congress set to ban something they like to call "partial-birth" abortion

without clear definition of the procedure and without provisions for protecting the health of the patient.

a similar ban was struck down in a nebraska court in 2000 because the procedure was too broadly defined and similarly did not allow for the procedure as a method to save the life of the woman considering the procedure.

i wrote on this subject earlier this year, and there are a few things that bear repeating about this procedure. this is a medical procedure that has been deemed "immoral" and is backed by wholly immoral logic and "science" that skews statistics relating to women's future health after ondergoing said procedure, like the statistics showing that women who have abortions are at risk for breast cancer. what?

for the record, "partial-birth" is not a medically recognized term. it is language made up by anti-abortion activists who have succeeded in infiltrating the language into greater culture - language that conjures up images of babies and mothers and intends to incite emotion and value-based thinking into the minds of abortion fence-sitters. this language has been very effective in the last fifteen to twenty years to increase anti-abortion numbers.

the proper term for the procedure is D&X, short for dilation (of the cervix) and extraction (of the fetus).

contrary to what anti-abortionists would have us believe, late-term abortion procedures do not happen at the whim of women that Dr. Laura refers to as "knocked up." D & X procedures are performed during the third trimester of pregnancy if:

(1) the fetus is dead.
(2) the fetus is alive, but continued pregnancy would place the woman's life in severe danger.
(3) the fetus is alive, but continued pregnancy would grievously damage the woman's health and/or disable her.
(4) the fetus is so malformed that it can never gain consciousness and will die shortly after birth.

according to the alan guttmacher institute, this means 1% of all medical terminations of pregnancies.

this ban is clearly about congresspeople congratulating themselves for a job well done, an unconstitutional vote that will gather future bipartisian votes for republicans by citizens who have been clearly diseducated on the subject of women's health.

interesting, too, that this news has been very difficult for me to find - especially with more "important" new happenings, like CIA leaks and wars in the middle east. congressional republicans have tried to slip this bill in under our noses. this bill is not about the welfare of any group - except the welfare of conservative politicians' seats in office.

ethan observed

exercise in logical thought processes. may also be wishful thinking gleaned from mother.

driving past a large car manufacturing factory, ethan asks what the factory makes. i inquire what he thinks they make.

ethan takes a long look at the smokestacks. "it's a cloud factory."

conversations between a father car and a son car. may also be considered a lesson in safety and/or morality, if one ignores the violent retribution.

father car and son car are driving around recklessly. the son car gets upset and decides to turn into a helicopter. the son helipcopter drops a bomb on the father car.

father car: son, why would you do that to me?

son car/helicopter: you were driving too fast. that's very dangerous.

conversations between superheroes. may also be considered an exercise in asserting superiority and/or authority by an agent without considerable amounts of either.

spiderman: hey, batman! do you want to go to the park with me?

batman: nah. i don't like the park. i don't like you either.

spiderman: (cries loudly) please?! (cries more)

batman: stop whining! (kills spiderman)

tom swifties

"I'm simply not a nice girl," she whispered tartly.
"Parsley, sage, rosemary," said Tom timelessly.
"There it is again!" Tom recited.
"I've dyed my hair green and stuck a pin through my nose," said Tom punctually.
"I need to clear my throat," said Tom phlegmatically.
"I want a motorized bicycle," Tom moped.
"That's an ugly hippopotamus!" said Tom hypocritically.

all of the above were lifted from the great big tom swifty page. and now for some originals:

"I shaved my beard off," Tom said, but that was a baldfaced lie.
"I will never do the chicken dance again," Tom said foully.
"I have a frog in my throat," croaked Tom.
"I hate being average," Tom said meanly.

and you?

scholastic complaint, complete with food references

i may have made a big mistake in taking this history course.

the class is the History of Religion and Politics in America. i know, it sounds interesting, doesn't it?

big problem. i don't know how to research historical documents. i know how, the problem is figuring out where the hell everything that pertains to my subject is. keyword searches are not very friendly to me. keyword searches have teeth. the keywords are snubbing me.

looking for scholarly articles on literature is very, very easy. all you need is an author's name. cake! pie! cherry, man. cherry.

i never thought i'd be a senior in college with this problem.

in other news, i have rediscovered ween.

ugh. and not-so-ugh.

my blog vacation might be over soon.

the reason i stopped blogging for a week is a strange one. the autobiographical "I" of blogging was getting in the way of my schoolwork.

how difficult it is to write an expository essay when your daily writing exercises are written subjectively, with a sprinkling of the "I" in every piece.

in addition, i am taking a class that encourages the use of the "I" and dramatization of authoritative ideologies in order to make the reader and writer feel the ideology instead of just coopting ideas through reading.

show, don't tell - just like you were taught in creative writing.

telling is the standard mode of operation in academia, and i wonder what would happen if i threw a bit of myself - hell, more than a bit - in my academic writing. it's just not wanted or respected. one must have a recognizable name and a reputation for excellence in the ivory towers before you can exert any sort of subjectivity into your writing.

academic writing must be abstract! unreachable for the common soul! pretentious! contrived! and above all else, it must leave the reader with a dry, incomprehensible sense of pseudo-understanding, preferably with the taste of something sour and dirty lingering in one's inferior mouth! you're not smart enough to get me, a paper asserts, and remember, i'm better than you are.

rubbish.

i'm very tired of school, if you haven't noticed yet. i'm just tired in general - i'm running on coffee and four hours sleep most days. i've got the no-sleep acne like you wouldn't believe.

to top it off, i've caught a nasty cold. i've been coughing up green stuff for the last few days, and i think i just summoned up a tiny piece of lung in the last wad of green stuff. a quivering piece of dirty pink, it was.

and this weekend, i had to spend the night at my mother's house to avoid exposing ethan to the plethora of drunken college parties on campus. when we go outside every morning, ethan takes a breath and looks around. "nope, no parties today!" he says.

i think i'm warping him.

but things are looking up here. ethan procured his winter wardrobe, and after a stint in the local shopping mall, i really wish there were affordable local stores that sold children's clothing. you urbanites really have a lead on us when it comes to consumerism - at least you have the option of supporting locally owned stores.

and my mother, in an unexpected flavor of generosity, told me that it was time that i begin building up my own wardrobe and gave me some money to shop for myself. music to the ears of a self-proclaimed shopaholic.

in addition, i've been given the opportunity to get in on some grant money with an exciting professor who wants me to help build her a website. if only the grant will come through for us. and what's better, i've convinced her to get away from a static website and go for a blog. yeah, i said it. a blog.

in the meantime, i need to turn away from this website and begin doing some more academic work - even if it will kill me.

in the meantime...

this totally cheers me up.

and so does this.

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a brief annoucement

we interrupt your regularly scheduled programming (nothing) to make an annoucement.

i am getting very, very tired of blog spam.

i have neglected my blog the last few days and, surprisingly, i do not miss it.

with all of the ed-blogging i have to do for classes, i have decided to take a break from this blog.

i don't know when i'll be back, but feel free to leave glowing comments for me to find later.

xoxox

the identity discourse continues

in a very strange way.

a commentor at jane's fired off an email to the twelve aryan nations website after my mention here to voice his disgust with the organization.

he has entered his short dialogue with the organization at his own website. a conversational gem:

see for yourself.

a quick thought

i just need to say how much informational technology rules.

thanks to everyone who participated in the essay request, to those who are working on a response, and those with a critical analysis of our responses.

this just reaffirmed my love of the blog.

astridiana responded.
so did aldahlia.
and did hellblazer.
alegna offers an aussie point of view.
and prometheus 6 continues to keep track of our responses - and is thinking of archiving them somehow for a more coherent discussion.

whiteness, as i know it

two years ago, i took a class on black american literature. i loved the class - the student presentation/discussion format, the reading, and the professor. the professor was a tiny little black man with a comical reputation of being dominated by his very successful and respected wife, apparently fueling his notions of the oppressed black manhood. he was a very quiet man with a good sense of humor, preferring to let the class members give their presentations without interruptions, occasionally interjecting points, facts, and further questions for discussion when necessary.

i remember the look on his face when one day a student dared to call him by his first name, instead of by the recommended address, "Professor S-------." the student might as well have called him boy. the professor gave a thorough history of how white students have historically afforded less authority and respect to black people of authority, and from now on, he preferred to be addressed by his degree. the student was put in his place - and rightfully so. the lesson that i took from that moment was that even if offense was not intended, and even if the student didn't understand the connotations of his actions, it did not excuse him from exhibiting traditional racist behavior.

this semester was the semester of september 11th, racial tensions were running high inside and out of the class. due to the presentation format, students gave short speeches and papers related to the writing every day. suddenly, the topics strayed from the literary readings and began to focus on the class's personal experiences of race and racism. the n-word began getting thrown around with surprising freedom (the students maintained that it pertained to the discussion although it made many of us uncomfortable) and one day, a student admitted to having lots of friends in the KKK. "in fact," he declared one day, "my boy scout troop used to camp on KKK camping ground every year. they were really nice people." he then added that he did not consider himself racist.

my professor was floored. everyone in the class sat staring with their mouths gaping open. professor s. sputtered for a moment and dropped his pen. "how do you justify that?" he asked. he couldn't say anything more. he, like the rest of us, was speechless.

"i don't know," the kid said. "it's just the way it was."

here's an idea grifted from my favorite theorist (guess who), bell hooks. this idea often seeps into my thoughts, regarding whatever sort of racial and gendered thoughts i might be having. in her essay "representations of whiteness," bell hooks says that those who ignore issues of racism uphold the values of racist society.

such people assume that racial discrimination, terror, and harassment no longer occur. this is simply untrue.

in order for me to discuss my theory of whiteness, i first feel the need to explain how i became attuned to the subject of race. these experiences are mostly passive observations of others' racism and friends who have been targeted because of their race.

mini non-fiction:

i am twelve. my friends and i have begun calling each other with crypic statements about our new romantic interests.

the phone rings one night and my mother answers. "she's not here," she says. "can i take a message?" she writes nothing down. assuming it was another telemarketing call, i thought nothing of it. later that night, she pulled me out of my father's hearing and asked, "lauren, why do you have a black boy calling you?" i asked her what she meant, or how she would even know what race he was by his voice. "you just know," she said. i was furious.

it was my friend, J. calling to ask whether or not my best friend was interested in him. the next day, i told him what had happened when he called and how upset i was with my mother. he was hurt and confused and i wished for some time that i hadn't told him. he rarely called to talk after that.

years later, i ran into him at a random moment and we were thrilled to see each other. he told me then that he appreciated my honesty. he is now making a notable career singing off-broadway.

i am thirteen. i am in the most diverse school system in the county. my group of friends jokes that we look more like kids from an after-school special than your usual clique. the group is made mostly of boys - my best friend and i are the only girls regularly invited on neighborhood outings. the others consist of three white boys, two black boys, one arab-american english-speaking boy, one japanese-american bilingual boy, and one mexican multilingual boy.

one day, the boys are jokingly throwing around racial slurs at one another while playing basketball. although i am uncomfortable with them doing so and refuse to join in, even after having some funny gendered slurs thrown my way, i realize that there is enough love between them to never let any feelings get hurt.

but when the arab boy is insulted with a racial slur by a history teacher in front of his class, the other boys crowd around him in support and denouce the racist bastard teacher for having the nerve to humiliate him in front of his peers.

we are all still, for the most part, friends.

i am fourteen. my church gets a new minister. he and his beautiful wife and three kids are from Gary, Indiana, and eager to get their middle son away from the drugs and violence he's been tempted by. they are the only black family in the church, except for a group of children who have been adopted from africa by a white family.

the congregation has a schism between those who approve of his style and teachings and those who are offended at his blackness. parents of girl children are worried by the presence of his teenage sons. within a few months, church attendance begins dwindling. a few more months and my mother reprimands me for my friendship with the minister's sons. within the year, our church is set on fire and half of it is burned to the ground. the minister left shortly afterward and headed to an urban church with a mostly black congregation.

i later ran into the minister's middle son, who moved into the apartment downstairs from me with my white, middle-aged neighbor. he had just gotten out of prison and had renounced gang activity. one night, he borrowed his girlfriend's walkman for a walk to the gas station for some cigarettes. she accused him of stealing the walkman and he was taken back to jail.

i am fifteen. there is a family reunion in Arkansas, where my family originates. there is much conversation about how the old neighborhood has gone downhill since everyone (white) left. i learn for the first time that i am not only of scottish heritage, but also of german, swedish, and jewish heritage.

we drive through my grandmother's neighborhood, and at the sight of a few elementary-aged black kids walking on the sidewalk, my mother instructs me to lock my car door. i refused. my mother was furious with me. when i called her on her racist fears, she told me a long story about how she was in high school during the Central High integration period in Little Rock and was brainwashed with fear.

black women were okay, she said. when she was growing up, black women were always around and always polite. black men, she said, were something she was taught to fear. when i pointed out that the kids were quite young, she told me that she couldn't help it. that's just the way she was raised.

when i think about this now, i remember a common saying i've read from southern black women from that time period - that black people should never trust a white female over the age of twelve.

i am almost sixteen. i have begun dating an eighteen-year-old black boy. my parents find that we are dating and are furious. one night, after staying out way after curfew, my parents call the police and together they figure out where we are staying. they press charges on him for statutory rape, although every sexual experience we had was explicitly consensual. before the police can book him, he leaves town.

i have spoken to him only once since and do not know if anything ever came of the charges. this was a major turning point in my relationship with my parents - a point at which i decided that they could not decide what was best for me without letting their personal prejudices (far more than race) get in the way.

i am sixteen. my boyfriend's mother is japanese and his father is white. when i tell my mother that i have begun seeing him and ask if there's going to be a race clash, mom tells me that she doesn't mind asians. she's always seen them basically the same as whites. she then lauds the beauty and zen of asian culture while cooking spaghetti.

i am seventeen. i have begun seeing a multiracial boy with an unusuallly romantic spanish name. although he, by all accounts, could "pass" for white, which is a point of consideration for my parents' approval, my father asks my mother why i can't bring home a "nice white boy."

i am eighteen. i give birth to a biracial child. suddenly i am bombarded with questions about my son's ethnicity and proclamations that biracial children are the most beautiful of all. and while this sentiment can be debated, i wonder why it sounds so close to a contrivedly non-racist statement about one's approval of miscegenation and interracial breeding.

i go on a date with a fraternity brother that i met through a string of mutual acquaintances. he and i were completely and totally incompatible - comically so (i've got a million funny stories about this guy) - but managed to have a few good conversations before i decided that he drove me absolutely batty.

he is a biracial and from the west coast. when he first told his mother that he got accepted at a college in indiana, he told me, she was terrified. she thought for sure that he would be a victim of a hate crime.

i didn't learn of my ethnic heritage, aside from my obviously scottish surname, until the age of fifteen. nothing, no acts and no traditions and no discussions, in my family hinted at any heritage other than that of southern white tradition.

the earliest maternal ancester that can be traced in my lineage is that of christian widmann sr., who immigrated to the united states in 1750. before that year, he did not exist on paper. he had ten children from which my family sprung. they moved all over the united states. my family line moved west and south, eventually ending up in missouri and arkansas, working jobs as store clerks, farmers, metal workers, and small-business owners.

the ancesters of my father are unknown. while one side of his lineage was wealthy, and presumably french, the other was poor. dirt poor. my father was an only child and grew up as the child of modern-day sharecroppers who didn't have indoor plumbing until the early sixties, when my father was a senior in high school. during his teen years, my father raised beagle puppies to sell for extra money and eventually buy his first car. my father worked in cotton fields from his early childhood, and maintains to this day that his experiences there, working as an overseer of uneducated blacks in the jim crow south is where his racism comes from. over the years, he has learned to cultivate superficial relationships with people of other races, but as a whole, tends to view the white race as superior.

my mother, as an educator, has worked hard to get over the pollution of racism from her childhood because she was expected to teach and nurture minds from all backgrounds. she often says that there is more than one way of being a parent, meaning teaching, and so she viewed her class as a brood of her own children and loved them accordingly.

one might wonder why i recount all these stories of my childhood and of my family. they have done much to shape me and my worldview. my racist parents unwittingly put me into various multicultural situations in which i cultivated relationships with people who were wholly unlike me and i loved it from the very beginning. be it my rebellious nature or natural liberal inclination or my love of learning about the unknown, through their own racism they taught me that racism is not okay, judgment based on one's skin color is unacceptable.

it is mildly uncomfortable to out my family in this way - i was raised in a family where secret-keeping was normative behavior - but in order to be honest about my experiences of my own race the secrets should be revealed for a contextual basis.

in recent times, i've tried to reconnect with the bases of my family's racism. the poor, white, american southeast is so backward that it intrigues me. i've done some reading on the social hierarchy that continues to exist and have yet to come to any conclusions except that my family, too, maintains these backward notions.

i find it curious that when i bring up feminist ideology to my mother, she listens without protest, but when i suggest negative associations with what bell hooks calls "the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy," the familial protest is obvious. i hold the reputation of being the family's communist black sheep. i'm usually referred to as the family hippie, but i digress.

old habits die hard, but i'm trying to kick them to death.

on I-65 heading south toward indianapolis, there is a road sign that is very telling about the area in which i live and the history behind it.

a turn-off leads to an overpass to two towns in opposite directions.

the race relations reporter offers other examples.

PLAINFIELD, INDIANA: A black man returning to his home in Plainfield, Indiana, found that a racial slur had been spray-painted on his garage door. Three other racial slurs were found painted on the back of the house. In addition, a flammable liquid was thrown onto the roof of the house. Some windows were broken and some window screens were slashed. The house's heat pump was also vandalized. (The Indianapolis Star, 8-3-02)

OSCEOLA, INDIANA: The Church of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan held a White Pride Fest on a farm near Osceola, Indiana. About 120 Klan members and supporters attended the event. Racist collectibles were available for sale at the event including books, music, lapel pins, and a T-shirt with a picture of a tree with nooses hanging off the branches. Above the picture was the legend, "Nigger Family Tree." Tom Metzger, founder of White Aryan Resistance, and Matt Hale, founder of the World Church of the Creator, addressed the gathering.

A counterevent promoting racial diversity was held on the campus of Bethel College that was attended by 240 people. (South Bend Tribune, 8-4-02, 8-5-02)

i met a few skinheads in town last year, not knowing that they were skinheads at first. i was very uneducated about the symbology attributed to their particular group. they were tattooed all over their bodies with swastikas and numerology associated with hitler's birthday and the SS. shortly after being introduced to them, one of my girlfriends was harassed at her two places of employment and at her home for not giving them sexual favors on demand. one incident ended in a physical argument and a subsequent visit to the state police. soon afterward, we learned that a female acquaintance had been raped by a member of the group. she went into hiding for months. the rape was never reported.

i offended the white members of my black lit class one day when, after reading all the literature by black american authors, hearing all the accounts of racism, thinking of the events i recounted above, the racism of my family, and the victimization of my friends at the hands of white supremacists, and hearing one student laud the respectability of the KKK, i raised my hand and exclaimed that i hated white people. in this environment, how could you not?

and so i move onto the meat of the essay: what it means to be white.

thinking about all this, writing about all this, i feel that on some level i'm trying to prove my non-racism. but i'm not so innocent.

i am painfully aware of my race and the race of other people when we come into contact (attempting, i think, to change the world through a conversation or two) until we have a strong personal connection. i assume, as well, that the other person is as aware of my race as i am of theirs. i shouldn't project my own insecurities on other people, and yet it happens, probably because i need to feel comfortable with my paranoia, even as i try to relate to people on an individual level.

i have been on the receiving end of white privilege and neglected to question it's validity until long after the fact.

i have had a hard time justifying that i am allowed to have an opinion on the subject of race and racial identity (especially that of others) because i am white.

i regularly practice white (wo)man's guilt. i feel it intensely, whether or not i think i should. the history of america's racial discord and atrocities is manifest. it's been said that guilt is for the guilty, and although i've never been guilty of perpetrating any racial atrocities comparable to that of my ancestors, i have been guilty as the receiver of white privilege and feel horrible that i can't see a whole person without taking their race into account, even though i try not to.

in the era of race consciousness, it might be a good thing to internally account for people's race. i try never to do so externally unless the topic is apparent. but i do long for personal, interracial discussions on race. the problem is not to request that someone speak on behalf of "their people," especially if they do not have a fully realized concept of their own race.

this is why i have a hard time writing this essay. i do not have a fully realized concept of whiteness. i tend to view myself through other lenses: female, youth, mother, single mother, poor, rich, american. but not white.

here is what i do know.

whiteness gives a person extra opportunities in the world without necessarily deserving them. Whiteness believes the access to those opportunities are in order.

Whiteness has made me self-conscious of my whiteness when speaking to people of other races, even though Whiteness instructs me to believe in a colorblind world. i'm sure this is an easy thing for White people to say. the white person in me says otherwise.

whiteness has given me the opportunity to receive a good education without question to the validity of receiving my copious financial aid and live a life in which i will never question whether i was hired or fired because of my race (although being female can be thrown into that mix).

Whiteness tells me i don't have the authority to teach my son about the chinese culture that has shaped the other half of his family, even though his father is just as american as i am and has not experienced pure chinese culture since he was a very small child. what we can teach him collectively will come from his paternal grandmother and what we can glean from books.

whiteness has allowed me a get out of jail free card when i have been pulled over (and when i was often in trouble in my early teens). Whiteness gave me that card.

as look over the list of these things, the list begins to look incomplete. there has to be more, i think. and there probably is.

as difficult as this has been to write, i have realized another thing that is true of my experience as a white person: i haven't thought enough about it. questions arise.

my education at purdue in the field of English Education has focused largely on multicultural values - recognizing the value of all students, not penalizing ESL students, recognition that students have different backgrounds and should be able to draw on those backgrounds in the classroom without fear. there has been much discussion about other races with an emphasis on the growing spanish-speaking population in indiana.

as i think back, there has been very little discussion, or even any sort of recognition that we, as white pre-service teachers from the home of the american ku klux klan, will be required to address race and race relations in the classroom. where are the discussions of whiteness? does the majority population not deserve to be critiqued in the manner that minority populations are critiqued? why is it that white critiques of whiteness is still mostly uncharted territory?

why aren't i institutionally encouraged to examine whiteness in the same manner i am expected to examine other races?

why am i to assume that whiteness is still the norm? that colorblindness is the sought-after goal? why don't more white people questioning how the notion of colorblindness excludes and devalues those for whom their race is a defining classification?

there are more questions. there are many more questions. and i am hard-pressed to come up with many solutions. in my corner of the world, the opportunities for critical collaboration are few.

i don't know if this is what cobb was looking for when he made that tangential request for an essay on whiteness, but this is what i know. i'm sure a more critical analysis is probably in order. but because i've been thinking about this for awhile and have been heavily ruminating on this topic for two days now, there will be more written in the future.

P6 is still addressing the topic (and is waiting for responses from anne and christine).

if anyone has more written, please leave a link in the comment box or trackback - i, like cobb, want a thousand answers to this topic.

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