by Roxane Gay
Cosby, Lemon, and others who espouse similar ideas are, I would like to believe, coming from a good place. Their suggestions are, on one level, reasonable, mostly grounded in common sense, but these leaders traffic in respectability politics—the idea that if black (or other marginalized) people simply behave in “culturally approved” ways, if we mimic the dominant culture, it will be more difficult to suffer the effects of racism. Respectability politics completely overlook institutional racism and the ways in which the education system, the social welfare system, and the justice system only reinforce many of the problems the black community faces.
We are having an ongoing and critical conversation about race in America. The question on many minds, the question that is certainly on my mind, is how do we prevent racial injustices from happening? How do we protect young black children? How do we overcome so many of the institutional barriers that exacerbate racism and poverty?
It’s a nice idea that we could simply follow a prescribed set of rules and make the world a better place for all. It’s a nice idea that racism is a finite problem for which there is a finite solution, and that respectability, perhaps, could have saved all the people who have lost their lives to the effects of racism.
But we don’t live in that world and it’s dangerous to suggest that the targets of oppression are wholly responsible for ending that oppression. Respectability politics suggest that there’s a way for us to all be model (read: like white) citizens. We can always be better, but will we ever be ideal? Do we even want to be ideal, or is there a way for us to become more comfortably human?
Take, for example, someone like Don Lemon. He is a black man, raised by a single mother, and now he is a successful news anchor for a major news network. His outlook seems driven by the notion that if he can make it, anyone can. This is the ethos espoused by people who believe in respectability politics. Because they have achieved success, because they have transcended, in some way, the effects of racism or other forms of discrimination, all people should be able to do the same.
In truth, they have climbed a ladder and shattered a glass ceiling but are seemingly uninterested in extending that ladder as far as it needs to reach so that others may climb. They are uninterested in providing a detailed blueprint for how they achieved their success. They are unwilling to consider that until the institutional problems are solved, no blueprint for success can possibly exist. For real progress to be made, leaders like Lemon and Cosby need to at least acknowledge reality.
Respectability politics are not the answer to ending racism. Racism doesn’t care about respectability, wealth, education, or status. Oprah Winfrey, one of the wealthiest people in the world and certainly the wealthiest black woman in the world, openly discusses the racism she continues to encounter in her daily life. In July 2013, while in Zurich to attend Tina Turner’s wedding, Winfrey was informed by a store clerk at the Trois Pommes boutique that the purse she was interested in was too expensive for her. We don’t need to cry for Oprah, prevented from buying an obscenely overpriced purse, but we can recognize the incident as one more reminder that racism is so pervasive and pernicious that we will never be respectable enough to outrun racism, not here in the United States, not anywhere in the world.
We must stop pointing to the exceptions—these bright shining stars who transcend circumstance. We must look to how we can best support the least among us, not spend all our time blindly revering and trying to mimic the greatest without demanding systemic change.
In July 2013, President Obama made a historic speech about race. His remarks were, by far, the most explicit remarks the president has made on the subject. In addition to sharing his own experiences with racism, he offered suggestions about how we might improve race relations in the United States—ending racial profiling, reexamining state and local laws that might contribute to tragedies like Trayvon Martin’s murder, and finding more effective ways to support black boys. These suggestions are a bit vague (and black girls seem to be forgotten, as if they too don’t need support), but at least Obama’s ideas place the responsibility for change on all of us. We are, after all, supposed to be one nation indivisible. Only if we act as such, might we begin to truly effect change.
When Twitter Does What Journalism Cannot
On Tuesday, June 25, 2013, Texas state senator Wendy Davis stood for nearly thirteen hours without food or drink, without rest, without leaning, without the ability to use the restroom, to filibuster Senate Bill 5 (SB5), a legislative measure that would have closed thirty-seven of the forty-two abortion clinics in Texas, the largest state in the contiguous United States. Interested people from around the country, nay, the world, were able to watch this filibuster, and the political maneuverings of those who tried to stop it, via a live stream on YouTube—one watched, at times, by more than 180,000 people.
The filibuster was a gripping spectacle that kept me rapt for hours. On Twitter, people were able to offer support, however symbolic, for Senator Davis’s efforts. There was a sense of community. For some levity, I couldn’t help but remark on Senator Davis’s flawless hair, several hours into her ferocious stand.
Near midnight, after some intense and partisan efforts to derail Senator Davis’s efforts, the impassioned crowd in the gallery began shouting and cheering, letting the senator know she did not stand alone. It was a sound of women fighting for their reproductive freedom in the only way they could—with their voices. I will never forget that sound. It awoke something in me I hadn’t realized had gone dormant.
And why were so many of us watching this amazing set of events happen on a YouTube stream? Because none of the major news networks, not one, carried or covered the last hours of the filibuster. The gap between old and new media yawned ever wider.
That, however, is not where this story begins.
The reason I knew anything about what was going on in Texas was thanks to the efforts and boundless energy of Jessica W. Luther (@scATX), a Texas activist who shared information about SB5 for weeks. I don’t know her personally but we became connected online. I’ll be honest—at first, I was completely clueless about what was happening in Texas. At times, I thought, I do not have the energy to care about this.
Luther was so committed, though, and so full of passion and good information, that I started to care. I started to pay attention. I read the articles and commentaries she shared and began to understand what was at stake not just for women in Texas but for all American women. I was reminded that change sometimes does begin with one person who raises her voice.
And there I was, watching a YouTube live feed of a state senate filibuster, something I never thought I would do.
Social media is a curious thing. On the one hand, it offers an endless parade of ephemera from the daily lives of friends, family, and strangers—discussions of a fondness for yogurt, a picture of a barista’s decoration in latte foam, descriptions of excellent meals, pictures of pets and small children or maybe an abandoned easy chair on a crowded street corner. There’s all manner of self-promotion and relentless affirmation. There are knee-jerk, ill-informed reactions to, well, everything. The abundance of triviality is as hypnotic as it is repulsive.
But there are times when social media is anything but trivial. During Hurricane Sandy, social media allowed public officials along the eastern corridor to disseminate information about available resources and evacuation routes, and provide updates on the storm. Social media allowed community members to offer information and assistance and human connection through small, grassroots networks. Certainly, there were flies in the ointment as people of questionable moral stability spread rumors and began, with astonishing speed, to develop fraudulent schemes, but for the most part, social media was used to accomplish some good.
I cannot think of a significant event in recent memory I did not first learn about via Twitter—the midnight shootings in Aurora, Colorado; the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary; the uprisings across the Middle East during the Arab Spring; the activities of the Occu
py movement; the results of the 2012 presidential election; the shooting of Trayvon Martin and ensuing debacle; the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas; the bombings at the Boston Marathon.
When these major news stories are breaking, there’s always a significant difference between what’s being shared via social media and what major news outlets are covering. That difference becomes more pronounced and more pathetic with each passing day.
Good journalism takes time that social media, which advances at a breathtaking pace, rarely affords. Good journalists need to verify information before they can report it. They need this time because, in the best of all worlds, we’re supposed to trust that they are offering us accurate, unbiased information. But even after they’ve applied the necessary rigor to their profession, journalists from major news outlets still seem like they can’t keep up—or, perhaps, it’s that they won’t keep up. Somehow, though, smaller journalism outlets manage to get the work done. The feed of Wendy Davis’s filibuster was made possible because the Texas Tribune, a nonprofit news organization in Texas, was there from the start.
On Tuesday, June 25, Senator Wendy Davis stood and fought for reproductive freedom in her state, and the networks were largely silent. MSNBC offered some coverage earlier in the evening, but during the last few hours, the news networks—the twenty-four-hour news networks created for this very purpose—were silent. They reported inaccurate information when they bothered to report at all. The next morning, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo referred to the efforts of Davis and the Texas men and women who held vigil with her as “odd politics at work,” and before that suggested, “Why not spend the time trying to compromise and figure out the bill in the first place?,” as if reproductive freedom is simply a matter of compromise. He was incompetent, a frustrating combination of dismissiveness and negligence.
When journalism is working effectively, and it often is, I appreciate having journalists explain what I might not understand or know enough about. An Internet connection does not make me, or anyone, an expert on culturally significant events. Smart journalistic perspective would have been useful to many people while Senator Davis spoke. Instead of being able to turn to news, though, people were on Twitter and elsewhere across the Internet, researching parliamentary procedures of the Texas legislature, sharing the most significant moments of the night, and holding the Texas Republican senators accountable when they tried to break their own rules even though they were in plain sight. Average people with Internet connections did the work we used to trust major journalism outlets to do.
Smart journalistic perspective was useful earlier on June 25, when the Supreme Court, in an appalling 5–4 decision, struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, essentially disenfranchising a significant number of Americans—voters of color, rural voters, elderly voters, and impoverished voters. It was useful to see what people were thinking about that decision across social networks, but it was even more useful to read and watch well-considered reporting about a topic I don’t know much about. It was more useful to be informed than to assume the responsibility of having to inform.
That same Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act and dismissed California’s Proposition 8 appeal, offering one step forward after innumerable steps back. Again, social networks were active, mostly with jubilation (or not, depending on whom you consort with). The Twitter discussions about DOMA also provided a useful reminder that the institution of marriage can and should be critiqued as we move forward with marriage equality. There were discussions about the implications for gay and lesbian couples in binational marriages and the financial benefits the wedding industry will reap from this decision. Social networking broadened the conversation.
The news networks covered these decisions on marriage equality fairly robustly. Around the same time, they also covered George Zimmerman’s trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin, the ongoing intrigue involving Edward Snowden and revelations about the NSA, and Paula Deen’s damage control. There is no shortage of news, and there never has been. We live in a big, messy world.
Social networks are more than just infinite repositories for trivial, snap judgments; they are more than merely convenient outlets for mindless joy and outrage. They offer more than the common ground and the solace we may find during culturally significant moments. Social networks also provide us with something of a flawed but necessary conscience, a constant reminder that commitment, compassion, and advocacy neither can nor ever should be finite.
We cannot lose sight of what happened on June 25 because we are so consumed by what happened next, nor can we lose sight of what happens today in favor of what tomorrow will bring. Traditional journalism can give us the grounding and context we dearly need, while social networks remind us that we do have today, that we can be mindful of the past and future while taking some time to appreciate the present.
The Alienable Rights of Women
Reproductive freedom is on my mind. How could it not be? I’m a woman of reproductive age, and depending on where I live, my reproductive choices are limited.
Often, when I read the news, I have to make sure I am not, in fact, reading The Onion. We continue to have national and state debates about abortion, birth control, and reproductive freedom, and men, mostly, are directing that debate. That is the stuff of satire.
The politicians and their ilk who are hell-bent on reintroducing reproductive freedom as a “campaign issue” have short memories. Of course they have short memories. They only care about what is politically convenient or expedient.
Women do not have short memories. We cannot afford that luxury as our choices dwindle.
Politicians and their ilk forget that women, and to a certain extent men, have always done what they needed to do to protect female bodies from unwanted pregnancy. During ancient times, women used jellies, gums, and plants both for contraception and to abort unwanted pregnancies. These practices continued even into the 1300s, when Europe needed to repopulate and started to hunt “witches” and midwives who shared their valuable knowledge about these contraceptive methods.
Whenever governments wanted to achieve some end, often involving population growth, they restricted access to birth control and/or criminalized birth control unless, of course, the population growth concerned the poor, in which case, contraception was enthusiastically promoted. Historically, society has only wanted the “right kind of people” to have a right to life. We shouldn’t forget that fact.
Here’s the thing about history—it repeats itself over and over and over. The witch hunts, and the demonization of contraception and abortion and the women who provided these services from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, are happening all over again. This time, though, the witch hunt is a cynical ploy to distract the populace from some of the truly pressing issues our society is facing: the devastated economy and a Wall Street culture that remains unchecked even after the damage it has done, the raging class inequalities and widening gap between those who have and those who have not, the looming student loan and consumer debt crises, the fractured racial climate, the lack of full civil rights for gay, lesbian, and transgender people, a health care system too many people don’t have access to, wars without cease, impending global threats, and on and on and on.
Rather than solve the real problems the United States is facing, some politicians, mostly conservative, have decided to try to solve the “female problem” by creating a smoke screen, reintroducing abortion and, more inexplicably, birth control into a national debate.
Women have been forced underground for contraception and pregnancy termination before, and we will go underground again if we have to. We will risk our lives if these politicians, who so flagrantly demean women, force us to do so.
Thank goodness women do not have short memories.
Pregnancy is at once a private and public experience. Pregnancy is private because it is so very personal. It happens within the body. In a perfect world, pregnancy would be an intimate experience shared by a wo
man and her partner alone, but for various reasons that is not possible.
Pregnancy is an experience that invites public intervention and forces the female body into the public discourse. In many ways, pregnancy is the least private experience of a woman’s life.
Public intervention can be fairly mild, more annoying than anything else—people wanting to touch your swollen belly, offering unsolicited advice about how to raise a child, inquiring as to due dates or the gender of the not-yet-child as if strangers have a right to this information simply because you are pregnant. Once your pregnancy starts to show, you cannot avoid being part of this discourse whether you want to or not.
Public intervention can be necessary because pregnant women must, generally, seek appropriate medical care. You cannot simply hide in a cave and hope for the best, however tempting that alternative may be. Pregnancy is many things, including complicated and, at times, fraught. Medical intervention, if you’re lucky enough to have health insurance or otherwise afford such care, helps to ensure the pregnancy proceeds the way it should. It allows your fetus to be tested for abnormalities. It allows the mother’s health to be monitored for the number of conditions that can arise from a pregnancy. If things go wrong in a pregnancy, and they can go horribly, horribly wrong, medical intervention can save the life of the mother and, if you’re lucky, the life of the fetus. Public intervention is also necessary when a woman delivers her child, whether by the hands of a doctor, midwife, or doula.
It is only after a baby is born that a woman might finally have some privacy.
