final papers=lots of food, coffee and facebook updates

It's that time during the semester when i find myself updating my facebook status in 30 minute increments. yes, it's finals time.

In the spirit of procrastination, here's a bunch of random stuff:

1. Really cool/scary map of the unemployment rate since 2007.

2. A sex scene from True Blood (courtesy of desertDIVA)

3. A random quote from the paper I'm working on right now:

"[R]acial discourse is not simply about private speech acts or individualized modes of communication: It is also about contested histories, institutional relations of power, ideology, and the social gravity of effects. Racist discourses and expressions should alert us to the workings of power and the conditions that make particular forms of language possible and others seemingly impossible, as well as the modes of agency they produce and legitimate" -Henry A. Giroux

4. Another random quote (i love this article by jodi melamed, 2006):

"As historical articulations of race and capitalism have shifted--with white supremacy and colonial capitalism giving way to racial liberalism and transnational capitalism and, eventually, to neoliberal multiculturalism and globalization--race remains a procedure that justifies the nongeneralizability of capitalist wealth. Race continues to fuse technologies of racial domination with liberal freedoms to represent people who are exploited for or cut off from capitalist wealth as outsiders to liberal subjectivity for whom life can be disallowed to the point of death"

5. One thing on my birthday wish list: a stainless steel travel mug

6. I just finished off the ice cream.

7. is my favorite number.

8. I think snuggies are cool.

9. When I finish the semester, I'm going to continue the tradition I started and quit several yrs ago and compile a list of socially responsible gifts for kids. Unfortunately, it's usually a pretty short list.

10. My skin is so dry right now that I put on lotion and it burned. Not a good feeling.

11. and one last quote that I love:

"Women of color live in the dangerous intersections of gender and race. Within the mainstream antiviolence movement in the U.S., women of color who survive sexual or domestic abuse are often told that they must pit themselves against their communities, often portrayed stereotypically as violent, in order to being the healing process. Communities of color, meanwhile, often advocate that women keep silent about sexual and domestic violence in order to maintain a united front against racism... the analysis of and strategies for addressing gender violence have failed to address the manner in which gender violence is not simply a tool of patriarchal control, but also serves a s a tool of racism and colonialism. That is, colonial relationships are themselves gendered and sexualized" (Andrea Smith, 2005)

Dirrrrrty Dishes and the Same Old Routine

Warning: This is a RANT. Proceed with your own instinct.

After coming home from three days away in the city, my kitchen sink is full of dirty dishes. Actually, the kitchen is just plain filthy. I live in a house with three other women, one is which is away. The other two have been home for the last couple of days. I don't mind doing the dishes-- I was everything in the sink and put away the clean dishes in the dishwaher. Some of the tupperware I put back in the dish rack for convenience (I knew I was going to clean the kitchen later). I also vacuumed the living room, hallways, and back office. I acknowledge that lately I have not been cleaning as much as possible, but at the same time, have not been home that much, hence feeling that the mess wasn't mine to clean. Tonight I had plan on cleaning everything for tomorrow, which I am hosting my first thanksgiving dinner. Needless to say, my plans changed. Due to the turkey defrosting and one of my housemates bringing over a friend who was cooking/baking, I was not able to get back to the kitchen. Later my other housemate came home and they all decided to watch two movies in the living (where I originally was studying, but moved because of the noise).

After a couple of hours, I decided to take a shower. When I got out of the shower I caught my two housemates gossiping behind my back and the one's friend was making a mess of the kitchen. I WAS PISSED. I could hear them saying "oh wow she actually did the dishes" BITCH PLEASE! I was the dishes (including ones that are not mine) at least three times a week. I do it at times when people are not home, because that is usually when I prefer to be home so I do not see them. I was so hurt that they would do such a thing, especially since I have not bitched about one of them consistently not cleaning the drain in the bathroom. I had to finally stick up for myself, which I could tell caught them off guard.

Moral of the story is that I do not trust these women. I am done covering for someone who can turn on me so quickly. Why do I have to be quiet when you study when you can watch two movies and be HELLA loud when I am working on my final papers..... serisouly I am rarely ever home and thats the time to do it? Right now I should be reading Trinh Minh Ha and instead I am blogging my frustrations to help calm me down. UGH!!!!!

There is so much more I could write.. but I will try not to let it get to me. Fucking Bitches!

Knowledge and Value

This was sent to me from another fierce WOC graduate student. Her email shows yet again how hard it is to 1. be in the academy 2. change the academy 3. sustain ambition to work within its constructs (the academy). We have to voice our frustrations and not isolate ourselves..... in numbers we grow stronger.

She states: "Hope you are well, my cognate class (on law and race) is painfully horrible! yesterday we were supposed to have our only in class test. He hadn't printed the tests out before class started, so he sent them to the faculty printer, and somehow they got lost, he told us to "not talk while he was out of the classroom" like we were 5th graders or something, I asked the class if they had put in complaints about him before and the consensus was that they and others have but nothing gets done, I think it is true about U of M's treatment of athletes, (who are almost all African American) even the school newspaper has some scathing comments about athletic/personal performance of individual athletes etc.

I am also feeling a little frustrated because there was an incident during a critique, where I was shut down and ignored, and no one jumped in. basically a white student is doing a painting using images of black subjects, to in her words"provoke a conversation about race and gender" last critique I urged her to use caution when comparing Hip Hop's role of women to that of Enslaved black women, during the antebellum and the Middle Passage, I offered myslef as a resource because of my studies on this history and the images from them, (as I had said there were not many photographs available) then I was cut off my a gentleman who said he was hired by Northwestern to archive slavery photographs on a library website. (it turned out these were photographs of Africans NOT African Americans, good try mister, both Black but NOT the same).. so at this last critique the conversation was of course more formal, like color composition etc. then I kept trying to bring the conversation back to race, and bluntly asked her what her point of view was she said it was to provoke a conversation (w/ I was trying to have a conversation, no?) then turned her attention to someone else, she was obviously uncomfortable about my confrontations, and was trying to move the group onto a different painting with benign subject matter. I asked her why she was using visual references of anthropological drawings of the African Slave trade and the journey to the West coast of Africa, I asked her if she was trying to talk about the invention or the convention of race, this time she completely disregarded and ignored my question and turned to the (white) guy next to me and said "didn't you have a question?".. not one of my liberal classmates or Professor said a word, so not only was my scholarship on this subject disregarded, but my own experience as a WOC and as a WOC artist who works on race. I cant wait for the break."

Stay strong!!! Yours in solidarity: libralady

Booze, Blunts, and Bloodsuckers

Just have to say that I am very excited for tonight's activities. Will bring pie for the munchies. Even fierce women of color need herbal remedies.

Life's Ups and Downs

I've taken a break from this blog, which I now realize was a mistake. This space is so critical for all of us to voice our frustrations, hopes, desires, worries, and fears. The last couple of weeks have been tremendously hard; whether in regards to school, work, or love. However, we (I) are soldiers and keep on trooping through the misty unknown that is the future. The one major issue that has been on my mind is compromise-- When do we pick our battles and when do you stay silent. When do we disrupt something good for a perceived something better... do we take the risk, or play it safe? When do you know that you have a good thing, or when you should revert to something from the past that end up bad... or good? These have been the questions plaguing my mind. I am very thankful for what I have now: great friends, family, work situations, adviser, and of course, partner. Yet, I still feel no happiness, no consistent butterflies. But this is just the beginning.... will it improve over time? God I hope so. Please strength do not leave my side, I need you more than ever.

the ugly funk

This has been hard...to write I mean. I've been feeling invalidated...by whites and also by people of color. By people either telling me that what I see is in my head, or invalidating my experiences by homogenizing it as experiences of all people of color. I lost my voice, even forgot what it once sounded like.
So for months I've sat here looking at this blog, trying to write something worthwhile and felt I had nothing to contribute. Then today I woke up and felt something radiate inside me...ANGER. My inner voice wanting to say nothing more than FUCK YOU to those voices I've internalized over a life time. I am what I am and I do not need you to define me, solve me or tell me how to be. And if I contradict myself, so be it... it is inevitable! I will no longer live in fear!
So, this is want I have to contribute at this moment... the mess, sadness, anger, loneliness, frustration and the powerlessness I feel. I refuse to hide it away like some sorry secret. This is how the world I live in has written me at the moment and this is as real as it gets.

- theothergrlnxtdoor

the other thing about tokenism....

yes, i understand that the title of my paper at this graduate student conference is "provocative" and is is about intimacy and sex, but, hello, i'm describing the united states and how they maintained a foothold in their overseas empire. yes, i am talking about "inappropriate" things, but imperialism is inappropriate, period. you white guys don't need to go around the conference dinner looking for the girl who is giving the "nasty" talk and congratulating her for having the "nasty" title, and telling her how you are all looking so much forward to it. this shouldn't make me rethink my entire paper presentation because i don't want to "perform" for your lusty desires and whatever it is you think my paper is going to be about, but as a woman of color presenting on the subject of imperialism in a developing nation, this is what i am now thinking about. and i am also now thinking about not going to my panel, so you don't have the opportunity to hear the "nasty" girl give her "sexy" talk. but instead, i think i will change my paper a little, and preface it by calling you assholes out, and relating how people like you are the continuing legacy of empire and sexual exploitation that continue to plague my motherland. really, what it comes down to is that i have a smarter title than you, and that you are acting like you are 12. and you are racist. and sexist.
assholes better recognize.
desertDIVA