"And When You Leave, Take Your Pictures With You" by Jo Carillo

When I first read "And When You Leave, Take Your Pictures With You" by Jo Carillo I thought it was so full of anger and I did not quite understand the reason for it, although I must say that I did not grow up in the United States mainland, and the racial composition of the island where I grew up is very mixed, and race relations had not been a major issue there as it has been in the United States mainland. When I came to understand the author's feelings in this poem, was after reading the discussion about privilege in Peggy McIntosh's "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women's Studies".

I think McIntosh's thesis in "White Privilege and ...." explains Carillo's perspective in "And When You Leave...". Part of McIntosh's explanation of the anger racial minorities feel towards white liberals, male and female, is that white people, liberals and conservatives, enjoy a privilege in this society for being white, but they do not realize that they are enjoying such privilege and this makes minorities resentful against whites, even on the occasions when white people are trying to be allies in the struggle for minorities' rights. "At the very least, obliviousness of one's privileged state can make a person or group irritating to be with." McCintosh, Peggy "White Privilege and Male Privilege..."  . If people enjoying a privilege do not recognize that they do so, then they cannot work to end it. I think McIntosh's reading also ties with "The Bridge Poem", that until you really get to know yourself, including any privileges enjoyed, you cannot be a bridge. You have to realize whether or not enjoy privileges, in order to be able to work to make society function more on the basis of merit rather than on personal traits that have nothing to do with merit.

"And When You Leave..." also touches on class. The black and brown women in the poem are working class women, farmers and factory workers, while the "white sisters" background is not really described in the poem, but it is pointed out in several parts of it that the white sisters "own pictures", which give a sense of economic power, to be able to "purchase" an image in order to give the message that you care. I believe the poem clearly depicts the big schism between the poor and the upper middle class, which is more significant than the fact that the poor brown and black women are "sisters" with white women. I believe that this poem's theory is that in the hierarchy of societal factors to unite or separate groups, class is more significant than gender too. 

Coming Apart

I really liked this reading section because it presents, through a fictional story, an explanation of the complex relationship of an African American couple, the feelings of oppression because of race and because of gender. She feels oppressed because historically the black women was subjected to the power and aggression of the white man, she knows that women of her race were used and abused by white men exercising their power as slave owners, her feelings of oppression come from her race and the unfair treatment committed against her race. But I believe that besides feeling oppressed because of the unfair treatment her ancestors received because of their race, she feels oppressed and indignant because of the treatment she receives because she is a women. This feeling of oppression due to different gender perspectives becomes clear to me when she feels angry and horrified at what she observes while she and her husband walked down 42 second street in New York City on one of his business trips, while his reaction to the circumstances faced by them during that New York visit was merely curiosity and sexual interest " For her this is the stuff of nightmares-possibly because all the dolls are smiling. She will see them for the rest of her life. For him the sight is also shocking, but arouses a prurient curiosity. He will return, another time, alone." "Coming Apart." After reading the passage about the New York visit, I am convinced that the wife, a black women, feels oppressed by her husband, a black man, when she perceives from him that he has an interest in white women and reads pornographic material that is insulting to all women. "To share the power of each other's feelings is different from using another's feelings as we would use Kleenex. And when we look the other way from our experience, erotic or otherwise, we use rather than share the feelings of those others who participate in the experience with us. And use without consent of the used is abused." "Coming Apart".

The other interesting aspect of the relationship between this couple is that the husband, in his wife's eyes an oppressor, feels oppressed by his wife because of her attempts to understand her feelings and react according to her new understanding of her circumstances. " He feels oppressed by her incipient struggle, and feels somehow as if her struggle to change the pleasure he has enjoyed is a violation of his rights." "Coming Apart." The husband's sense of oppression does not have the complexity of the dual level-race and gender, that the wife's sense of oppression has, because the husband's thirst for pleasure has made him forget that the objects of his desire are not merely female sexual objects to his eyes but black women as much as he really is a black man, even if he has forgotten that.

"Oppression by Choice" by Anne E. Cudd

I tried to apply the first tier analysis of Cudd's oppression test to the husband's situation described in "Coming Apart." My first impression was that the husband character did not meet the first tier prong of the oppression test.  According to Cudd's  "... one of the criteria of oppression ... is that one suffer harm as a result of coercion." Cudd. "Oppression by Choice." I cannot see how the husband's character is coerced to buy pornographic materials. Quoting for Cudd's article, which cites Michael Levin " ... a person is not oppressed by  feature of society if it is unintended result of "her" choices." "Oppression by Choice."  Every time the husband decides to buy pornographic material he is exercising his free will in a consumer society where we are all free to buy whatever we want so long as we have the means to pay for it. He has not been oppressed because of any coercion to buy pornography. He feels oppressed because his wife has started to question their relationship in light of her new understandings of the relationships of power that have shaped her and her African sisters' lives through history. " A necessary condition of coercion is that one lacks a choice,..." "Oppression by Choice." He lacks a choice because under his wife's new perspective of their relationship he cannot control her views or her understanding of their relationship with the American society anymore. He has no choice but to let her be her new being. She is walking away from oppression, finding choices for herself, while he has lost control over her and this leaves him without a choice over who is this person he is in a relationship with.

"White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women's Studies" by Peggy McIntosh

I really enjoyed reading "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women's Studies" by Peggy McIntosh. It was written in a straightforward manner, easy to follow, full of everyday examples of privileges that I guess people do not notice because such privileges are so common and people are so used to them that they do not consider them privilege, and finally because this reading selection helped me understand better the other two poems I read: "And When You Leave, Take Your Pictures With You" by Jo Carillo and " The Bridge Poem" by Donna Kate Rushin.

An issue I think McIntosh does not discuss in any detail in the selection, and that I believe is of some importance, is that once people recognize that they do enjoy a particular  privilege, they have to decide how to go about solving the privilege problem. I can see two ways in which this can be done, either by providing the privilege to the other group that did not enjoy it, in which case the privilege ceases being a privilege because everyone will enjoy it,  or by the people who are enjoying presently relinquishing the fruits of that privilege so that no one will enjoy that privilege. Because race and gender issues depend a lot on personal attitudes and beliefs I do not think that it will be feasible to end privilege by granting everyone the living conditions of the white male in the United States. It would require a major change in personal attitudes. I think that though affirmative action this country tried to effectuate the second alternative to ending privilege, relinquishing privileges, that white males have enjoyed and give it to those who do not enjoy the privilege, for example seats in colleges and universities.  The problem with this system is that the group "white male" selected to relinquish a privilege is also defined by class, and poor white males do not understand that they have enjoyed the privilege that they are being asked to relinquish. I am coming to the belief that to really understand social issues you cannot artificially divide and focus groups into isolated variables  such as : gender, race, etc. This is really complicated.

"The Bridge Poem" by Donna Kate Rushin

I like the " The Bridge Poem". When I first read the poem, the title of it made me think that it was going to say something positive about being a bridge, because from my personal perspective a bridge is something I relate with unity and service, something useful. I was surprised when I read the poem and realized that the author did not want to be a bridge anymore. But after thinking about it, and reading the poem once again, I can understand the reason why the author does not want to continue being a bridge. If she continues being the bridge between her friends they are not going to make an effort to reach out to each other. Her friends, the groups she mentions in the poem, are groups that are supposed to have common ideals, nonetheless they do not seem to understand each other. There is something that separates them that is stronger than the ideology that is supposed to unite them. The author seems to say, and I agree, that people need to understand, without a "translator/bridge", why they seem to feel like they are all like separate islands instead of like one group of people sharing a common history, common goals and probably a future together, and then resolve those issues so that they can move on together. But this process of understanding oneself is a personal individual experience,  if you do not do it by yourself you do not learn. The author also admits that she needs to go through that introspection process herself before she can be a real bridge. Perhaps she has to continually be a bridge because she really has not been an effective bridge so far because she is still learning about herself,

" I must be the bridge to nowhere

But my true self

And then

I will be useful" By Donna  Kate Rushin.

Time, March 31, 2008 "A Village Women's Legacy" p.62

I really liked this article. After doing a presentation on women's activism, where I spoke about some famous women who either used their notoriety to be politically active, like the Dixie Chicks, or who became famous in certain circles because their causes succeded in part due to their activism, this article presents the example of a quiet personal approach to activism that saved a whole village in Ghana. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady, Rosalyn Carter decided to take the cause of eradicating the guinea worm disease in the village of Denchira in Ghana after they met a young women who greeted them while in great pain, and that during their meeting, they had the opportunity to observe how a worm of the kind that causes the guinea worm disease came out of the woman's nipple. This was so shocking to the President and Mrs. Carter decided to use their power and influence of the Carter Center to work to stop this disease from decimating villages in Africa. This disease would make villagers so weak that they could not work the land to make a living. "Sometimes it's the quietest voice that speaks the loudest"... " I never did see the young women again or find out what happened to her. But the following year when we returned to her village, guinea worm had been nearly eliminated there, .... Having seen her the day in 1988, I came to see life differently- in a micro way. I now believe that the vitality of one person's life has an impact on the health and harmony of the surrounding world."

Time, March 31, 2008 "Why Women Need Better Sleep" p.64

As soon as I saw this article another article came into my mind- "Biology Does Not Determine Gender Roles" by Ruth Hubbard. Hubbard's article made the statement "Women's biology is a social construct and a political concept, not a scientific one,..." The Time article seems to say that women's biology is a scientific concept and that based on biological differences women develop more adverse effects because of lack of sleep than men. The reason why women develop more negative effects for lack of sleep than men is that men produce more testosterone than women. Dr. Suarez, from Duke University, did the study that reflects the finding. " I kept trying to disprove the findings, Suarez says. I put in age, but age did not do anything to destroy the results. I put in race because blacks often report worse sleep than whites, but nothing happened. Smoking and, for women, menstrual statues did not eliminate the gender gap either." According to the study women do not get enough sleep are more likely to develop risk factors for diabetes and heart disease than men under the same circumstances. If we accept this findings as correct, is it not true that in our society well-paying and prestige require long hours of work and attending social events at night which means these positions may mean that women will have to trade their future health for their dream job ? If these biological results are true, then society has gendered these high-powered-well-paying jobs by the way society has defined and crafted them or else women's physical health will pay the cost.