Minority Celebrations

Happy Women's History Month!

International Women's Day was last week, but all of March is intended as a celebration of women around the world. I, personally, took a 90 minute mini-class on American Women in Rock and Roll, as a part of a special day where my school held different workshops on different topics.

Anyhow, this is sort of a response to the annual dialogue that comes up around Black History Month (which was February), and generally any period of time set aside for minority celebrations. For example, see this 55 second clip of Morgan Freeman being interviewed by Mike Wallace.

I have seen the transcript of this interview all over tumblr; it is the first post on the blog Stuff White People Reblog. The post has 120,000+ notes.

As I did with my "United States on LGBT People Around the World" post, I'd like to add something to the conversation and go against the flow a little. With this commentary, take a grain of salt– I'm white, Morgen Freeman is black. However, it should also be noted that he is incredibly rich and famous, and so both of us speak from points of privilege.

First off, I can't think of (m)any problems that were ever solved by not talking about them. Women and black people didn't get their rights by patiently waiting for them.

Second of all, as alluded in my disclaimer, racism probably looks really good and solved from a Morgan Freeman standpoint. I found his salary for only one movie, and it was $5 million– in 1997 dollars. But the point being that the average Black American is definitely behind whites. A 2004 U.S. Census Bureau study called "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States" said that in 2004, African-Americans earned about $16,000 less in annual income than White Americans (11) and 14% more of the black population was below poverty than the white population (17). In addition,  the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in February 2012 for Black Americans was nearly double what it was for White Americans.

Clearly, economic inequality exists, whether or not Morgan Freeman wants to talk about it. Instead of pretending like it doesn't exist, we should try to figure out how to best lift African-Americans out of poverty and get jobs. Just because we have a mixed race president in the White House doesn't mean that we are a post-racial country.

One final point that I should make was a comparison that my English teacher brought up in our AP Literature class. American culture has been traditionally viewed as a "melting pot," with immigrants assimilating into the dominant culture. However, a more recent view has been that of a salad bowl. Different ingredients can maintain their individual tastes and still come together to make a dish with variety. Of course, the lettuce is still a part of the salad. But it's still lettuce.

African-American history (and women's history, this month) is a vital part of American history. But considering that blacks are still an oppressed minority group, I see no harm in taking a little less than 1/12th of the year to more closely examine Black History– and what we can do to elevate the status of African-Americans today.

Classism - Occupy Wall Street

No war but the class war.

Because, ultimately, that's what a lot of oppression comes down to-- when people are marginalized financially. It makes sense, on a basic level. First, have the ability to hold a job and feed a family. Second, voting rights and the like.

Spurred by an anti-consumerist magazine’s call to action (and operating under the slogan of "We are the 99%), for the past three weeks around 5,000 people have marched on America's most famous symbol of the higher-ups in finance.


But why did they start this? What do they want?

The first question is not terribly difficult to answer. Most of the United States is not in its happy place, economically. People are not very confident in the economy's future, and unemployment is at an undesirable 8.7%. It is certainly not unfathomable that a large amount of people would take to the streets in protest. Again, back to the nucleus of a lot of oppression-- the ability to provide for oneself and one's dependents. Doesn't seem unreasonable.

This leaves the second question: Why? What do they want?

The protest movement has been criticized as unfocused. It is modeled after the Arab Spring, yet the recent Middle Eastern protests seem to have the pretty clear goal of government overthrow/reform. It would be easy to dismiss 5,000 people in the largest city in the country as ignorant, disenchanted youth.

But anyone who calls these protests unfocused is clearly not listening. Occupywallst.org, the "unofficial de facto" voice of the protesters, released both a list of grievances (cleverly modeled after the Declaration of Independence) and a popular but unofficial Proposed List of Demands. The grievances are very broad but include workers' rights, education, and how money is handled; the demands, while equally far-reaching, are mostly for legislation for responsible banking and to minimize the influence of corporations of lobbyists on elections and the democratic process.

Of course, the protests are not as simple as that. There has been some debate over the role of unions in the protests, and many Republican politicians have expressed their contempt for the movement. But is there anything really all that reprehensible in the Occupy Wall Street sentiments? Don't most people agree with the basic tenet that corporate greed is bad? Or are they asking for too much?

I'd love some feedback concerning your personal feelings regarding the protests. Feel free to leave a comment. =)