episode two.
PITCHFORK: Action Bronson Teaches You How to Make Guacamole in Latest Episode of Food Show "Fuck, That's Delicious"
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Monday, June 16, 2014
Sunday, June 15, 2014
venus.
a moment of clarity.
words.
"Since the early 1980s, executives and financiers have consolidated control over dozens of industries across the U.S. economy. From cable companies and hospitals to airlines, grocery stores and meatpackers, where once many small and mid-size businesses competed, today we see a few giants dominate. They use their power to raise prices, drive down wages and foreclose opportunity. Wealth is transferred from consumers, workers and entrepreneurs to affluent executives and shareholders.
The ongoing debate in America over economic inequality — as seen, for instance, in the Occupy movement and the success of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” — is a vital one. But it is incomplete. The challenge is not limited to the decline of organized labor, tax cuts for the well-off and the increased power of Wall Street. The lack of competition in many sectors of the U.S. economy is also a powerful driver of economic disparity.
...Many factors drive the inequality of wealth and income in America, but decreased competition matters because the concentration of economic power also concentrates political power, which in turn positions dominant companies to reshape economic policies in ways that further favor them. Many of the important policy decisions that have contributed to inequality in recent decades — including financial deregulation and lower corporate taxes — reflect the lobbying of oligopolistic corporations.
...We can restore a more fair and competitive economy. To do so, we must realize, first, that intense concentration across our markets contributes to inequality. Second, we must recognize that we have the right to use laws to neutralize the power of these corporate giants. Americans in the Gilded Age freed themselves from the clutches of Standard Oil and the railroads because they knew that markets and economic outcomes were theirs to shape. Today, by contrast, we frequently surrender this power by assuming that inequality is a result of impersonal forces — technology, globalization — to be tracked and studied by technocrats, rather than a condition we can change through popular will and political action.
...the relationship between uncompetitive markets and inequality is largely ignored. Let’s not forget that earlier generations overcame the concentrated wealth and power of the Gilded Age by restoring competitive markets, a pillar of economic and political democracy. We can do it again."
THE WASHINGTON POST: How America became uncompetitive and unequal
words.
"Since the early 1980s, executives and financiers have consolidated control over dozens of industries across the U.S. economy. From cable companies and hospitals to airlines, grocery stores and meatpackers, where once many small and mid-size businesses competed, today we see a few giants dominate. They use their power to raise prices, drive down wages and foreclose opportunity. Wealth is transferred from consumers, workers and entrepreneurs to affluent executives and shareholders.
The ongoing debate in America over economic inequality — as seen, for instance, in the Occupy movement and the success of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” — is a vital one. But it is incomplete. The challenge is not limited to the decline of organized labor, tax cuts for the well-off and the increased power of Wall Street. The lack of competition in many sectors of the U.S. economy is also a powerful driver of economic disparity.
...Many factors drive the inequality of wealth and income in America, but decreased competition matters because the concentration of economic power also concentrates political power, which in turn positions dominant companies to reshape economic policies in ways that further favor them. Many of the important policy decisions that have contributed to inequality in recent decades — including financial deregulation and lower corporate taxes — reflect the lobbying of oligopolistic corporations.
...We can restore a more fair and competitive economy. To do so, we must realize, first, that intense concentration across our markets contributes to inequality. Second, we must recognize that we have the right to use laws to neutralize the power of these corporate giants. Americans in the Gilded Age freed themselves from the clutches of Standard Oil and the railroads because they knew that markets and economic outcomes were theirs to shape. Today, by contrast, we frequently surrender this power by assuming that inequality is a result of impersonal forces — technology, globalization — to be tracked and studied by technocrats, rather than a condition we can change through popular will and political action.
...the relationship between uncompetitive markets and inequality is largely ignored. Let’s not forget that earlier generations overcame the concentrated wealth and power of the Gilded Age by restoring competitive markets, a pillar of economic and political democracy. We can do it again."
THE WASHINGTON POST: How America became uncompetitive and unequal
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Friday, June 13, 2014
class.
an ongoing discussion/moment of clarirty.
words.
"The decision in Vergara v. California won’t do much to help poor kids and is a diversion from the real source of inequality identified in Brown itself: the segregation of our public schools.
Racial segregation continues to bedevil American society and is closely coupled with rising income segregation. Concentrations of poverty have much more to do with why poor and minority students often end up with the worst teachers than do tenure laws. If the plaintiffs were genuinely concerned about connecting great teachers with poor and minority kids, they would go after that problem, not the due process rights of teachers.
...Reforming (or gutting) tenure laws might make it easier to weed out bad teachers, but it does nothing to address the underlying ability of segregated schools to attract and retain strong teachers. As a result, even if tenure reform is successful, there is little reason to think new teachers hired in high-poverty schools will be much better.
...Rather than gutting hard-won protections for teachers, the next legal case should go after economic segregation itself. Instead of invoking Brown in a broad metaphorical sense, why not bring a state-level suit against actual segregation by class and race? If it is a violation of the California state constitution to have tenure laws that make it hard to fire bad teachers in poor and minority communities, why isn’t it a violation when the state and districts draw school boundary lines in a way that promotes deeply unequal, economically segregated schools that many strong educators won’t teach in?
... Careful research comparing students who applied for a lottery to attend the integrated magnet schools found that those admitted later performed better on math and reading than those who lost the lottery and attended other urban schools. California needs a similar lawsuit. Such a case would underline a profound truth: The big problem in education is not that unions have won too many benefits and supports for teachers. It’s the disappearance of the American common school, which once educated rich and poor side by side."
SLATE: Tenure Is Not the Problem: Teacher protections are not why poor schools are failing. Segregation is.
words.
"The decision in Vergara v. California won’t do much to help poor kids and is a diversion from the real source of inequality identified in Brown itself: the segregation of our public schools.
Racial segregation continues to bedevil American society and is closely coupled with rising income segregation. Concentrations of poverty have much more to do with why poor and minority students often end up with the worst teachers than do tenure laws. If the plaintiffs were genuinely concerned about connecting great teachers with poor and minority kids, they would go after that problem, not the due process rights of teachers.
...Reforming (or gutting) tenure laws might make it easier to weed out bad teachers, but it does nothing to address the underlying ability of segregated schools to attract and retain strong teachers. As a result, even if tenure reform is successful, there is little reason to think new teachers hired in high-poverty schools will be much better.
...Rather than gutting hard-won protections for teachers, the next legal case should go after economic segregation itself. Instead of invoking Brown in a broad metaphorical sense, why not bring a state-level suit against actual segregation by class and race? If it is a violation of the California state constitution to have tenure laws that make it hard to fire bad teachers in poor and minority communities, why isn’t it a violation when the state and districts draw school boundary lines in a way that promotes deeply unequal, economically segregated schools that many strong educators won’t teach in?
... Careful research comparing students who applied for a lottery to attend the integrated magnet schools found that those admitted later performed better on math and reading than those who lost the lottery and attended other urban schools. California needs a similar lawsuit. Such a case would underline a profound truth: The big problem in education is not that unions have won too many benefits and supports for teachers. It’s the disappearance of the American common school, which once educated rich and poor side by side."
SLATE: Tenure Is Not the Problem: Teacher protections are not why poor schools are failing. Segregation is.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
a moment of clarity.
words.
for your consideration...
"When the Americans invaded, in March, 2003, they destroyed the Iraqi state—its military, its bureaucracy, its police force, and most everything else that might hold a country together. They spent the next nine years trying to build a state to replace the one they crushed. By 2011, by any reasonable measure, the Americans had made a lot of headway but were not finished with the job. For many months, the Obama and Maliki governments talked about keeping a residual force of American troops in Iraq, who would act largely to train Iraq’s Army and to provide intelligence against Sunni insurgents. (They would almost certainly have been barred from fighting.) Those were important reasons to stay, but the most important went largely unstated: it was to continue to act as a restraint on Maliki’s sectarian impulses, at least until the Iraqi political system was strong enough to contain him on its own. The negotiations between Obama and Maliki fell apart, in no small measure because of a lack of engagement by the White House. Today, many Iraqis, including some close to Maliki, say that a small force of American soldiers—working in non-combat roles—would have provided a crucial stabilizing factor that is now missing from Iraq. Sami al-Askari, a Maliki confidant, told me for my article this spring, “If you had a few hundred here, not even a few thousand, they would be coöperating with you, and they would become your partners.” President Obama wanted the Americans to come home, and Maliki didn’t particularly want them to stay.
The trouble is, as the events of this week show, what the Americans left behind was an Iraqi state that was not able to stand on its own. What we built is now coming apart. This is the real legacy of America’s war in Iraq."
THE NEW YORKER: In Extremists’ Iraq Rise, America’s Legacy
for your consideration...
"When the Americans invaded, in March, 2003, they destroyed the Iraqi state—its military, its bureaucracy, its police force, and most everything else that might hold a country together. They spent the next nine years trying to build a state to replace the one they crushed. By 2011, by any reasonable measure, the Americans had made a lot of headway but were not finished with the job. For many months, the Obama and Maliki governments talked about keeping a residual force of American troops in Iraq, who would act largely to train Iraq’s Army and to provide intelligence against Sunni insurgents. (They would almost certainly have been barred from fighting.) Those were important reasons to stay, but the most important went largely unstated: it was to continue to act as a restraint on Maliki’s sectarian impulses, at least until the Iraqi political system was strong enough to contain him on its own. The negotiations between Obama and Maliki fell apart, in no small measure because of a lack of engagement by the White House. Today, many Iraqis, including some close to Maliki, say that a small force of American soldiers—working in non-combat roles—would have provided a crucial stabilizing factor that is now missing from Iraq. Sami al-Askari, a Maliki confidant, told me for my article this spring, “If you had a few hundred here, not even a few thousand, they would be coöperating with you, and they would become your partners.” President Obama wanted the Americans to come home, and Maliki didn’t particularly want them to stay.
The trouble is, as the events of this week show, what the Americans left behind was an Iraqi state that was not able to stand on its own. What we built is now coming apart. This is the real legacy of America’s war in Iraq."
THE NEW YORKER: In Extremists’ Iraq Rise, America’s Legacy
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
somewhere in america.
an ongoing discussion.
words.
SLATE: Are Bulletproof Blankets To Shield School Kids Really the Answer?
words.
SLATE: Are Bulletproof Blankets To Shield School Kids Really the Answer?
a moment of clarity.
words.
"A vocal group of conservatives — representing a slim minority of the country and previously encouraged by people like Cantor — will not be happy until they have a full flowering of their revolution. The GOP seemed to be coming to grips with the danger that attitude poses — not just to the Republicans’ national popularity, but also to the country that the party is supposed to be co-governing. That counterrevolution, however, suffered a devastating setback on Tuesday.
For anyone who cares about immigration reform, cutting greenhouse gas emissions, adequately funding the government or a variety of much less contentious things that a faction of conservatives dislikes, this is not good news. The country needs a functional Republican Party, responsive to broad swaths of the nation and with leaders confident enough to cooperate with Democrats, to help face its problems — or, at least, to keep the lights on. Instead, the pressure Republicans will feel to choose ideological fuming over legislative achievement, on issues large and small, will now be even greater."
THE WASHINGTON POST: Eric Cantor’s defeat hurts the country
"A vocal group of conservatives — representing a slim minority of the country and previously encouraged by people like Cantor — will not be happy until they have a full flowering of their revolution. The GOP seemed to be coming to grips with the danger that attitude poses — not just to the Republicans’ national popularity, but also to the country that the party is supposed to be co-governing. That counterrevolution, however, suffered a devastating setback on Tuesday.
For anyone who cares about immigration reform, cutting greenhouse gas emissions, adequately funding the government or a variety of much less contentious things that a faction of conservatives dislikes, this is not good news. The country needs a functional Republican Party, responsive to broad swaths of the nation and with leaders confident enough to cooperate with Democrats, to help face its problems — or, at least, to keep the lights on. Instead, the pressure Republicans will feel to choose ideological fuming over legislative achievement, on issues large and small, will now be even greater."
THE WASHINGTON POST: Eric Cantor’s defeat hurts the country
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Monday, June 09, 2014
Saturday, June 07, 2014
beautiful.
We talk a lot about the importance & symbolism of having Barack in office & yes, we should, but Michelle's presence is just as uplifting too. Maya Angelou's death and life and the feelings it/she generated has reminded me that our Black women have been and are often phenomenal. Many thanks a thousand times over to the single mothers/mothers, grandmothers who raised countless generations of kids, and the educators.
Black women/ladies/sisters/friends, we salute you & thank you. I wouldn't have the resources to be typing this right now with out you.
Thank you.
rachelsklar: Here is a transcript of Michelle Obama’s amazing speech at Maya Angelou’s memorial service
EARLIER:
american beauty.
maya.
all my lovers.
a video.
starring starchild.
THE FADER: Watch the Video for “All My Lovers” by Solange’s Teenage Guitarist, Starchild
starring starchild.
THE FADER: Watch the Video for “All My Lovers” by Solange’s Teenage Guitarist, Starchild
Friday, June 06, 2014
i just bought a bugatti (i'm happy).
a video.
from young nigga (aka tyler, the creator).
PITCHFORK: Tyler, the Creator Makes Fun of Rap Videos With "I Just Bought a Bugatti (I'm Happy)" Featuring IceJJFish
from young nigga (aka tyler, the creator).
PITCHFORK: Tyler, the Creator Makes Fun of Rap Videos With "I Just Bought a Bugatti (I'm Happy)" Featuring IceJJFish
a moment of clarity.
words.
"Notwithstanding Freeman, there’s no understanding income inequality—or the disparities in criminal justice, education, health care, and unemployment—without a firm grasp of race, or rather, the economic consequences of past and current racism.
... as we craft policy to ameliorate these problems, we should keep his point in mind. If the goal is success, then the fight against inequality—and more broadly, the fight for opportunity—has to consider race. There’s no other choice—despite what some actors will tell you."
SLATE: What Morgan Freeman Doesn’t Understand About Race
"Notwithstanding Freeman, there’s no understanding income inequality—or the disparities in criminal justice, education, health care, and unemployment—without a firm grasp of race, or rather, the economic consequences of past and current racism.
... as we craft policy to ameliorate these problems, we should keep his point in mind. If the goal is success, then the fight against inequality—and more broadly, the fight for opportunity—has to consider race. There’s no other choice—despite what some actors will tell you."
SLATE: What Morgan Freeman Doesn’t Understand About Race
Thursday, June 05, 2014
Wednesday, June 04, 2014
Tuesday, June 03, 2014
a moment of clarity.
words.
for your consideration...
"The question we might also ask is not whether an individual should be punished for an act of violence, but where this violence is coming from and how we might prevent it. Often, when older people in the neighborhood talked about the troubling levels of violence, they blamed bad parenting, absent fathers, or a lack of moral fortitude in the younger generation. Maybe all this is true, but from what I observed, the roots of crime and violence were also found in economic hardship and in particular a profound dislocation from the legal labor market.
...The deep employment problems of African-American young men cannot be solved through police work or prison sentences. They predate the war on crime and may well survive it. But if we want young men like Chuck and Mike to end their reliance on an underground, illegal trade for income and employment, we must address the chronic joblessness that they face. As long as the drug trade continues to sustain a large portion of poor African-American communities, we will see a level of violence there that no resident or outside observer feels is acceptable.
Policy analysts sometimes look at a neighborhood like this one and conclude that the main problem is one of police legitimacy. This sanitizes the intense conflict going on between the police and the residents of poor minority communities. In these neighborhoods, the problem is not that the police lack legitimacy; the problem is that residents who are already struggling with acute poverty, joblessness and drug addiction are living under daily threat of arrest.
...Whatever our opinion about Mike or Chuck’s guilt or innocence, we might agree that a criminal justice system that arrests an 11-year-old boy for sitting in the passenger seat of a stolen car or makes a 14-year-old boy scared to seek medical treatment for a severe injury is not working for the public good. Perhaps we might also agree that requiring young men to avoid their mother’s houses, their workplaces and their friends’ funerals in order to stay out of jail is also misguided.
...People on both sides of the aisle and on both sides of the courtroom now acknowledge that the criminal justice system needs a major overhaul. After four decades of zero tolerance and getting tough on crime, we seem poised for change. Can we seize the moment?"
THE NEW YORK TIMES: This Fugitive Life
for your consideration...
"The question we might also ask is not whether an individual should be punished for an act of violence, but where this violence is coming from and how we might prevent it. Often, when older people in the neighborhood talked about the troubling levels of violence, they blamed bad parenting, absent fathers, or a lack of moral fortitude in the younger generation. Maybe all this is true, but from what I observed, the roots of crime and violence were also found in economic hardship and in particular a profound dislocation from the legal labor market.
...The deep employment problems of African-American young men cannot be solved through police work or prison sentences. They predate the war on crime and may well survive it. But if we want young men like Chuck and Mike to end their reliance on an underground, illegal trade for income and employment, we must address the chronic joblessness that they face. As long as the drug trade continues to sustain a large portion of poor African-American communities, we will see a level of violence there that no resident or outside observer feels is acceptable.
Policy analysts sometimes look at a neighborhood like this one and conclude that the main problem is one of police legitimacy. This sanitizes the intense conflict going on between the police and the residents of poor minority communities. In these neighborhoods, the problem is not that the police lack legitimacy; the problem is that residents who are already struggling with acute poverty, joblessness and drug addiction are living under daily threat of arrest.
...Whatever our opinion about Mike or Chuck’s guilt or innocence, we might agree that a criminal justice system that arrests an 11-year-old boy for sitting in the passenger seat of a stolen car or makes a 14-year-old boy scared to seek medical treatment for a severe injury is not working for the public good. Perhaps we might also agree that requiring young men to avoid their mother’s houses, their workplaces and their friends’ funerals in order to stay out of jail is also misguided.
...People on both sides of the aisle and on both sides of the courtroom now acknowledge that the criminal justice system needs a major overhaul. After four decades of zero tolerance and getting tough on crime, we seem poised for change. Can we seize the moment?"
THE NEW YORK TIMES: This Fugitive Life
Monday, June 02, 2014
Sunday, June 01, 2014
Saturday, May 31, 2014
neutron dance.
with ryan adams.
(and the pointer sisters).
STEREOGUM: Watch Ryan Adams Cover The Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance”
(and the pointer sisters).
STEREOGUM: Watch Ryan Adams Cover The Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance”
Friday, May 30, 2014
undun.
a moment of clarity.
words.
"The unspoken divide between black people and white people—whether over reparations, affirmative action, or the question of paying N.C.A.A. athletes—comes down to a question of history. In one version, that history appears as an incremental movement toward equality after a long night of discrimination; in the other, history looks like a balance sheet, and the cumulative debits of sanctioned theft, enforced poverty, and scant opportunity far outweigh the inconsistent credits of good will. Few whites recall, for instance, that General William Sherman, during his March to the Sea, issued orders mandating the redistribution of land seized from Confederates, in forty-acre parcels, to newly emancipated black families. But within black America, that fact—and the fact that the orders were revoked following Lincoln’s assassination—is common knowledge, recalled with the bitterness of an outstanding debt.
Absent an understanding of this past, it’s possible—even entirely reasonable—to conclude that affirmative action represents a full recompense for the social engineering that produced a disproportionately black underclass in the United States. To the extent that the history remains obscured, the narrative looks like a lineage of failed handouts to a feckless and troublesome population, never quite capable of pulling themselves up, and mired in their own self-defeating ways. These deletions in our own history deliver various national oddities, like an overwhelmingly white Tea Party movement that is fixated on government encroachment on liberty and yet has almost no regard for the concerns of African-Americans, whose history is defined by the government-sanctioned theft of their freedom.
...We are discussing reparations at this moment because in two years Barack Obama will leave the White House, having repaired the economic collapse that greeted his inauguration, but with African-Americans still unemployed at a rate twice that of whites, and struggling to see how this world differs from the status quo ante. Those who saw Obama’s election as redemption for slavery were off by fourteen decades: his election was supposed to expiate sins much closer to the surface, and therefore far more difficult, and far too expensive, to confront.
The point of Coates’s essay—and, ultimately, the point of this conversation, despite the political impossibility of enacting reparations—is a broader understanding of black poverty as the product of public policy and private theft facilitated by racism. The belief that blacks have been given too much is made possible by the refusal to countenance how much was actually taken away in the first place."
THE NEW YORKER: What We Talk About When We Talk About Reparations
words.
"The unspoken divide between black people and white people—whether over reparations, affirmative action, or the question of paying N.C.A.A. athletes—comes down to a question of history. In one version, that history appears as an incremental movement toward equality after a long night of discrimination; in the other, history looks like a balance sheet, and the cumulative debits of sanctioned theft, enforced poverty, and scant opportunity far outweigh the inconsistent credits of good will. Few whites recall, for instance, that General William Sherman, during his March to the Sea, issued orders mandating the redistribution of land seized from Confederates, in forty-acre parcels, to newly emancipated black families. But within black America, that fact—and the fact that the orders were revoked following Lincoln’s assassination—is common knowledge, recalled with the bitterness of an outstanding debt.
Absent an understanding of this past, it’s possible—even entirely reasonable—to conclude that affirmative action represents a full recompense for the social engineering that produced a disproportionately black underclass in the United States. To the extent that the history remains obscured, the narrative looks like a lineage of failed handouts to a feckless and troublesome population, never quite capable of pulling themselves up, and mired in their own self-defeating ways. These deletions in our own history deliver various national oddities, like an overwhelmingly white Tea Party movement that is fixated on government encroachment on liberty and yet has almost no regard for the concerns of African-Americans, whose history is defined by the government-sanctioned theft of their freedom.
...We are discussing reparations at this moment because in two years Barack Obama will leave the White House, having repaired the economic collapse that greeted his inauguration, but with African-Americans still unemployed at a rate twice that of whites, and struggling to see how this world differs from the status quo ante. Those who saw Obama’s election as redemption for slavery were off by fourteen decades: his election was supposed to expiate sins much closer to the surface, and therefore far more difficult, and far too expensive, to confront.
The point of Coates’s essay—and, ultimately, the point of this conversation, despite the political impossibility of enacting reparations—is a broader understanding of black poverty as the product of public policy and private theft facilitated by racism. The belief that blacks have been given too much is made possible by the refusal to countenance how much was actually taken away in the first place."
THE NEW YORKER: What We Talk About When We Talk About Reparations
yes. we can.
a moment of clarity.
words.
"In the aftermath of the weekend’s ghastly events at UC Santa Barbara, there’s been plenty of discussion about our pervasive culture of misogyny, and the myriad destructive ways in which it manifests. A large part of the narrative has been that men need to shut up and listen to women’s voices on this topic, which is certainly true. But men also need to talk, honestly and amongst ourselves, about the nature of masculinity, and acknowledge our own destructive impulses. This is a problem that men need to be discussing precisely because it’s a problem with men. And it’s only men who are going to fix it.
The most important thing we need to realize is that potential to be the problem lies within all of us — and because only by acknowledging this can we start to look to a solution. I’m not saying we all have the potential to be killers, but we all have the capacity to to be unthinkingly misogynistic, to refuse to examine our behavior and our assumptions, to subscribe to the sentiments that fuel the “men’s rights” movement and its ilk.
.... Men don’t talk about violence against them because our culture, shaped by millennia of male dominance, tells them not to, because to do so is unmanly. Men are denied access to children because of gender roles imposed by patriarchy — that the man is the provider, and the woman the carer. And so on.
...Understand that your actions don’t exist in a vacuum. They exist in the context of a society where literally every woman you will ever meet has a similar story to tell, if she feels safe enough to do so. Understand that society is a large-scale representation of this. Understand that you are owed nothing.
You don’t get a gold star for being a good person. It’s the minimum standard of human decency that anyone should be able to expect. You don’t get taught this stuff. But you can work it out for yourself. Pay attention. Recognize misogyny when you see it. Don’t be an asshole. Listen to women. Believe them. And most of all, understand that they are your fellow humans and deserve to be treated as exactly that: people who share this planet with you. We’re not going to fix society’s ingrained misogyny overnight. It will take generations. But we won’t make any progress until we acknowledge that it exists."
FLAVORWIRE: Yes, All Men: Every Man Needs to Understand Internalized Misogyny and Male Violence
words.
"In the aftermath of the weekend’s ghastly events at UC Santa Barbara, there’s been plenty of discussion about our pervasive culture of misogyny, and the myriad destructive ways in which it manifests. A large part of the narrative has been that men need to shut up and listen to women’s voices on this topic, which is certainly true. But men also need to talk, honestly and amongst ourselves, about the nature of masculinity, and acknowledge our own destructive impulses. This is a problem that men need to be discussing precisely because it’s a problem with men. And it’s only men who are going to fix it.
The most important thing we need to realize is that potential to be the problem lies within all of us — and because only by acknowledging this can we start to look to a solution. I’m not saying we all have the potential to be killers, but we all have the capacity to to be unthinkingly misogynistic, to refuse to examine our behavior and our assumptions, to subscribe to the sentiments that fuel the “men’s rights” movement and its ilk.
.... Men don’t talk about violence against them because our culture, shaped by millennia of male dominance, tells them not to, because to do so is unmanly. Men are denied access to children because of gender roles imposed by patriarchy — that the man is the provider, and the woman the carer. And so on.
...Understand that your actions don’t exist in a vacuum. They exist in the context of a society where literally every woman you will ever meet has a similar story to tell, if she feels safe enough to do so. Understand that society is a large-scale representation of this. Understand that you are owed nothing.
You don’t get a gold star for being a good person. It’s the minimum standard of human decency that anyone should be able to expect. You don’t get taught this stuff. But you can work it out for yourself. Pay attention. Recognize misogyny when you see it. Don’t be an asshole. Listen to women. Believe them. And most of all, understand that they are your fellow humans and deserve to be treated as exactly that: people who share this planet with you. We’re not going to fix society’s ingrained misogyny overnight. It will take generations. But we won’t make any progress until we acknowledge that it exists."
FLAVORWIRE: Yes, All Men: Every Man Needs to Understand Internalized Misogyny and Male Violence
Thursday, May 29, 2014
american beauty.
a moment of clarity.
words.
"One of Maya Angelou’s greatest gifts was breaking people down to their core, often with just one line. She seemed to know exactly what to say, when to say it, and how to say it so that it would register as the most necessarily emotional gut punch imaginable. Interestingly enough, this typically happened with some of the more idolized men of their respective generations. Powerful men, often trapped by their own machismo, shunning emotions. On numerous occasions, she’s mentioned the people who have visited her — people who wanted to make the pilgrimage and talk to her, people like Richard Pryor and Chris Rock. People who needed to have a conversation with her, with the intentions of leaving cleansed. And clear-headed. And most importantly, talking with someone who will listen, impart wisdom, and will not judge. That nonjudgmental nature, mixed with Maya’s calm and Maya’s knowledge, is one of the many reasons she exists on an island of importance, even after her death."
GRANTLAND: The Teacher and the Students: Remembering Maya Angelou in Culture
SEE ALSO:
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Maya & Me & Maya: What Maya Angelou Meant to Me
words.
"One of Maya Angelou’s greatest gifts was breaking people down to their core, often with just one line. She seemed to know exactly what to say, when to say it, and how to say it so that it would register as the most necessarily emotional gut punch imaginable. Interestingly enough, this typically happened with some of the more idolized men of their respective generations. Powerful men, often trapped by their own machismo, shunning emotions. On numerous occasions, she’s mentioned the people who have visited her — people who wanted to make the pilgrimage and talk to her, people like Richard Pryor and Chris Rock. People who needed to have a conversation with her, with the intentions of leaving cleansed. And clear-headed. And most importantly, talking with someone who will listen, impart wisdom, and will not judge. That nonjudgmental nature, mixed with Maya’s calm and Maya’s knowledge, is one of the many reasons she exists on an island of importance, even after her death."
GRANTLAND: The Teacher and the Students: Remembering Maya Angelou in Culture
SEE ALSO:
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Maya & Me & Maya: What Maya Angelou Meant to Me
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
maya.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be better.
For they existed.
SLATE: Maya Angelou on What Happens When Great Souls Die
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be better.
For they existed.
SLATE: Maya Angelou on What Happens When Great Souls Die
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
f***in' problems.
a moment of clarity.
words.
"...We don’t have a Shinseki problem, in other words. We have a President Obama problem. We have a Congress problem. We have a civil service system “in crisis,” as the Partnership for Public Service said in a recent report.
Such “scandals” will recur, likely with increasing frequency, as long as government leaders ignore the underlying problem: a personnel system that has not been upgraded to suit the 21st-century knowledge economy.
...It is a cumbersome system that can’t recruit or compete for talent and doesn’t reward top performers or punish poor ones. Some of the resistance to change is political: Democrats rely on government unions that are suspicious of merit-based policies, and Republicans are suspicious of government altogether. But Mr. Stier says the bigger obstacle to reform is structural. Political leaders want to influence policies that will bear fruit while they are in office. Civil service reform is hard work, requires sustained attention and would pay off mostly in future presidential terms.
...Less than 6 percent of the federal workforce is younger than 30 , compared with 23 percent in the country. As the public workforce ages and retires, dysfunction will increase, unless someone gets serious about attracting and retaining talent."
THE WASHINGTON POST: The true VA scandal is shared across the federal government
words.
"...We don’t have a Shinseki problem, in other words. We have a President Obama problem. We have a Congress problem. We have a civil service system “in crisis,” as the Partnership for Public Service said in a recent report.
Such “scandals” will recur, likely with increasing frequency, as long as government leaders ignore the underlying problem: a personnel system that has not been upgraded to suit the 21st-century knowledge economy.
...It is a cumbersome system that can’t recruit or compete for talent and doesn’t reward top performers or punish poor ones. Some of the resistance to change is political: Democrats rely on government unions that are suspicious of merit-based policies, and Republicans are suspicious of government altogether. But Mr. Stier says the bigger obstacle to reform is structural. Political leaders want to influence policies that will bear fruit while they are in office. Civil service reform is hard work, requires sustained attention and would pay off mostly in future presidential terms.
...Less than 6 percent of the federal workforce is younger than 30 , compared with 23 percent in the country. As the public workforce ages and retires, dysfunction will increase, unless someone gets serious about attracting and retaining talent."
THE WASHINGTON POST: The true VA scandal is shared across the federal government
a moment of clarity.
words.
"My purpose here is not to convince everyone that Rockefeller is right about the massive GOP resistance to Obama — although I certainly agree with him — but rather to consider the things we say when we want to avoid talking about race. “You called me a racist” and “You played the race card” have become all-purpose conversation stoppers.
Whenever I write about race, some readers react with one or the other of these end-of-discussion criticisms. Some people believe, or pretend to believe, that mentioning race in almost any context is “playing the race card.” Nearly 400 years of history — since the first Africans landed at Jamestown in 1619 — amply demonstrate that this view is either Pollyannaish or deeply cynical. We will never get to the point where race is irrelevant if we do not talk about the ways in which it still matters."
THE WASHINGTON POST: Talking about race is no black-and-white matter
"My purpose here is not to convince everyone that Rockefeller is right about the massive GOP resistance to Obama — although I certainly agree with him — but rather to consider the things we say when we want to avoid talking about race. “You called me a racist” and “You played the race card” have become all-purpose conversation stoppers.
Whenever I write about race, some readers react with one or the other of these end-of-discussion criticisms. Some people believe, or pretend to believe, that mentioning race in almost any context is “playing the race card.” Nearly 400 years of history — since the first Africans landed at Jamestown in 1619 — amply demonstrate that this view is either Pollyannaish or deeply cynical. We will never get to the point where race is irrelevant if we do not talk about the ways in which it still matters."
THE WASHINGTON POST: Talking about race is no black-and-white matter
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)