Race, Gender and Welfare.

Planned Parenthood Summary Post.

In fact, one of the reasons I felt the urgent need to right something about this (other than overhearing yet another disturbing comment about a black woman’s child-bearing habits on television) is the candidacy of Newt Gingrich.  For those who do not know, Gingrich was one of the main architect’s of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act. Gingrich and others convinced the public of the need for welfare reform by engaging in  a lot of rhetoric about the childbearing and child-rearing habits of women on welfare – especially among African American women.

The reason for this particular post is that I am personally fed up.  I am fed up with the derogatory, racist, sexist, objectifying, and to be perfectly honest just plain rude comments about my fertility and motherhood.  So I am offering brief and somewhat funny (in that I laugh so I won’t cry kind of way) summaries of the comments received over the last year and a half since giving birth to my second child:

I understand that some in will consider this taking a big risk here, since I am on the job market and in academia there is always that question of divulging one’s parental status, but given the fact that I am a parent of an eight year old and eighteen months old boys I have never considered NOT divulging an option – this was especially true when I was interviewing for my current position while 8mos pregnant – try hiding THAT from a search committee!

1. Are you planning on telling them about all of your kids on your job interview? 

This came from a “concerned” colleague who I was acquainted when I was interviewing for work a little while ago, I found the wording odd given that I have only 2 children which hardly warrants the use of the word  ”all.”  I mean really, I am not sure under what conditions this question is appropriate but I have heard this phrasing a number of times in reference to my own and other WOC parenting.  My least favorite is:

2. Well, nobody TOLD you to have ALL of THOSE babies.

This is often uttered by someone close to you, and in my case usually comes from a “well-meaning” relative like an aunt, cousin, or sister-in-law, and is usually meant to refer to the fact that in choosing to have my children I have broken some cardinal rules of childbearing that all “good” women must abide by.    1.  I had my children after prime childbearing age (this is different in every family, culture, tradition). In my family this is after the age of 35. 2.  I stubbornly hold on to my career despite the fact that I am a mother.  And possibly worst of all:  3.  I am a single parent, to make matters worse I am a single mother and I have the audacity to do this while being black and giving birth to – hold your breath – boys! I know, for shame, I am being slightly tongue-in-cheek, but I am feeling your collective scorn even as I write this.  I have often thought that if Dante’ were to write the Inferno in 2011 even he would have found a place for black single mothers in hell – he probably would have placed us somewhere between the eighth and ninth circles – so vilified are we.  At any rate, now that I have “all” of these babies, I am now saddled or you might even say cursed, and well, isn’t that how it should be?  I mean, nobody “told” me to do it, right?  And since I did, I should be miserable (which I am not), my children pathological (which they are not), and then the social order will prove correct.  If I am poor, physically ill, get abused and fail, then it is my own damn fault – period.

3. Oh, I forgot you are a “breeder”  I’ll let you get home to all your babies.

Okay, this one is hard because I hear it so often particularly from nonchildbearing academic compatriots.  I mean I have a lot of respect and try to create a space for people who do not have children.  Since I went a great deal of time living without small children in my life, I understand not everyone wants to engage them in their space – this is why I always ask.  Suffice to say, if you are friends with a black woman and you:  a) do not have children, and  b) are not black, never – under no circumstances refer to her as a breeder.  In fact, you should never refer to a black woman or any woman as a breeder, I mean really (damn).  This  should require very little explanation, it’s not clever, just racist and sexist.

4.  So, do you receive any support from their fathers? Is their dad financially responsible and part of their lives?

Again, just plain rude.  Unless you are a social worker or working in that capacity, how is this your business? This is curiosity purely for the purpose of gossip and well, you know where Dante’ placed gossips.  After living in a very small town in Iowa for five years I have learned to deal with this question with humor (like sugar – it helps the medicine go down). So now when people ask (which happens less frequently) I simply tell the truth but add, but I am always happy to add more patrons, are you offering?

These are just the main themes, I am sure if I come back to the post, I could come up with more.  And with regard to having children and working in academia well, it’s been blogged about before and believe me by better folks than me – I love this post Professor Mamma from the folks at the now defunct “Bitch Ph.D.”

Upon reflection, this post is really a composite of the number of comments received from people referring to my children as “all your babies” or “all your kids.”  This odd linguinstic twist occurred with the birth of my second child, and I find it odd because I only have two children.  Usually all refers to a lot more than two, which got me thinking, is this a race thing?  Read the comments and feel free to judge for yourselves.

And, since I always keep my promises, here is some suggested reading to get you started (more to come later):

The Black Feminist Reader

Joy Jame’s “Shadow Boxing” 

Mignon Moore’s “Invisible Families”

Ruth Feldstein’s “Motherhood in Black and White”

Dorothy Robert’s “Killing The Black Body”

http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2011/10/question-of-day_19.html

Melissa’s question is: “What types of women’s stories do you wish were told more often in literature, film, and other media?”

Here is my answer:

- A woman who has an abortion and feels no guilt whatsoevever.
- A woman who loses her virginity on her own terms, has an orgasm and feels no guilt whatsoever.
- A woman who has sex with multiple partners on her own terms, gets pleasure out of it and feels no guilt whatsoever AND is not slut-shamed by everyone around her.
- A woman who is raped, takes her rapist to court and wins, without being slut-shamed by the court system and without having to meet any criteria for being a “good victim.” (I realize this is not realistic, but the media can provide escapism and sometimes I like that).
- The stories of women who have been raped, full stop.
- A woman who is fat and has an active romantic life with partners who like her just the way she is.
- A woman who is fat and does not feel awful because of it.
- Fat women’s stories, full stop.
- A woman in the armed forces.
- Trans women’s stories.
- Women of color’s stories.
- Lesbian women’s stories.
- Asexual women’s stories.
- Bisexual and Pansexual women’s stories.
- The stories of women sex workers.
- Poor womens’ stories.
- The stories of women who are victims of domestic violence.
- The stories of women who have physical disabilities.
- The stories of women who have mental illnesses.
- Feminist women’s stories.
- The stories of women who are more than one of the above.

I often see women like those above (well, except for the fourth one) as characters in other people’s stories, and they are nearly always reduced to caricatures or stereotypes. I would like to see their stories from their own points of view. This isn’t a comprehensive list either; there are plenty of stories I’m not even thinking of that I would still love to see.

Anyway, after a week of reading posts about the very RUDE comments endured by members of the class (particularly the women in the class) from their male classmates and reviewing the statistics/newspaper articles/journal reports that have become a part of the daily attack on the reproductive rights and freedoms of all women, I find myself returning to the question of anger.  Why are women so angry, or to put it more succinctly why are we so afraid of our anger?  Looking around there is a lot to be angry about.

Here is a brief list of some of the things that I am angry about:
1.  Mississippi attempts to ban birth control
http://www.thenation.com/article/163808/ban-birth-control-they-wouldnt-dare

2. Just about anything that happens in Kansas

3.  This billboard and others like it

4. The fact that the recession has had a disproportionate effect on women of color and single mothers -and nobody seems to care: http://www.thenation.com/article/36882/african-americans-virtual-depression

5.  The pay gap:

White Men: $1.00
White Women: .71
Black Women: .60
Latina/Hispanic Women: .50

Remember anger can be good, it can be productive. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a female equilvalent of Joe the Plumber?  So, what makes you angry?

Yes you can, dear. And no it’s not, homie.

First, when one makes a statement like that you get a major F in intersectionality 101 my dahlings. By creating these rigid categories of identity -one fails to see that many folks  are located across these identities. In other words-they are fat, black and queer. Oh my word.

Inadvertently, you are denying their existence by creating normative constuctions of what black is (slender, heterosexual, male) or what queer is (slender, white).

Secondly, you are barring fat folk from engaging with already existing discourses of critique. See, when you take seriously fatphobia and fat based discrimination and you see the way that these things intersect with racialized thinking (for instance the thought that whiteness defines what it is to be human or civilized), you can start to make amazing connections. Lesley over at Fatshionista does this when she talks about the queering affect of fatness.

Another example would be the way in which black fatness leads to certain types of policing within the black community. This policing is of course tied to the impact of white supremacy on black life; it also is a means to narrow who can be included in blackness proper –a class determined idea of black citizenry.   

You didn’t think the media made such a big deal about Michelle Obama’s arms for nothing, right?

But alas we stumble upon a caveat. If you (as a fat acceptance activist/scholar) are going to engage with this type of comparative  body politics, you have to take it seriously. You can’t just throw these comparisons around to promote the idea that fat people have it worse than black folks. When you do that you also fail intersectionality 101. Remember those fat folks of color???

You need to be aware of your positionality. For instance, you can think about how your whiteness affords you privilege but how your fatness can undermine or complicate this privilege.

It’s tough work. I’m still over here trying to find articulations that make sense of my fat,black, hijabi, Muslimness.