Gina Harris's Blog, page 22

Spotlight on Gloria Jean Pinkney: Black History Month 2024

Getting back into the swing of blogging about books, it became a wonderful thing to realize I could just keep writing until I had caught up on everything after a few years stalled. Unfortunately, there was not going to be any way to clear out the column for Black History reading. 

While that is the list that I have been working on the longest, it is also the longest, meaning the most books. I have recently calculated that I can be caught up in 2029 without neglecting other areas of study, so that's the plan. 

Keep in mind that this is the tenth post for this month, covering just over one hundred books and movies. I got a big chunk covered when I did the spotlight on Brian Pinkney, son of Jerry and Gloria Jean Pinkney (and husband of Andrea Davis Pinkney).

However, at this typing I have reviewed 31 of Jerry's books, and have about 80 to go. I don't know if I will be able to find all of them, but I will get to as many as I can before next February.

Four of those books were done with Gloria Jean, and she only had one other book that I had not read yet, so obviously it made sense to get that book and clear out a little bit more.

The other thing I should add is that it is clear that Gloria Jean has written more than what is found on Goodreads or in the library, so I have to assume that a lot of the writing is happening in magazines and church publications. 

One thing we learn from the writing I did find is that she is very religious, being a prayer warrior and having a prayer partner. It makes sense that a lot of her work is to a targeted audience, and that is fine.

The other thing that comes up is that from her work here, family is a key role. Of her three children's books, two were written with her husband Jerry. For the other two, there are illustrations from Jerry and Brian, as well as photos from son Myles Pinkney, and also some assistance from daughter Troy Pinkney Ragsdale on Music. 

When I first discovered the family connections and wanted to look into them more, I had not imagined the artistic working together that they would do, but it feels like it makes sense for them.

Children's Books with Jerry Pinkney

Back Home
The Sunday Outing

The Sunday Outing is a prequel to Back Home, telling the story of how Ernestine was able to make the visit to her extended family in North Carolina. 

Children's Book with Robert Casilla 

Daniel and the Lord of Lions

Okay, this is the one that was not a family project. It is a simple retelling of the Bible story.  

Comes with a CD:

Music From Our Lord's Holy Heaven

The family participation (her husband and three of their four children) is especially appropriate here because the collection of songs are those she has sung around their home, with comments on their meaning, and then a recording of her singing, if you still have a CD player around. (It turns out I don't, which I probably should rectify at some point.)

The most religious of all...

In the Forest of Your Remembrance 

This is where the "prayer warrior" and "prayer partner" come in. I appreciate her stories of faith and listening for inspiration, as well as being a bit put off by references to Benny Hinn and Focus on the Family. 

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I protest

Picking up from where we left off last week, it was pretty clear that Reagan wanted power concentrated along lines of race and wealth in general. The specific concern about college protesters struck me more because of what I see with protest now.

There is a lot that can be said about responses to protests against the murders of George Floyd and Michael Brown, but for right now let's focus on Palestine.

A few months ago I was coming back from Sacramento. The traffic coming into PDX seemed unusually low. As we were leaving the airport, we saw the reason why: protestors marching against genocide in the road, stalling traffic behind them.

The other people in the car said several critical things about the marchers, including that not only would that not help, but that if they were made late for their flight they would immediately be against that cause.

"So being late would make you support genocide?"

Yes, that was perhaps a little aggressive, but this was important! I have less and less patience for people not thinking things through. (I am aware I may be alienating some people on Facebook as we get closer to the election.)

This led to a discussion on Israel and Palestine and the overall issues there. I said things that were hard to answer. There was an attempt to turn it to feeling sorry for the children, which I get, but is also a way of missing the point.

I don't want to go over all of that. There is probably more clarity for people now than there was at the time. Even so, you still have some people denying it's genocide, or arguing it's earned, or going full-blown Antisemitic, and various points in between.

I suspect that anyone who will support the slaughter in Gaza because of a protest was already supporting it. 

That does not mean the protesters are doing a good thing or doing it well.

I wrote on this topic a little in the wake of the Occupy protests, but not all protest is effective. Sometimes, all you are doing is ruining someone's day. I believe many are sincere, but I would not be surprised if some really enjoy being obnoxious while considering themselves morally superior.

What would make protest effective?

The establishment was bothered by student protesters and draft protesters during Vietnam, but I don't know how much it effected policy. We did see effective protests during the Civil Rights Era, so that might be a better place to look for examples.

Let's look at the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

The reason to protest was clear. Not only did the seating rules mean that sometimes Black passengers were not allowed to sit even when there were empty seats, but because they needed to pay at the front and then go to the back door to enter, sometimes drivers would pull away. The drivers were more abusive than the company policy called for, but that system of inequality made it easy for drivers to show their power abusively.

The request was to end that policy of seating and entrance, as well as hiring Black drivers. Those were concrete steps that would improve the situation. They would not fix racism -- something much harder -- but they would remove some of the bolsters of racist abuse and make that area of life safer and more pleasant for Black passengers.

The bus company did not have motivation to fix this, but they did have motivation to make money; the boycott had a strong and direct impact on that.

It took them 381 days. That is not something you can do easily or without planning. It took ride organization and fund-raising, but also raising each others' spirits and providing encouragement when people got tired.

There is some planning involved in blocking a road or disrupting a Christmas tree lighting, but whom are you affecting and how?

Raising awareness can be worth something, but then is there a place to direct that awareness?

If you are striking at the pockets of a specific business, does that business have any control over the situation?

One of the sad things about the conversation in the car is that as we started reaching some understanding, and talked about effective protest, I had to admit that I could not think of good ways to catch the notice of people who would actually have an impact.

That is not just related to the situation in Palestine. If you think about climate change or other issues, the consolidation of wealth to the top 1% has made it very hard to hit them in their pocketbooks.

It doesn't mean that things are hopeless, but it will require different ways of thinking and acting and organizing.

It may require a complete rethinking of priorities.

Related posts:

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2023/10/palestine.html

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2024/06/dominator-culture-and-social-media-gaza.html

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Hodgepodge: Black History Month 2024

We are winding down, though there will be two more posts in this section.

There were some things that almost became themes. For example, there were two works invoking feminism, differently, but in differently needed ways.

Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

I love both writers, and these are very different approaches.

Kendall focuses on how feminism needs to include economic issues and survival of the marginalized, or it is only maintaining privileges for the already privileged. Recent evens have shown how that doesn't necessarily work, even for the privileged, but there are other, crucial reasons to look beyond that goal.

Gay has a collection of essays about ways in which she might feel that she is letting feminism down by not upholding it correctly. We can have an idea of feminism that overlooks individual needs in the interest of purity, or simply by overlooking how difficult life can be and what is most important.

It is not a coincidence that both of these books were written by Black women (or that a white woman co-opted Gay's title when speaking against #MeToo: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/15/margaret-atwood-feminist-backlash-metoo).

For other potential themes, if you include the works by Amanda Gorman, there was quite a bit of poetry. Since she had her own spotlight, that left three, and I was not sure that needed its own post.

Poems by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

1919 by Eve Ewing

Eve Ewing almost got her own spotlight as well, but her other poetry book and her education book had already been mentioned in other posts in 2021. Then, while I have read some of her comics, she has been writing them so quickly that it would be too soon to do a spotlight for that. 

Suffice it to say, I will read pretty much anything she writes (and she has some Monica Rambeau books now!) so a comic spotlight is not out of the question. Maybe next year.

I would also read more Claudia Rankine. Harper was fine, but I think what I read was pretty complete.

The Book of Delights: Essays by Ross Gay

Not quite poetry, but poetic in its own way, this is the result of an attempt by Gay to find things that are joyful, and delightful. There are 102 short sections. I like his long form work better, but this has value. It is better to break up the reading into short pieces, as he did with the writing.

Black Hollywood: Reimagining Iconic Movie Moments by Carell Augustus

Movie buffs are going to get more out of this than I did, because there are movies that I haven't seen and I know I was missing context. There is still some great photography, and some faces that are good to see.

Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo

This one was initially a little disappointing and is more disappointing in retrospect. The title implies a sharp, incisive wit. There is good information, but tending more toward the dull and academic. Then, just recently, I saw some people I really respect complaining of being misrepresented in Oluo's most recent book Be a Revolution. This was specifically related to disability. While harm and disrespect was probably not intended, it still appears to have been done. 

This kind of makes sense to me. While her So You Want to Talk About Race was excellent, I remember sections where she admitted to her own prejudice, more class-based, but it seems completely believable that she could slip into ableism. 

African American Grief by Paul C. Rosenblatt and Beverly R. Wallace

This work is a response to a realization that studies of the American populace focused on white people, and therefore were not complete. 

While it is pretty academic -- and I am not even in the target group -- I have been re-reading it because there are things that resonate that I want to understand better.

Finally, there were an additional three books that relate, but will end up in a post on rock biographies, and not specifically about Black History. I will list them here just to keep them as part of the record.

Will by Will Smith

Chuck Berry: The Autobiography by Chuck Berry

Up, Up and Away: How We Found Love, Faith, and Lasting Marriage in the Entertainment World by Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. with Mike Yorkey

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Dynamite

I suppose one reason I have such a hard time getting to the point is that the points keep intersecting and circling back to each other.

They way we talk about money -- where tradition dictates that it is gauche and improper to talk about financial specifics -- works better to uphold economic exploitation. For example, not talking about wages makes it easier for gender and race-based pay discrepancies to persist.

That also helps the bigotries persist. Those who are earning more and getting better loan conditions can easily believe they deserve it, and that the only barriers to other people are their own flaws, laziness, or poor choices.

It's easy to believe that when you are on the other side of it as well. With both sides reinforcing each other, the tendency is to consolidate power.

What I was trying to get to a week ago was that college used to be much less expensive. I hinted at some of the factors that have changed that, but I wanted to get to one specific thing, and how it is part of a broader picture:

https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/

There was a time when the state of California had an amazing college system. A year at Berkeley cost California residents a $300 fee. Now, that was a long time ago... it would be more like $2000 annually now, but compared to $40,000 annually it still sounds pretty good.

California was not the only state with affordable higher education, but I do remember it being more practical for a young Beverly Cleary to live with relatives in California and attend college there (Berkeley, in fact) than in Portland. 

Still, college had been more affordable in general, and the GI Bill would have cleared some additional obstacles. Therefore, through the 1960s student debt was not a large factor, until Reagan.

While you would not expect the man who broke the air traffic controllers union to be in favor of sharing and spreading power, he had a head start before then.

Reagan had already come down hard on the state school system in his speeches while running for governor in 1966, but it was in 1970 that he actually shut the schools down.

He was running for re-election, so the decision could have been somewhat strategic (it worked last time), but I believe he sincerely hated the student-led protests against the war in Vietnam.

I do not believe that the statement of the threat was completely sincere.

As first stated by Reagan's education adviser, Roger Freeman, who was defending Reagan:

“We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. … That’s dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow [to go to college].”

“If not,” Freeman continued, “we will have a large number of highly trained and unemployed people.” Freeman also said — taking a highly idiosyncratic perspective on the cause of fascism —“that’s what happened in Germany. I saw it happen.”

I am not disputing that there was unemployment at the time of the rise of fascism in Germany, but it was not a highly educated movement either. The ones who embrace fascism most strongly are more likely to be anti-intellectual, correlating with their penchant for book burning. 

(Looking at Trump supporters, after whiteness the next common denominator is not being college-educated.)

As it is, the students protesting were disruptive, and probably embarrassing. It was happening right after advances in civil rights that Reagan would be working on undoing in just another ten years, so of course they had to go.

That sentiment about being careful about whom we allow to go to college? I hate the snobbery and arrogance of that. There is still some truth coming out, with an educated proletariat being dynamite.

Can we use that? Can we blow up prejudice and inequality and exploitation?

There are some serious obstacles, but there can still be hope.

History itself: Black History Month 2024

It was not planned out, but there was a narrative that emerged with my writing. It became especially clear when I listed the books in chronological order, rather than the order read.

The Betrayal of the Negro: From Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson by Rayford Whittingham Logan

We start with the upending of reconstruction, therefore former slaves not having protection from former masters and even those who had not been owners before. So there are beatings and lynchings and rapes, except generally the rapes are of Black women by White men, but the lynchings are supposedly because Black men are so likely to rape White women. 

No. It was to punish financial success, which was even more impressive considering the obstacles. Perhaps that made it more galling to those who had been working so hard against it.

The Left Great Marks On Me: African American Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to WWI by Kidada E. Williams

On Lynchings by Ida B. Wells

Revolt Against Chivalry: Jessie Ames Daniel and the Women's Campaign Against Lynching by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall

In general I don't believe in having heroes, but Wells became my hero before I was so set against it and additional reading hasn't disappointed me. 

I have On Lynchings here as kind of a bridge for the documentation of the abuses and the documentation of the fighting against them. There was always resistance. 

That includes White women campaigning against lynchings in Revolt Against Chivalry, with women organizing to say that are not protecting us this way, you are not making our lives better, do not use us to make it noble!

In many cases those organizers were themselves subject to racism or misogynoir -- that is why I generally avoid declaring anyone "my hero" -- but they were still working for good.

Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Cafe Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights by David Margolick

Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class by Blair LM Kelley

Perhaps the worst thing to look back on is for how long lynchings were common. 

You can make arguments that it started even before Emancipation and that recent events like the murder of Ahmaud Arbery count, but generally people look at the time period from the end of Reconstruction to the end of World War II, almost seventy years.

(Here is one set of statistics: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynchingyear.html)

Part of what makes Black Folk so interesting is how much of that resistance was labor organization, and how necessary it was. That might not seem so much like "civil rights", but the ability to provide for oneself, and to have reasonable freedom in your manner of doing so is essential to everything about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In many ways, the switch to "Civil Rights" was largely a matter of entering the public consciousness.

Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey into Mississippi's Dark Past, a Memoir by W. Ralph Eubanks

Southern League: A True Story of Baseball, Civil Rights, and the Deep South's Most Compelling Pennant Race by Larry Colton

Once we get more into the "Civil Rights" period, some of the things that stuck with me were very personal, but of course these are books written by people who were closer to it.

Eubanks looked into old records and found some of the threats and surveillance that happened with his parents (thank you Freedom Of Information Act). There is the home he remembered and the people he remembered, and some of them were dangerous in a way he had not suspected.

With Colton, the thing that stands out most is him interviewing White players who remembered some of the new Black team members as not being very social without ever thinking about the inability of those teammates to stay at the hotels they stayed at or enter the bars where they hung out.

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Possibly the thing that brought it home the most was this book of essays by Coates. Eight years is the Obama presidency, right?

It is in fact a collection of essay written during that presidency, yes, but the quote comes from South Carolina state congressman Thomas Miller, arguing against the disenfranchisement of Black Americans (including himself) at the end of Reconstruction.

Also...

*Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini

When I obtained this book, I had not realized it was a novel. I had meant to read a historical account. 

I don't think it's a bad telling. There is more on the sewing than I would have looked for.

I am putting this here because it doesn't seem to go with any of the other books, and Andrew Johnson looks like a jerk, which makes sense, but also leads to this thought:

It made apparent sense to choose Andrew Johnson as a running mate to show a commitment to unity going forward. That sounds reasonable, but given Lincoln's death, it is hard to imagine a worse choice. 

While that starting Betrayal had more to do with later presidents -- like Rutherford B. Hayes and Woodrow Wilson, as mentioned in the title -- well, there are times when the appearance of unity cannot possibly be as valuable as taking steps to guarantee continued progress.

Inasmuch as there has always been resistance to racist abuse, there has also always been resistance to progress. 

Anyone who cares will need to constantly remember that and be vigilant about fighting its many forms.

Imbalance of power

Picking up where we left off, I am no longer ashamed of being poor or fat (at times I have to fight it harder) because of an awareness of systems that make it very hard -- if not impossible -- to change some of those things. 

That tendency to be ashamed and blame it all on personal flaws works to create misery and prevent finding and achieving what is possible.

It has taken me a while to understand how difficult it is to escape class. I say this even though one of the perceived escape routes was much easier for me when needed than it would be now.

When I went to college, it was relatively affordable.

For the record, I started college at the University of Oregon, Winter term 1991. Out of the 180 credits needed for graduation, I brought 51 from AP tests, plus one writing course taught at a college level for credit but offered at the high school. 

It was a late start because of needing to work. There was a lot of time taken off for work, as well as 18 months for a mission. I ended up taking eight terms of classes, spread out over the years so I graduated in June of 1996.

The fees for the AP tests were my first credit card charges. I finally became eligible for student aid in my senior year. (The 18 months of no income while on the mission really helped with that.) 

With all of that, working while in school and taking terms off to do nothing but work, I graduated with about $2300 in debt. If I had not gotten close to a third of my credits in high school, if I had not taken such a heavy course load, or if I had not been able to work while in school, it would have been more, possibly triple, but still...

Students today should be so lucky. 

Just in the last 20 years college tuition and fees have grown twice as fast as the consumer price index. This has not been due to the quality of education rising or the jobs that you could get rising, but rather to increased administrative costs and because capitalism allows profits to be extracted from any public good, even at the expense of the public good.

I was also fortunate in that the interest rates were not unreasonable at the time, and that a college degree really did increase your earning power. My personal struggle with interest rates is more that I have already paid enough to equal the cost of my initial mortgage, with hardly any decrease in the principal. By the time it is paid off -- if everything goes according to schedule -- I will have paid its value four times over.

I get pretty regular offers to take it off my hands. They generally offer an amount that would pay off the mortgage and most of my personal debt. Taking that would leave me with no assets and no place to live.

It is also a sever undervaluation. Now, the Zillow estimate is way too much, but potential buyer could get significantly more out of it than they are offering me. 

As they don't need a home, they could make a large profit on the sale. What they might be even more likely to do is to make it a long or short-term rental, continuing to restrict the supply of housing that makes it such a seller's market right now.

It would be easy to look at the numbers and think that you would have to be stupid to fall for it, but you don't; you only have to be desperate. There are a lot of ways for that to happen.

The offers were even more persistent when I was in foreclosure, and this isn't even touching on reverse mortgages preying on the elderly.

For years I was told to avoid debt, except for a house and schooling. 

It is more common now that people will advise holding off on college, and maybe choosing a trade school (like those never load people down with debt), but there was a lot of time in between where people who were doing everything they say is right have been getting screwed for it, ending up poorer while the haves get richer.

I have a lot of feelings about that, but I am past feeling shame for it.

The funny thing about this post is I started with education because I was going to go to one specific place.

That's just going to have to wait until next week.

Memoirs: Black History Month 2024

There is such a wide variety with this group, it follows that there are some I liked more than others.

The other thing is that sometimes the lines blur. 

There are ways in which Ibram X. Kendi's How to Be an Antiracist was so personal that it was almost a memoir. 

I almost put Frederick Douglass's autobiography in history, because it contains so much history (as many of them do). Since it is his personal story -- while also showing a broader landscape that he was a key part of -- it belonged here.

The Pretty One: On Life, Pop Cultere, Disability, and Other Reasons to Fall in Love With Me by Keah Brown

I first heard Keah Brown speak at AffectConf, so of course I wanted to read her book.

Brown was born with cerebral palsy, and a twin who did not have it. That did not help with body image issues, yet so much of it sounded familiar (especially for women), even without having those issues. Kind of more bubbly and cute than deep (maybe that is my age speaking), but still with a lot to relate to.

Piccolo is Black: A Memoir of Race, Religion, and Pop Culture by Jordan Calhoun

Brown delivers on pop culture much better than Calhoun. The order of the sub-title does put pop culture last (though I would say religion -- featured second -- is featured more prominently than the first-mentioned race), but the main title sounds like there is going to be more on that, and it was disappointing. 

One big reason I read it is to find out about "Piccolo". Yes, I knew Panthro was Black, but who was Piccolo? So, just in case you are wondering, he's from Dragonball.

Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement by Tarana Burke

This is a good and important book, but I think the best thing I can say about it is exactly what I wrote when I originally reviewed it on Goodreads:

There is a lot of wisdom in here about healing and empathy, but perhaps the most important lesson is that carrying around your own wounds -- no matter how far down you push them -- limits your ability to help others.

Burke did a lot of good before dealing with her own abuse, but it does not compare to what she could do after.

We're Better Than This by Elijah Cummings

I read this shortly after Cummings' death, having not thought about him much before except that he really looked like John Lewis. 

I found a warm man full of integrity, who continued to work hard while facing grave health problems. 

A little repetitious at times, but still worth the read.

Act Like You Got Some Sense and Other Things My Daughters Taught Me by Jamie Foxx

We read this because we were watching and enjoying Beat Shazam, with Foxx and his older daughter Corinne. Very entertaining, but still heartfelt.

Becoming by Michelle Obama 

This was my favorite of the bunch. Obama's voice really comes through, and I like her. A lot of the information was interesting, but simply spending time with her was enough to be worthwhile. 

Life and Times of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

Riveting for the most part, and even though it is older, and it is very readable, which is not always guaranteed for books written over a century ago. A very brief account of his limited time with his mother shows the heartbreak of slavery, and then its brutality comes through later.

Look for editions published after emancipation. In earlier versions he does not give the details of his escape. While it was relatively simple, it is still interesting.

Circling around the point

My initial plan was to circle back to economic inequality and how it affects political power. There are  some timely examples! 

As soon as I finished writing the last post, I knew I would have to write more about fat.

That was exacerbated by two articles and a conversation. 

Both of the articles were about medications that were initially developed for diabetes but are now being seen as "miracle" weight loss drugs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/07/opinion/ozempic-weight-loss-drugs.html?utm_source=pocket_saves

https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2024-04-15/how-miracle-weight-loss-drugs-made-health-disparities-worse#:~:text

The New York Times article is about how the real problem is satiety, and that is caused by poor food quality, so really we should be uniting against the manufacturers of processed foods.

The LA Times article is about how this increases already existing health disparities because the people who don't generally have access to healthy foods and health care also don't have access to the drugs.

I'm not saying they don't have points, but they are missing some points too. 

First I am going to backtrack to Metformin.

One nice thing about Metformin is that it has been around since the 1950s in Europe, though it was not approved for use in the United States until 1995. It is generic and cheap. 

It also helps some people lose weight, so it gets prescribed a lot for people who do not technically have diabetes yet but might get it.

It does not help everyone lose weight. I know at least two people who have lost weight on it without changing diet or exercising more. It can happen; it's just not guaranteed.

One of Metformin's functions is to suppress your liver from releasing too much stored glucose during fasting periods, like at night. If you are having insulin problems, that release can raise your blood sugar, which can have extra wear and tear on your organs. If you have plenty of insulin, that extra blood sugar can be used or stored as fat. 

It totally makes sense that taking Metformin would help with weight loss for some people but not all people.

That makes sense for any drug. 

For people getting all excited about a new "miracle" weight-loss drug, it makes sense, but those could be false hopes. 

I suspect that is a large part of why the hype keeps migrating. It was Ozempic, but then it was more Mounjaro that was going to give us all our dream body. Then before Wegovy got to really be the big one, Zepbound started stealing its thunder. There are always studies showing this one may be more effective or this one interacts with two receptors instead of only one, and then there's this thing called "super responders" who skew the results.

What really brought it home for me was hearing someone referred to as "skinny fat".

I'd heard the term before, but kind of forgotten about it. In this case, the speaker did not like the person he was talking about, and I think it was just very hard for him to give credit for that undeserved body shape. 

I don't know whether the subject in question is healthy or not, but neither does he. It might even be an appropriate description if she has an unhealthy level of visceral fat, but he doesn't know that either.

It frustrates me how little we benefit from what we know. We know that Body Mass Index does not correlate with health, nor was it intended to, but we still use it. We know that things that are health indications -- blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol -- do not automatically correlate with body size. 

We still get hung up on it. 

Fat people -- especially fat women -- have a hard time getting a diagnosis or remedy beyond "lose weight!"

If we were better at listening to women, we might know a lot more about myalgic encephalomyelitis (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). Because it was first seen in a hospital environment, the majority of the sufferers were nurses, and women. Even though they were medically-trained, professional women, it was still assumed to be hysteria. If we had paid attention to long-term effects after an infection then, it could be helping us with Long COVID now.

Of course, we have a hard time getting people to believe in that too.

Incidentally, COVID does seem to be bringing on diabetes for many patients. If we are determined to stigmatize diseases, there are more opportunities coming.  

The main point I want to make is that if we really want people to be healthy, well, yes, we needed to mentally divorce "healthy" and "thin", but also, we are going to have to include not only access to health care, but also access to healthy food and activity and living conditions. 

That will not come from a pharmaceutical company. However, it might take a miracle.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/05/shame.html

Antiracism: Black History Month 2024

"Antiracism" was going to be a book category for this anyway, but having just done the spotlight on Stamped, I realized that I should really get around to reading Kendi's How to Be an Antiracist.

So I did.

"Antiracism" was already going to be a category because there were three other books on that topic for this round of reading and blogging. There have been another five that I have written about previously, and there are at least two on my reading list that I have not gotten to yet. 

I could say that some are better than others. It might even be quantitatively true where you could look at how well-written each book is and how well-resourced, but that would be largely beside the point.

Even on the same topic, they come from different viewpoints and different areas of expertise. Some of those may be more resonant for you because of your own experiences or interests, and some might do a better job of filling in the gaps in your own knowledge.

Therefore, the most useful thing I can do is probably just to cover the niche of each book, and then readers can choose which book sounds most appropriate for them.

I have not ruled out writing an overall summary when I finish those last two, but by then there will almost certainly be new books available (unless we get racism fixed by then).

Regardless, here is my most recent reading:

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

I loved Stamped, but it was long and detailed in a way that could be intimidating for some readers. This book is much more approachable.

Kendi starts right off with his own racism and continues to give personal examples. I won't say that makes the reading process comfortable, necessarily, but I think it does help the reader not feel judged. 

What it also does is make the book intensely personal, as we get all of the points and influences along his journey, right up until the necessity of writing this book. 

I recommend it.

Nice White Ladies: The Truth About White Supremacy, Our Role In It, and How We Can Help Dismantle It by Jessie Daniels

This is another one that is really accessible, despite the academic rigor behind it. 

The title describes the focus perfectly, so this is a good one for white women who do not think they are "Karens" -- maybe even find that term offensive -- yet still might benefit from looking into it a little more.

Dear White Peacemakers: Dismantling Racism with Grit and Grace by Osheta Moore

This one is pretty faith-based. I appreciated that in Austin Channing Brown's I'm Still Here, but not quite as much in this one. I still gave it four stars, but I have given a lot of these five stars. It may still fill an important role, and the focus on making peace and building community is admirable.

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee

This is well done, and a strikingly different approach in that it examines the literal cost of racism through an economic lens. 

Even while I doubted if that would move people (because people ignore their self-interests in favor of racism pretty frequently), I was still impressed with information.

Shame

It's not easy casting off shame.

Even now, where I am fairly advanced with it, I still feel a certain defensiveness writing about it. It tempts me to add all of these justifications and clarifications to prove that I am not just in denial.

I suppose that is why I wrote about the various employers screwing me over rather than some other topics, including how interest -- and therefore debt -- drives the economy, so is encouraged and reinforced, even though individuals will have their debt attributed to bad choices.

As it is, I have seen and elucidated clear examples of racism and sexism creating problems, and then people who were invested in the status quo continued to deny and downplay. There is often a limit to how much that type of engagement helps, though you don't always know that going in.

Therefore, I know as I write these things I am leaving myself open to judgment, but I also know that the people most likely to discount what I say are also the least likely to read what I write. I guess that works out.

What I am driving at is that some of what I write about is so baked into societal beliefs that if the initial response is denial that is not even weird. Keep an open mind, and reach out if you have questions.

Getting back to those three employers, the first one did not end up making much of a difference, but the other two really set me back. There were other factors in that (a worldwide financial crash, my mother's dementia), but I lost ground that I never regained.

This is pretty normal. If you have more resources, even setbacks can work in your favor. For example, that worldwide financial crash did affect the stock balances of rich people, but if they didn't need to sell so were able to hold out, there was a big rebound coming. 

That was not how it worked for us.

That could be a reason to be skeptical about those arguing for the privatization of social security, but I am mentioning it more to get to the other area where I needed to let go of shame...

I am no longer ashamed I am fat.

I admit this is not the same as being happy about it.

I recently told a friend (who had been fat-shamed by her doctor) that if I had never dieted I would probably be about sixty pounds lighter.

That's only an estimate, and I would definitely still be considered fat (otherwise there wouldn't have been all of the dieting attempts along the way). It still would have been better. It would have made clothes shopping easier (though I hated clothes shopping back then too).

This is a thing that is remarkably well-known: 95% of dieting attempts fail, with the dieter gaining back anything lost, plus a little extra. Since even people who know that are desperately hopeful of making that 5%, the diet industry makes billions annually. Not millions; billions.

There are so many problems with that I can't even get into it now, but my point is how brilliantly this fits into dominator culture, and why people have such a hard time letting go of it. 

You can see if someone is fat -- though not if they are healthy -- by looking at them. Judging people by color has developed a bit of a stigma, but judging by body size is still A-okay. That is strong motivation to change, but in reality you just end up getting farther behind, probably poorer, probably less healthy from the strain, and almost certainly with a bit more heft to be judged by. Then no amount of science will convince hordes of people that it is not because you are just a slug who doesn't even try, and you don't deserve to ever taste anything good or ride on an airplane.

Incidentally, I have read that when it became common to judge people by their weight, assuming the sin of gluttony, it was partly because it was becoming too unpopular to criticize the greed of capitalists.

It tracks, doesn't it?

I think the order that makes sense here is to return to financial issues next Tuesday, but I am going to leave one thought here first:

The primary purpose of emphasizing personal responsibility is to weaken collective power.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/04/changed.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/05/anger.html

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2023/07/reparations.html