Bueno, gente, I want to start this meme while it is hot even though I, personally, will have to come back later to do a really good job at it, as it will take some thought. But the meme is, a) what are you actually ashamed of, and b) what have you been shamed for? WoC Ph.D. started it, although she did not name it as a meme. It is of course a response to a somewhat different question Bitch Ph.D. asked her readers.
Many of the things WoC Ph.D. is ashamed of, are the same as or similar to those I would list. For instance:
- I chose a profession in which I had to associate with people who despite all their economic privilege think they are poor
- I chose a profession in which I have to hold polite conversations with people who think it is their right to buy (adopt) children of color from poorer countries, say they have “rescued” them, and call themselves “progressives”
- I interact regularly with people who when called on their shit do nothing to address their isms but instead use linguistic games or self-righteous indignation to avoid oppression all together
- I have remained in a dilettantish profession which allows me to follow certain rather dilletantish interests when I could have, and could still use my considerable skills for the direct betterment of society
- I chose a profession in which I am expected to socialize with people who say, “But you have had the opportunity to discuss race with people of other races, and I have not”
- I chose a profession in which I have to work with people who think racism is a thing of the past, and who when hiring decisions are made only hire conservative people of color
- I chose a profession based on inequality in which women and people of color make up the ranks of the lowest paid, least tenured, and most over-worked (through demands placed on them to do extra teaching loads or not be asked back the following semester or year, by being asked to officially or unofficially mentor all the people in their identity group, and teach most if not all of the courses associated with their identity group)
- I have worked with colleagues who actively stole written work from their students and then won awards for publishing it
- I cannot believe in a movement, “feminism,” because it thinks the experience of upper class white women is universal despite whole libraries of texts that say otherwise, and in this way I am disloyal to women
- I refuse to belong to a movement, “feminism,” which makes room for the likes of Lyndie England but not Elvira Arellano, and in this way I am disloyal to women
- I have associated with people who in the face of oppression, be it the use of slurs or implied violence, have stood by silent
- I continue to have friends who in their most intimate relationships still show signs of internalized racism or sexism
- I have not always treated myself with the respect and trust I automatically accord others
Things I have been shamed for also include some of those on WoC Ph.D.‘s list, and quite a few more of my own:
- being willing to give up things for others to have things
- risking my career and my paycheck to stand up for people everyone else is willing to oppress
- speaking out when everyone else remains silent
- having intellectual interests and respecting intellectuals
- not respecting academia enough
- putting career ahead of family (not feminine enough) and social justice – as well as general honesty and integrity – ahead of career (not masculine enough or conformist enough)
- having an independent mind
- being able to get a point across to a Whiteman without resorting to histrionics
- being very intelligent
- not being afraid
- realizing that a large part of the reason I am not afraid is that I come from privilege and I have backing – I do not have all that much to fear
- deciding to take advantage of that fearlessness as opposed to being embarrassed about it and trying to stamp it out (so as to become more class/race/gender “appropriate”)
- believing that “intersectionality” is just the latest form of whitening – which earlier on has been dressed up as mestizaje, integration, “diversity” and multiculturalism
I have not done a stellar job with the meme, but I think this is enough to start. Now everybody tag your own self.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
what an interesting list (and not just because a few are mine) and a great idea! Here is hoping people send us both the trackbacks so that we can see how it progresses.
Bitch PhD’s actual question was: What assholish things should you be ashamed of according to everyone else? So in fairness, my two lists are a play on her utter lack of shame.
A lot of these are still too culturally US A-sian for me to understand their real meanings.
Anyway:
http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/2007/09/self-tagging-shame-meme.html
okay – still playing catch up inbetween everything else but boy am I breathless at this one… (I think Bitch Phd lives across the county from me, no? I tried to read her stuff regular but couldn’t cozy to it — I’m off and running now though)
real quick before I go – the Lyndie England Vs. Elvira Arrellano…yeah, what’s up with that one, huh?
RG – I thought Bitch PhD was in OC but it seems she takes the Ventura paper … why would that be?
On England vs. Arellano: that is one of WoC PhD’s examples I lifted, taking it as an example of feminism which is “for all women” (including England) as long as they are American / white. But apparently there is a “feminist” defense of England (one of those convicted of the Abu Ghraib abuses) and also a “hillbilly defense” … I figured this out by Googling. More Googling netted a Libertarian analysis of the Abu Ghraib abuses as a result of feminism (which leads to barbarism). I would love to know more about this … there appears to have been a whole discussion of it … here’s an article in Counterpunch: http://www.counterpunch.org/baker05152004.html
love Counterpunch – I get its broadcast on the local Pacifica station.
I know what you mean about B Phd – this is what I thought – she’s in OC – but perhaps takes the Ventura paper because she used to live there (a bit of a stretch, I know).
Hmm. I could have sworn she was at UCI.
Originally she was in Canada, apparently at Guelph. Then Mr. B got this job in SoCal and she is being a stay at home Mom and blogging in a couple of places. I thought she was in OC and had gotten a job offer at some place like UCI but turned it down in favor of a liberal arts college. Actually, though, she is still unemployed and might be in Ventura … or might just be taking its paper for mysterious reasons.
Perhaps she takes the Ventura paper because she wants to infiltrate CSUCI. I think she mentioned that once, something about CSUCI being a green campus. I read OC as well. I remember thinking wtf was she doing in OC, the biggest and stupidiest Repug county in CA. I wonder why she is not willing to knock on UCLA’s door, or CSULB, or CSUN even. Ventura County already has enough problems. Think Redneck second to OC.
I think she has knocked on those doors. And I hear she has gotten some offers. She thought the “sweet little college” (I am supposing a private liberal arts one, I could be wrong) would give her a more flexible schedule but she may not realize that those places actually have *less* flexible hours than the research-extensive places.
I am from the zone, I know Ventura, and yes – it is redneck central. I would much rather work at CSULB or CSUN than CSUCI – that place is too new, it can’t have the kinks ironed out yet, and it is a converted mental hospital. I am not sure about the vibes although it did house Charlie Parker while he was detoxing from heroin one time – see his composition, “Relaxing at Camarillo.”
And I hear the teaching/research situation at the CSUs, particularly the non-fancy ones (CSULB from what I understand is one of the best), is really bad these days due to funding and maybe other decisions made by the legislature / supervisors / etc.
P.S. Confessions of a Community College Dean commented on her post that it and its thread showed housing costs, not overconsumption of lattes, were “the real culprit” (i.e. what makes it hard to be upper middle class on only one good income).
I do not disagree but I can think of a few other factors and variables he may be too lucky to have to see … and by the way I do not see why educated people should fear ‘bad’ public schools, can they not make up at home for that?
just a shout-out about conditions here in OC – some of us are trying, really we are. We’re just up against some mighty entrenched powers, to say the very least.
I know. And I actually like OC, it is b.e.a.u.t.i.f.u.l. Like the pictures that especially Chunk keeps putting up on your blog.
Yes, beauty still outshines the bulldozer and good people are doing good things to hold the line where they can against all odds…sure, I day dream about LA or the bay area but I do love a challenge.
“and by the way I do not see why educated people should fear ‘bad’ public schools, can they not make up at home for that?”
Thank you for mentioning this, as it drives me crazy how so many of my (usually white) colleagues perpetuate school segregation by willfully avoiding the “bad” public schools in the area to enroll their kids in either a.) private school or b.) a “better” suburban school, which then forces them to move out of the city into the boondocks of uncivilized suburbia just so the little ones can get properly zoned to said school.
Their actions basically undermine any “antiracist” rhetoric they spew out when they engage in these offensive behaviors.
ABW – yes. And the excuses are often so silly / so transparent … they are often a mask for just wanting to live in a white area, have space to park a big car, etc.! I do of course realize that there is such a thing as a bad school but …
When I lived in N.O. white people were constantly moving away “for the children’s sake.” They would even say, “because I do not want to raise my child in such a segregated atmosphere.” Then they would move off to truly segregated cities like New York and Portland! I am convinced they meant, not in a Black majority atmosphere, or not in an atmosphere where, if you want to stick to majority white venues, you have to think actively about how to segregate yourself.
More info on this from blogs: everybody see Rachel’s Tavern for statistics on segregation and the G Bitch’s recent series of posts on desegregation … http://g-bitch.com/?p=352 … !
P.S. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, the Chronicle (of Higher Education, yes) has footnoted this post and four hundred people have read it according to my statistics! That is a lot for me! Ah, had I only known … I would have already put more work into this post. I would have thought deeply about it and made a complete list, rather than putting down what came to mind in the moment. Ah well, another post, another day, for now I am just amazed to be this widely read today.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/footnoted/index.php?id=564
that’s good news!
Oh frabjous day, calloo callay!
What comes to your mind in the moment is pretty damn good if I say so myself.
I am not always in agreement with Allen Ginsberg but his “First thought, best thought” has some merit.
Graz, RG and JC! First thought, best thought, yes … and this is less “shrinky” than what I’d think I should work up, and I think more real.
But to the list of things I’ve been shamed for we could add:
– not fitting better in middlebrow academia
– the fact that my aunt paid for college [that is my parents, but she also paid for them to go to school, so I never figured this one out].
Re this, however, and since this has now been linked to the Chronicle and all. and I’ve been cited elsewhere as saying I didn’t like Bitch PhD, I’ll say:
I am from a middle class academic family wherein our stay at home mom was and convinced we were poor. I always had a hard time figuring this out since, while it was clear we were not rich, we seemed to have money to spend, more than some of the neighbors. Now some of my own friends from elementary school are in her position and they are saying the same things. It is a phenomenon to be studied. Example: they have their Volvo financed because they did not have the cash for it, so they are “poor.”
The point is not that B PhD “should” be more frugal. I want a bike, new underwear, to fix the scratch on my car, much more discretionary money for travel, and new floors in the kitchen, laundry room, and sun room. I spend too much on coffee, restaurants and books to effectively save for these things, so I am hardly more virtuous than B PhD.
My issue with the posts in question is the reencoding of wants as needs … and the conflation of middle class woes (not that they aren’t real) and real financial trouble / actual poverty. The site in general had some interesting content earlier on but in the last couple of years I have not found it to be an alternative to what my IRL WoST colleagues have to say, but just more of the same … mild critique of patriarchy but lots of class and race blindness. It is not the fact that she is situated as she is which bothers me, it is the unconsciousness.
I’ve been on the road again and am just catching up with your posts now. As you know, I’ve been struggling with issues of race, gender, privilege, etc. more than usual. Trying to really push myself to confront (and deal with) my own privilege. Standing down a room full of aggressive, patronizing older men of color yesterday afternoon with two other younger women – both of color – over our approach to political organizing versus theirs is the latest chapter in this process. Seems in all these conversations over race, gender, class, etc., we don’t spend enough time discussing the inter-generational aspects of the reproduction of inequality, etc. Dealing with some of these supposed social activism elders (these men) and their patronizing dismissal of the younger women they are supposedly mentoring, leaves me well aware that I need to be better educated/go deeper on the historical cleavages in movements.
Anyway, I wanted to follow up on Anxious Black Woman’s comment about whites pulling their kids out of urban schools in favor of whiter suburban or private schools. This is one decision I think about that could loom in my future. My partner is a white man who I met in my PhD program, and we both love and our committed to our moderate-income and mixed-culture/age/race/ethnicity/household urban neighborhood. Though we are a long way off from having (or even deciding to have) children, I struggle with this. Shouldn’t we follow through on our commitment to the neighborhood and public schools and equity in a concrete way as sending our kids to the local schools? Aren’t we both so highly educated and privileged that we could supplement their public school education? As mentioned, I don’t have kids, and I don’t know where the truth lies in the myths around how parenting – i.e., loving a child – changes you and makes you sacrifice so much for them, such as your own principles, etc. etc. etc. Already, I think about moderate-income cities that I could move to to be closer to my relatives, who could help with caregiving, but am loathe to believe I could ever move into the ‘burbs, or spend the $$ on private schools that offer their own forms of damage for kids.
Anyway, I need to do my own shame meme, though I will certainly scare away the large portion of apolitical readers I have that wish I would just keep chatting about my boyfriend etc. and not get into this deep shit. Well, there’s one thing I’ve been shamed for, in my culture, certainly: being political! (Recently at lunch, my aunt confessed that she thought the war in Iraq was wrong and apologized, saying “I know you’re not supposed to talk about politics…”)
Hi Leigh – and very good point on the intergenerational aspects of this thing!
On this: “I don’t know where the truth lies in the myths around how parenting – i.e., loving a child – changes you and makes you sacrifice so much for them, such as your own principles, etc.”
I think a lot of people use their children as excuses to become self-indulgent. “We need this SUV to keep the children safe.”
This having been said, I do have my friend with several children who was always pro public school until they got so right wing … abstinence only, D.A.R.E., color between the lines, creationism / intelligent design theory, do not read ahead in the book, and on, and on, and she sort of has a point.
There are also schools in my area which are so rough that they turn people – and I am talking now about working class people with no possibility of attending private school – off to education in general.
In the end, it has to come down to whether your child is going to be physically and emotionally safe and intellectually nurtured. My kid has had a great experience in her urban public school, whereas in some of those suburban schools there is alot of hazing and bullying and drug use and nasty shit. So we all stand on principle, but then we have to evaluate what’s happening. I had a great public school experience, but after my sister had her 10th math teacher in one year, my mom decided to find a private school where she could learn.
Everyone may have moved on from this convo by now…but I’m thinking of schools and kids and privilege…
I am trying to get my 10 yr old cousin into private school. She’s in an urban public school system now and is being raised by her mom and grandma and living below the poverty line. She’s really bright and loves school but my family does not have a good track record with school. Very few of our cousins and even aunts and uncles have more than G.E.D.s. Anyway, she went to this private school weekend program on scholarship last spring and LOVED it. I think her mom and grandma (and some great aunts) are doing an amazing job of raising her, but frankly I feel that we don’t have a great track record on education in our family, and I’d like to get her into an exclusive system where education is treated as her “job” and not as a luxury or, more accurately, a responsibility that can be traded in for other life responsibilities (having kids, for example).
When I went to Brandeis as an undergrad I was amazed (and a little righteously annoyed) by some of my upper middle-class friends (to whom I was catching up in terms of my ‘rents incomes by then, if not culturally/attitudinally with them) who informed me that going to school was the only “work” they needed to do (I was working at the time) and was expected of them.
Well, look at me now, still working but going full-time to a fancy phd program. And if I can do it, maybe she can too, with some help along the way. And here I am, trying to get my young cousin with a similar zeal for learning (and an awareness of it, I was always acting out in school) into a private school that will take care of her and give her more opportunity – and role models (I really hate how legit. a statement that is but feels like it isn’t because conservative “culture of poverty” and other bullshit rhetoric have bastardized everything that remotely relates to behavior, agency, cognition, etc.).
But the big difference here is $$$$$. At the end of the day, while my family may have lacked the cultural “capital” to get why I was pursuing all this schooling (and heckling me as lazy, spoiled – even if good-naturedly *most* of the time), my parents certainly had the funds to help me with all my degrees (and housing and living, etc.). My cousin does not have that. Did you know it will cost in fees alone $200 just to apply to 2 schools???? And, of course, to have them waived is all this paperwork and process? I can handle the fees but I worry so much about this path: a) having to always depend on scholarships and finding resources to get through, b) being diff. from the average classmate by living in poverty and internalizing that diff., c) not making it (not even getting in), or d) succeeding and becoming diff. from our family and having to handle that dissonance and discomfort.
I suppose I should be thankful she’s *at least* white, but mostly I’m just pissed that it’s $200 for some 10 yr old just to apply to school and that I don’t trust any public school system (even if she had remained in the relatively good suburban one she was in until some domestic stuff forced them to move out of the district) to compete equally with our family’s inter-generational stagnant or downward mobility, and worried that this is a bad move, somehow meddling, somehow getting her hopes up, and will end badly.
I never know what’s going to come out of me when I sit down to write these comments over here!
A $100 application fee for each school … ! And – yes – I see why this school would be good for a lot of reasons. Mostly because she likes it. The blogger Kactus has her daughter that age in private school for the same reasons (they’re also on welfare) and it seems to be a good thing.
The downside of this “school is the only work you need to do” thing – which I was raised with – was that it was so disabling. It is great not to work, or not to work too much, as an undergraduate – my students work too much and it is why their schoolwork is so superficial and so on.
On the other hand these bourgeois families like to keep the kids dependent on them and manipulable, which is why they do not want them to work and have any money they can say they earned … or find out that they are competent at work and gain an identity of their own. It was like being a prisoner and I am still trying to recover from it.
What this school will do for your cousin, though, is expose her to some school oriented people, which is invaluable if you are school oriented yourself and do not come from a school oriented family.
After the time where the machista attitude has been denounced the feminists have to have the same attitude and denounce without condescension, the women committing abject acts in Iraq. It is at this price their cause [feminism] could come to maturity, washed of its illusions (notably when its adepts said that the violence is the fact of the man). And when the women have to risk the same punishment that for the men for similar crimes. Then without machismo (of men) and without misandry (of women), the humanity of men and women [will be] making progress.
[Edited slightly for clarity in English. –Z.]
Observateur – ici on parle francais! Je ne suis pas sure si vous faites un commentaire sur le ‘post’ ou si vous parlez en termes plus generaux.
En general si je ne me trompe pas c’est les femmes qui souffrent les punitions les plus severes pour leurs crimes. Vous vous referez a un instance specifique?
Nota bene – les hommes et les femmes n’ont pas encore la meme position au monde. Donc ce que vous appelez le “misandrisme” n’est pas 100% pareil au “machismo.”
***
Other topic: I may, by the way, have been slightly too mean to Bitch PhD in this post. I spend plenty of money myself, and wish I had more to spend. That wasn’t WoC PhD’s point with her post, or mine with this one, but still – I don’t mean to claim I am actually more virtuous that Bitch PhD or that I do not understand why she spends as she does.
And on that: in her area I believe the average income for homeowners is something like $450K per annum. That is why $100K does not go very far. This is not to say that many are surviving on much less – it is to say that in that area, really and truly, $100K is not a huge wad of cash.