism and oppression are just as vital the actions we take. If we are going to engage in solidarity, then language must be a crucial part of our liberation.

As we celebrate Native American Heritage Month, let us remember that coalitions are not easy. Solidarity is hard work. As Black queer feminist Audre Lorde stated in ‘Learning from the 60s,’ “any future vision which can encompass all of us, by definition, must be complex and expanding, not easy to achieve.” There is no guarantee that we will get along. We are not “natural” allies. We will definitely make mistakes. But if we are going to defeat racial capitalism and Indigenous dispossession, we need solidarity. We need what Leanne Betasamosake Simpson calls a “radical resurgence” and what Robin D. G. Kelley calls “freedom dreams.” We need radical resurgent freedom dreams that recover histories and help us achieve the decolonial future we want. In this hour, at this moment, our very lives depend on them.

About the Author 

Kyle T. Mays, PhD (Black/Saginaw Anishinaabe) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies and the American Indian Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes: Modernity and Hip Hop in Indigenous North America (SUNY Press, 2018). He is currently writing An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States with Beacon Press.

By Jude Casimir

Little Miss Flint (Amariyanna “Mari” Copeny) leads the March for Science, April 14, 2018. Photo credit: Hillel Steinberg.

By now, you’ve probably heard of Greta Thunberg, the sixteen-year-old Swedish activist who’s credited with bringing much-needed attention to the climate crisis and reinvigorating youth environmental activism. You’ve most likely heard about how she passionately and bravely took the stage in September in the midst of the worldwide climate strikes to address the highly esteemed attendees of the United Nations Climate Action Summit. You’ve probably seen the #HowDareYou hashtag echoing throughout social media over the past few weeks. If you read Beacon Broadside regularly, you’ve definitely been introduced to her.

Point is, you probably know who Greta Thunberg is.

But you’ve probably heard much less about young people like Mari Copeny, otherwise known as Little Miss Flint, who has been bringing attention to the Flint water crisis since she was eight years old. You probably don’t know a lot about Anna Lee Rain Yellowhammer and the Indigenous youth activist group ReZpect Our Water that formed back in 2016 in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline. You probably aren’t tuned in on the Brown and Black kids and youth around the globe, from Myanmar to Brazil, who were out striking along with Greta.

If you didn’t know about these activists and groups, it isn’t your fault. There’s a reason why these groups haven’t been given as great a platform as Greta, and that has to do with the media’s consistent whitewashing of climate activism and White Environmentalism being framed as the only answer. And whether you’re ready to acknowledge it or not, you’re probably complicit in it. If you’ve shared the aforementioned coverage of Greta, you’re probably complicit. If you’ve said something along the lines of “the kids are alright” in response to your exposure to her, you’re probably complicit.

Whitewashing activism of any kind isn’t new. It wasn’t new when the abolition of slavery was centered around the morality of white people rather than the violent and systematic dehumanization of the actual slaves. It wasn’t new in the 1960s or 70s during anti-war movements, nor was it new last year in the wake of the Parkland shooting when the white child survivors were the ones centered and spotlighted as gun violence heroes.

It’s hardly surprising either. In a world shaped by subjugation at the hands of white supremacy, in systems built to uphold white injustice, it really shouldn’t come as any shock that this is the case. White supremacy is so prevalent it permeates through good intention and often perverts any good effort. So, it doesn’t surprise me. But it does infuriate me. As a Black disabled woman, it does wear me down. It’s exhausting that Black and Brown people who have been speaking and shouting and screaming about issues like this must constantly and consistently wait for white people to realize the value of nature before they can act and take anything seriously. It’s further dehumanizing to be ignored only to have white people be heard over you. Our message just isn’t digestible if it doesn’t come from white people.

And I’ve observed that the value white environmentalism extracts from nature is always abstract. It’s always rooted in a vague sense of being “out there,” and it never addresses very real environmental injustices like environmental racism. It never addresses the fact that pollution follows the poor most closely. It isn’t rooted in decolonization and anticapitalism as it should be. Rarely does it ever go deeper than veganism being super great and the idea that plastic straws should be banned even though disabled and chronically ill people, myself included, have spoken out repeatedly about the harm in pushing these as actual solutions. But, honestly, why should it? Middle- and upper-class white people, the people who are always placed at the forefront of these movements, the loudest ones, don’t have to worry about these things, so why should they care beyond abstractions?

I should stress that none of this is Greta Thunberg’s fault. The entirety of the impact of white supremacy and the media’s insistence on pushing white activism doesn’t fall on this one teen’s shoulders. In fact, she has been in the news recently for reaching out to Indigenous activists like Tokatawin Iron Eyes of the Lakota people, who participated in the Standing Rock protests and has engaged in climate activism for many years prior. Greta is paying the attention forward. But this isn’t enough. Greta may have a team behind her, but she is still only one person. Just as it isn’t her fault that white supremacy exists, it also shouldn’t all be on her to bring attention to environmental injustices that go beyond her reach as a middle-class white girl who has barely begun life. 

As Greta herself mentioned, this climate crisis shouldn’t be on any young person’s shoulders. But it is. And if you call yourself an environmentalist, if you take yourself seriously as an activist, you better be working on recognizing your complicity in white supremacy and listening to all the youth climate activists involved. If you truly think the climate crisis is an important issue, you need to uplift the voices of Black and Brown youth as much as you do the already megaphoned white ones.

About the Author 

Jude Casimir sometimes writes things, and her passions include movies, books, TV, (especially American Vandal, the best show Netflix has put out), and socialism. She lives in a small town in Central Massachusetts and is desperately hoping to get back to the city sometime soon. She graduated from Worcester State University, and she ultimately wants to start her own online publication for marginalized people. For now, though, you can find her on Twitter: @itsjustjude.

By Leah Vernon

Photo credit: Velvet d’Amour

When you nope your way out of stifling expectations of others to live life on your own terms, you find freedom to be your full, authentic self. Leah Vernon was often told she was too fat, too Black, too Muslim, too slutty, too angry. She broke free from the naysaying and found her calling as a plus-size Hijabi model, social media influencer, public speaker, and freelance writer. In this selection from her debut memoir, Unashamed: Musings of a Fat, Black Muslim, she tells us about her identity battle with her hijab.

***

The identity battle with my hijab continued well into adulthood. As I started to come to terms with it, that it was in fact my choice to wear it or not, others’ disdain for it mounted.

I was hyperaware of my surroundings when I wore it, especially around white folks—they were the ones doing the most when it came to assaults and verbal attacks. I was lucky that I didn’t live in the south where bigots gave zero fucks about putting their hands on you if they thought in their little minds that you were Muslim. Although I was Black, ancestors straight from slavery, I was still visibly Muslim. The more “Islamic” I dressed, the more people would side-eye me. I’ve had people in waiting rooms get up from their seats and move away. I’ve had people stare me down, make me feel like nothing. I’ve had comments made about my hijab, whether or not I was concealing a bomb underneath it. One day, I was asked if I was wearing all black to work because of Osama bin Laden’s death.

I once met this girl from the Middle East my freshman year of college. “I didn’t know you were Muslim,” I said and gave her the Islamic greeting.

“Yeah, it’s okay.” She shrugged. “My sister and I don’t wear it anymore, you know, cuz 9/11.”

I nodded. I got it, but then again, I didn’t. I wasn’t taking off my hijab. Not for other people’s ignorance. If I was going to take it off, it’d be because I wanted to. not because I was pressured by society’s ill view of Muslims.

People wear their hijabs (or don’t) for many different reasons, but the majority of people, including Becky at the restaurant, believe that it is a universal sign of oppression. The media has made it so that close-minded individuals have been brainwashed to think that when they see a Muslim woman covering her hair and body, it automatically equates with her being forced to by her evil Arabic-speaking father. They have all these notions of you being bald, forced into an arranged marriage, being subservient to a man, and that you absolutely, unequivocally, couldn’t be a feminist. All hell would break loose if a hijabi was a feminist.

Deciding, really deciding, to unapologetically wear my hijab for me has been the most freeing and rebellious and feminist thing I could possibly do.

I didn’t wear my hijab for others, so they could think that I was a good, practicing Muslim. Nah. I did it because it was me, my crown, my shield. It told people that I was strong in my belief, whether I said it or not. I was proud and loud of who I was. And because I was so “out there” with it, it made individuals (like Becky) very, very uncomfortable. They just couldn’t figure out how a girl like me continued to defy odds, being different, being openly true, while getting beat down daily for being a minority Muslim.

I went through a phase when the pressures of being a “poster girl” Muslim got to me. I was visibly hijabi, fat, and Black. I thought that I had something to prove. I wanted acceptance and validation from everyone. Fat girls were seen a certain way, so I needed to dispel those stereotypes. Black girls from Detroit were seen a certain way, so I needed to rise above and be totally non-ghetto, code-switch the hell out of my vocabulary. And Muslims were seen as homophobic extremists. So I had to be cool, and out-of-the-box, and most of all, nonthreatening.

All of that identity shit weighed on me. With all that bending and reshaping, I began to lose a sense of self. I didn’t have anyone to let me know that it was perfectly fine to be who the fuck I wanted to be. No one told me that I didn’t owe shit to anyone. I didn’t have to be a poster child, spokesperson, or representative for any one of the minority groups that I belonged to. I could be me. Unapologetically.

As Muslims, we are taught to be perfect. In front of our peers, in the media, at work, at that nearby coffee shop. We are taught that we are being watched by not only God, but others, and that we need to be amazing individuals who aren’t touched by mental illness, sexual abuse, or homosexuality. We’ve created these ridiculous ideologies that we can only fit nicely into these frames.

I stopped caring about unattainable expectations. I stopped striving for a level of perfection that I was never going to bask in. And every day, I worked on finding me. Not allowing stereotypes to define me.

For one thing, I knew I was Muslim. Wasn’t really sure what kind of Muslim I was, but I was Muslim. I knew I was probably always going to be fat. And I couldn’t change that I was Black, and I wasn’t going to start bleaching and looking like the new Lil’ Kim. So, I swam in the greatness of what those individual things meant to me. They meant originality, they meant power, they meant hope.

~~~

Before the internet, real-life trolls, aka haters, would shame me. My earliest memory was at the mosque for Friday prayer. When a Muslim makes salat, it is a sacred time, a quiet time; one must not break concentration and one must not talk or touch the person who makes salat. When I knelt down to put my head to the prayer rug, someone, some-fuckin-body, thought that my outfit was obviously not up to prayer standards and proceeded to grab the bottom hem of my shirt and yank it down over my lower back and butt. As you can only imagine, all concentration was lost, and my link to our creator was broken as anger grew around my soul like vines. I wanted to break my prayer and be like, “Which one of y’all touched me?”

Muslims don’t show their skin! I imagined one of the old heads saying, once I found out who the culprit was. Needless to say, I never found out who inadvertently policed my body, even during something as sacred as prayer.

My Muslim girl indecencies only grew from there.

I started to wear short sleeves. Was scolded for that. I wore pants instead of skirts. Was scolded for that. I wore sundresses instead of an abaya. Was scolded for that.

Muslim men made me feel the most uncomfortable in my own skin. They’d secretly call me names like “slut” and “whore” and “bitch,” because a girl who dressed the way she wanted couldn’t have been good news. The interesting thing was that many of them would’ve slept with me (and a few tried), yet I was all the bad things in the holy book and labeled as a “hoejabi.”

I first heard the term “hoejabi” when I was a teenager. A hoejabi wore red lipstick, and with her hijab rocked tight jeans with rips in them exposing her thigh meat. She partied just as hard and went on dates with non-Muslim men. She cussed and did as she pleased. All secretly, of course. A lot of us Muslim women live double lives out of fear of the term, being deemed a hoejabi. Being outed in the community and ostracized for doing the same as men.

I used to be one of those women. Delving into the hoejabi lifestyle, yet checking over my shoulder for brothers in the community in the same damn club waiting to uncover a Muslim sister doing the same wrong as them. One time I was at the club with two of my Muslim girlfriends. It was New Year’s Eve. Neither of them wore their scarves, and as for me, I had the most un-Islamic dress on ever. My boobs were out, as well my legs and arms. I gave zero fucks. I just wanted to see what it was like to not be all covered up. In the crowd, one of my friends suddenly pointed, and I ducked when I saw who it was.

“Girl! That’s ole dude from the mosque.” I grabbed her wrist, trying to pull her into the other direction. “We can’t go over there. I don’t have any clothes on!”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s whatever.”

“Fuck,” I said under my breath, as I followed behind.

I crossed my arms over my chest trying to maintain some form of modesty, and barely made eye contact as they gave hugs and Islamic greetings.

One of them had alcohol in his hand. “So, what are y’all sisters doing at the club with no scarfs on?”

“What are you doing here in the same club with a drink in your hand?” I cocked my head to the side.

He laughed uncomfortably.

“I’m out,” I said, squeezing back into the crowd. At that moment, I knew he was going to go back to the community and tattle on us.

Not only are Islamic communities policing and playing into this one-size-fits-all hijabi stereotype, but the media is as well. now, folks are confused as to what a real Muslim woman looks like. We’ve turned the common hijabi into a one-dimensional caricature. And, once again, anyone else who doesn’t fit into that mold is quickly discredited, and if we don’t shut up, we get trolled and dismissed.

Look around you. The rise of the Instagram hijabi blogger has swept the internet for the last decade. She is usually a size four, her aesthetic is pastels; either she wears her hijab wrapped traditionally or, if she’s a little edgy, she may even wear a loosely tied turban that she claims is so cutting-edge, when Africans have been wearing turbans for hundreds of years. She’s either a pale Middle Easterner or white-passing, with a hubby with an amazing beard that he obviously conditions weekly cuz like, wow, it’s incredibly shiny. He makes corny cameos in her YouTube videos. She has someone take photos of her making salat in a very New York chic way. Can beat her face, travels the world, expenses paid. And bills? What’s a bill? Owns a fancy Bengal cat named Sahar. Usually a virgin, even though she has two kids, because Muslim women definitely don’t have sex and are just impregnated by sheer will and the divinity of God.

If you look at all the diversity and inclusion campaigns meant to fight against Islamophobia or from companies wanting to jump on them Muslim millennial dollars, you will see the cookie-cutter Muslimah. Tell me, where is the lie here?

As a fat, Black Muslim who definitely doesn’t wear pastels and may or may not cuss like someone’s disgruntled uncle, I am overlooked. My voice unheard. My stories discredited. and my faith constantly questioned. Muslims as a whole are fighting today for equality and proper representation in the media and within non-Muslim communities. Funny how they seem to forget the in-betweenies, the dark Muslim, the alternative Muslims, and Muslims who are queer. How do you fight for justice for one and not for all?

About the Author 

Leah Vernon is a plus-size Hijabi model, social media influencer, public speaker, and freelance writer. She’s been featured by Buzzfeed, Yahoo, CBC, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Seventeen, and the New York Times, and she’s worked with brands including Adidas, Lululemon, and Universal Standard. She speaks at universities and organizations across the country on topics of intersectional feminism, race, religion and spirituality, cultural sensitivity, social media, and branding. She grew up in Detroit but currently resides in New York City. Connect with her on Instagram (@Lvernon2000) and on her website (Leahvernon.com).

By Maya Fernandez

Photo credit: Peter Monsanto

To know Ntozake Shange was a privilege. Like many Black women, I was first introduced to her brilliance in college when I read her choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf and found myself in her words. As I immersed myself in her other written work, I learned that she wrote boldly with a heartbreaking and beautiful honesty that centers the stories and lives of Black people across the diaspora, and particularly, Black women and girls. She never dulled her experience or language for the sake of making a mainstream white audience feel comfortable, and instead, wrote plays, poetry, novels, and essays that affirmed Black lives, culture, and being. Her writing exuded pain, joy, warmth, brilliance, and she was constantly moving beyond the written page and letting her art take multiple forms, especially on the stage. In both her writing and life, Ntozake Shange practiced a mesmerizing authority that required those around her to make space and take in her dynamic presence, intelligence, and artistry.

I began working with Ntozake Shange on the reissue of If I Can Cook/You Know God Can for Beacon’s Celebrating Black Women Writers series. When we first reached out to her about reissuing the book, she was thrilled to hear we were refreshing her collection of recipes, memories, and stories from the Black diaspora and eagerly offered to write new material. What I anticipated as being limited interactions with a literary icon quickly turned into frequent communication, as she started to call me regularly to discuss her ideas for the reissue. Ms. Shange (and, no, I never called her “Ntozake” or even her nickname “Zake,” because my mother would not have approved of that, and I couldn’t bring myself to refer to the Ntozake Shange by her first name) began each of our conversations with, “Hi Maya, it’s Ntozake.” It was always a short and direct greeting, and before I could fully respond she was already ahead of me, discussing her most recent drafts and thoughts for the book, leaving me to quickly scribble notes.

As a young assistant and then editor, I relished in these phone calls, soaking up her words and grasping onto each sentence knowing that this was an artist at work. When she couldn’t reach me, I’d return to my desk to find a voicemail waiting with her signature, “Hi Maya, it’s Ntozake,” followed by a flurry of information I’d have to listen to a few times in order to I catch every word.

Once we covered the business in our calls, she would take a moment to catch up. The conversation would shift to discussing topics such as the origins of my last name or her recent trip to Brooklyn for an Afropunk festival, which she very much enjoyed. I am forever grateful for these casual conversations with a woman whose work impacted me so personally.

Last year on her seventieth birthday, Ms. Shange left me a voicemail that ended up being our last correspondence. At the time, she was in the midst of preparing for the release of the new edition of If I Can Cook and working on several new projects. Her excitement was palpable. Something I learned while working with her, was her unrelenting need to always create and write. Her work never ceased, regardless of the health issues she experienced during her later life, exemplifying her innate artistry. Though shortly after her birthday, she passed away in her sleep on October 27, 2018.

One of the new projects she was working on her next book, which focuses on Black movement and dance. As a dancer and performer herself, Shange’s written work often coincided with the stage, and her love of Black dance was something that she believed needed to be shared widely. Originally signed to Beacon by former editor Tisha Hooks, in 1997, the book was put on hold for two decades, because Shange suffered from two strokes and needed time to recover. But following the completion of the new material for If I Can Cook, she was determined to pick the project back up and share her personal history of Black dance with readers.

I am pleased and honored to share that in October 2020, Beacon Press is publishing Dance We Do: A Poet Explores Black Dance. Told through a series of portraits and interviews with prominent Black dancers and choreographers, along with her personal journey as a dancer, Ntozake Shange welcomes us into a world of movement, culture, and expression. She documents her early beginnings as a student learning from those who trained her, moved with her, and inspired her, as she shares the exquisite power of the Black body. In her authoritative tradition, she places these often-overlooked Black stories at the center of her writing, affirming that Black dance is a life of a people, and argues that it passes along the intergenerational history of the diaspora. Though she couldn’t complete the book in its entirety, this is one of the many gifts she has left behind. Dance We Do commands space while also welcoming readers into her early rhythmic beginnings.

The loss of Ntozake Shange is one that affected so many of us. Her writing gave solace, her art inspired, and her poetry provided guidance. But like she lived, Ms. Shange acted with a purpose, and her determination to create work that we can enjoy after she is no longer with us was intentional. In a 1995 interview with Rebecca Carroll for Mother Jones, she said, “I write for young girls of color, for girls who don’t even exist yet, so that there is something there for them when they arrive . . . I concentrate on giving this to young people because they are the treasurers of black culture.”

So today, on what would be Ms. Shange’s seventy-first birthday, I would like to thank her for doing exactly that. She leaves behind a collection of work that each day impacts a new reader. Her timeless art continues to be enjoyed through multiple mediums. This is definitely true with the exciting revival of for colored girls that is currently onstage at the Public Theater from October 8 to December 1. With the upcoming publication of Dance We Do, her legacy continues to tell the untold stories of Black culture and provide space for those who have yet to come. If you are interested in updates about the book, please subscribe to our newsletter.

In the 2018 epilogue of the new edition of If I Can Cook/You Know God Can, Ms. Shange signs off saying she is “Somewhere in the Diaspora.” With her work findings new readers each day, I like to think that with her writing and spirit remains somewhere in the diaspora. Happy Birthday, Ms. Shange!

About the Author 

Maya Fernandez, assistant editor, joined Beacon Press after graduating from American University in 2016.