you can look at each other
or you can look at the face of your god
Meant to link this Plastic discussion earlier, but as usual
"The Civil Rights Movement is finally paying economic dividends as African Americans move up the corporate ladder and into professional positions," writes toothless joe. "Over the past ten years, the racial income gap closed considerably. This shift has forged a black middle class and led many African Americans into previously white-bread suburbs. Atlanta, with its core of black colleges and substantial minority representation at other metro universities, is the natural epicenter of this trend. The outlook is not all bread and roses, however, because 'pockets of poverty' remain in downtown ghettos. The trend also registered strongly in Florida and Minnesota, but is not universal."
the front page post turned me off to even reading the fucking thing. Little of interest in the comments, as usual, but there is a link to Midnight Flight that makes it worthwhile:
This book is about one family's experience of White Flight from a changing Chicago community, South Shore Valley. It is also one person's memory of living in a wonderful community and the many factors, from racial change to social evolution that occured.[. . .] My family's flight began in the Fall of 1968, at a time when racial tensions were peaking, not just in our neighborhood, but around the country as well. This book tries to trace that experience, but only depicts a slice of the larger human tragedy and trauma that has haunted Chicago for decades. It is not an analytical portrayal of the bigger, complex problem of racial divisions. Instead, Midnight Flight offers a perspective of an experience that was shared by many people who lived in South Shore Valley, a once all-White community that turned Black, practically overnight.
I'm rather looking forward to heading back to Chi this weekend.
What?
np: Loreena McKennitt - The Mask and Mirror.
What?
Ohh-hoo, "Mask and the Mirror"..made me go and put in the player myself...reminds me of why I got this overblown stereo system to begin with. Homegirl kicks ass on "The Bonny Swans".
As for those genius at Plasitc, don't they know there has always been a Black middle class? And where were these "wealth flight" experts when the same "trend" was happening throughout the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, etc.
Somebody should talk about "white flight" Southern California suburb style - complete with vocal, in-yo-face Klan members on the school board and police force.
There was no black middle class prior to desegregation. I don't know what you're talking about.
Similarly, black women -- especially married black women -- didn't work outside the home prior to the feminist movement. Balancing work and rearing children didn't become an issue at all until middle-class white women had to do it.
With the help of black and Latina child care providers, who had no home lives of their own, and appeared as if by magic.
That sentence with the words "Klan," "California" and "suburb" is totally incoherent.
This is why I just know discussions of race on Plastic and Metafilter are going to be a treasure trove of idiotic quotes. Their ability to Not Get It is astonishing.
Play Loreena quietly, lest the neighbors think you're listening to Ay-rab music, and call Homeland Security.
I once heard the feminist-race divide issue put thus by a scholar of black women's history: White women's feminism (in the 60's) may have been struggling to get women into the workplace, but black women have always been struggling to get OUT of the workplace, so they COULD be with their families if they so chose.
And, irony of ironies, white women who now CHOOSE to stay home with their kids are sometimes accused of being wasteful of thier talent, traitors to fmeinisim, etc. I had to reassure my best friend, after she encountered some of this stuff, that in fact it was a whole steaming pile of horseapples, given that feminism supposedly seeks freedom of choice for women.
Kudos on the "black and latina caregivers who mysteriously appeared" bit. In Columbus, Ohio, you can add "Appalachian."
I get annoyed any time people openly complain about the cost of child care. What else SHOULD be more expensive, ethically speaking? Shouldn't these peple be paid as well or better than any teacher?
Oh. Right. We pay our teachers peanuts, too.
I complain about the cost of child care all the time, and I'll continue to do so. Ethically speaking, yes, it should probably be the most expensive thing of all, but financially speaking, it still sucks ass through a crazy straw that it costs so much. It doesn't make sense for me to go back to work full time, which would, in theory, help my family (which dances around on the poverty-line)out. Anything I'd make over what I make part-time would be sucked up by daycare.
Mmm, Catch-22. It works out the best for my kid, though, since it means we financially have to work it out so that someone stays home for him.
Anyway. Just because you realise the practicality and truth of one part of a situation, that doesn't mean you can't bitch about an annoying but also true part of the rest of it. Otherwise, people'd explode from the stress of keeping it all in.
A point. Childrearing is terribly stressful, no mater how you slice it.
There was a segment on Marketplace (MPR, Aaron) about nannies, particularly focusing on immigrant nannies who work for wealthy families here and send their money home to support their own families back in a home country.
You can find the sound file at the marketplace website here
I was amazed at the kindness of the women who were interviewed. Many of them bemoaned the eventual growing-up of the children they had basically raised in lieu of their own families and the separation that would come of it. I can't believe that all people who are treated as disrespectfully as most child care workers can possibly be this kind to their charges. And I can't say I blame them.
I am privileged to be in a position to have a parent with my children at all times. Or a trusted friend on the few occasions when we are both unavailable. It sickens me to think of the abuse that must occur in the childcare system. Childcare is stressful. It is difficult. It is frequently unrewarding. And being forced to leave a child in the care of someone who is paid so little...I can't even begin to imagine the consequences. I'm thinking we already bear witness to them.
Hmmm...maybe I'll post more about this at full bleed, as I'm thinking this isn't really on topic at all. What I will say is that it sucks hard that it is a privilege to stay at home with my children. It should really be a guaranteed right that any parent who desires can stay home with his/her children...and that every child is watched over by a loving, well-rewarded caretaker.
Damn, it sucks that that is an "idealistic" viewpoint. It really should just be taken for granted.
I'm going to go hug my children.