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Wanted: Your Short Essays

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I am currently reading Adrienne Rich’s essay “Teaching
Open Language in Admissions” and I have decided
to run a series of short essays or posts on my educational
experience.

I have come to the conclusion that I have had a very unique one,
and I would like to use this space to share our experiences.

For instance, as a first year student at Mills, I tried to test
out of English 1. Not only did I not test out, but I was recommended
to take the grad student led reading/writing workshop along
with first year English. I was not amused.

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which was about how Adrienne Rich and Ntozake Shange were
creating a new language, in order to say new things that never
had been said.

I remember the professor telling the rest of the class that I had submitted
one of the best final papers. I was proud of myself.

The irony that I could NOT test out of English, was placed in the “support
workshop” but wrote one of the best essays, was never lost on me.

If you have similar experiences, please send them to me at
m.dotwrites()gmail.

Musing on War Money and Art Money In the University

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Have public and private universities decided to trade arts education
for nuclear weapons?

While writing about the white and Black consumption of Black death
in hip hop last May, I came across Chomsky’s argument, that the
U.S. is moving towards a “Third” world model.

Meaning that, we are evolving to have two classes of folks in this country,
the elite and the people who serve them. This is clearly taking root in
California and New York City. Meanwhile in the heartlands, the economies in
the factory and mining towns have been gutted, and been replaced
with the Walmart, prison and meth economies. Neither of these are sustainable,
just or democratic.

A fundamental thread of the American experience has been that the next
generation will have a better life then the current generation. Given the economies,
listed above, this simply isn’t feasible.

Which brings me to the arts education article that I came across in the
New York Times today. Patricia Cohen writes,

If you are looking for a sign of how strapped the University of California, Los Angeles, is for cash, consider that its arts and architecture school may resort to holding a bake sale to raise money. California?s severe financial crisis has left its higher-education system ? which serves nearly a fifth of the nation?s college students ? in particularly bad straits. But tens of thousands of students at public and private colleges and universities around the country will find arts programs, courses and teachers missing ? victims of piercing budget cuts ? when they descend on campuses this month and next.

The comments on the article were interesting because
of both what they said, and what they didn’t say. One commenter
focused on liberal arts and moms. She writes,

Cathy
ME
August 10th, 2009
10:23 am

Is this about jobs? Do these administrators think, like so many ignorant Americans, that college degrees in the arts or liberal arts don’t lead to jobs? College is not vocational training, let me make that clear. But I also can’t help but notice that almost every single mother I know with a degree in art is a stay-at-home mother who is also self-employed. Whether they be painters or art gallery owners, private art teachers or web-page designers, commercial artists or wedding photographers, as I enter my middle thirties I’m surprised by how many women I know who have used their art degrees to spend most of their days with their children and make money at the same time. Facebook has made this even more apparent to me as I reconnect with women I haven’t seen in 15 or 20 years.

Make cuts in these programs, and you further reduce mothers’ (and probably fathers’) options for employment. You will also create more latch-key kids at the same time that you usher babies and toddlers into daycare centers as their parents wish it could be otherwise.

Another focused on how the arts are important to trained artists and engineers
on campus. A commenter writes,

10.
Dave
SC
August 10th, 2009
10:58 am

I work in engineering and science but regard reduced emphasis on the arts as short-sighted. Scientists and engineers are more creative and productive when they also have education and experiences in the arts. Life-long learning and an appreciation for abstract thought-and tolerance-are also positive outcomes. Arts programs add much to campus life. Spending cuts may be necessary but should be done equitably to all programs so that educational balance is maintained.

In his new book, the Empire of Illusion, Chris Hedges discusses the
relationship between the war economy and the American University.

His general thesis is that the university has used both private money from
corporations and public tax dollars from the Pentagon and the Department
of Defense to build weapons to supply, advance and sustain our permanent
war economy.

For the record, historically, when I have encountered anti war activists, I
typically, glazed over with a blank stare. It didn’t seem like what they were
talking about was relevant to me, what I was passionate about, or what I
was interested in. But, given the expense of war and the expense of
higher education, the relationship of critical thinkers to a sustaining a
Democracy it is an important issue to consider as we move forward.

In reading bell hooks, Chris Hedges and Chomsky recently, it has become
clear that there is a connection between the arts and the ability to make
sense of ones life. Be it reading a novel, seeing a play, watching a movie
or a tv show, attending a concert or writing a blog.

There is something to be said for a culture that derives its meaning from
art rather than war.

I am also seeing that there is a connection between a war economy
and our boys being raised to think that being destructive, rageful
and violent is the only and most appropraite way of being. Bob Herbert
wrote recently about how the murders of the women at The LA Fitness
in Pennsylvania last week the was an act of hate against women. A
commenter wrote back saying,

To the Editor:

While I greatly appreciate Bob Herbert?s focus on violence toward women, as a psychologist looking for possible causes and solutions, I see a bigger problem. Boys and young men in most of the world are brought up to admire violence through fantasy, media and sports and in preparation for the army and war. They are taught that being a successful man requires physical power, weapons and often violence.

This has to be addressed in our child rearing and in our culture and values, beginning with childhood games and culminating in our emphasis on physical force to solve global problems and sustain our ?world supremacy.?

Vivien D. Wolsk
New York, Aug. 8, 2009

Given the connection between how boys are socialized and war, and the
connection between our two wars, our schools and the dismantling of liberal arts,
I have a few questions.

What happens when a country treats it higher education like vocational/
trade schools?

When are we going to have a conversation about the fact that universities
are a billion dollar business and, given the fact that we are moving
towards an automated jobless society, what will we do with our young people
once they have graduated, if they make it that far?

If the arts programs have to sale cookies in order to survive,
do the engineering and physics departments have to as well?
If not, then why not?

Will the only jobs left be service jobs (waitresses, janitors, nurses)
or servicing the elite/corporations (finance, advertising) or joining the armed
forces?

If private corporations provide some funds to science and engineering
departments, (in return for the right of any novel discoveries) the schools
receive research grants/our tax dollars from the department of defense,
what do the students receive?

How are the interest’s of both the students and the public served by this?

Lets Discuss.

Sponsorship and Biases: Musing on The Crack Game and Investment Banking

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The crack game, in it’s essence, is pure capitalism.

Profit, over people, at all costs.
Eliminate enemies at all costs.
Take out the dominant political regime or competition at all costs.
Endless accumulation of property and capital, at all costs.
Domination through coercion, violence and if necessary legal
means at all costs.

People, human beings, babies, addicts and quite simply,
the human toll, are all irrelevant.

This evening I was reading a piece on the Newsweek site
titled, The Fatal Flaw of Obamacare. By the bottom of the first
page, I decided to Google the author because the derisiveness of
his tone suggested that he was getting conservative think tank money.
I found out he that he was a writer, and in fact conservative cat, who
is down with the National Review.
I was half right. It also became clear that his money is tied up with his
agenda. To be fair, there are left think tanks and “liberal” writers at Newsweek
who are pushing their own agendas.

My issue is with the lack of disclosure. The asymmetry of information
pisses me off, and when I sniff it out, I stay on it until my point is made.

The asymmetry tends to work in favor of he person who has more info.
Which brings me to Twitter. A few weeks ago, I learned that Oprah,
Puffy, Shaq and arguably others receive Twitter stock shares, in
exchange for tweeting.

That’s cool, but there was something that struck me about the fact that
this simply was never mentioned, in all of the articles in the mainstream press
about the popularity of the site. It became clear to me that everything is
for sale. (I know. Naive bear. Hang in there with me for 90 seconds. I will
explain.)

I hadn’t really thought about the notion of everything being for sale
as a strict truth since 1986, which is the year that the pure capitalism
of the crack game seeped into the streets corners and blocks of
East Oakland.

With the notion of everything being for sale, this afternoon I tweeted
that when you seperate your money from your art you are free.

This is material because I was once neutral regarding corporations.

There was a time when I thought that if I learned how corporations worked,
I could work for one, make my money, get in and get out. Never being one
short on ambition, I wanted to work at Merrill or Goldman Sachs. I
began to leverage my relationships, to the extent that I could try and
obtain such a position. I reached out to the men that I knew who worked
in the field and asked them to help me.

With this experience in the back of my mind, I read Matt Taibbi’s piece on
Goldman Sachs. In many ways it represents the convergence of art,
sponsorship and the essence of the crack game as pure capitalism.

Taibbi writes like he is independent. The piece reminded me of
Gary Webb.

Moreover, he has done, what very few people have done, which
is criticize politicians, investment banking and implicitly,
capitalism in the mainstream press which in this case is Rolling Stone
Magazine. What is material is that the story was NOT buried on arrival.

In the article, The Great American Bubble Machine, Taibbi writes,

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who’s Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.

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What is interesting about the piece is both his passion, nerve and
the fact that he isn’t a finance reporter, per se.

Furthermore, the article, gives me hope for the day in which
Black writers will themselves to write with similar fierceness,
criticism and vision.

On Alternet, Dean Starkman talks about the ways in which Taibbi’s
piece works, doesn’t work, and its merits as an article as a whole.
For the most part the mainstream press has dismissed it, yet and
still folks are talking about the company, Wall Street and whether
his assertions in the article are in fact true. They can’t rebut his arguement,
they are just opting to not take it seriously because he called Goldman a
“great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly
jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” Say word?

Ezra Klein offers a great sum up, of Starkman’s piece when he writes,

writing that “the weakness of the piece is where others might find strength, its polemical nature and its hyperbole.” In particular, he says that “when you call Goldman a ‘great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,’ you?re in a sense offering a big fat disclaimer?this piece is not to be taken literally and perhaps not even seriously.”

I am thinking about Goldman, I am thinking about Democracy
and I am thinking about the Crack game.

To create another future, one of the contradictions that many of us
who came up in the 80’s will have to face, is the conflict that arises when
we are faced with choosing money over people.

Take the d-boy for instance. I am mindful of our willingness to love or
respecting a dope dealer who sends children in the hood to college.
Yes, the d-boy sent the children to school, but the d-boy still sold crack,
that has to recognized and accounted for as well. Let me be clear.
I understand that cats in the hood didn’t fly cocaine, Tech-9’s nor AK’s
into the hood. I get that. And that isn’t the issue at hand. I am
more interested in who and what we respect and why.

I once thought that I could work at an investment bank, stack a little
cheese, pay off some school debt and move on.

I now realize that this is like saying, I will just sell crack for a few years,
make my money, and get out. It doesn’t work. I have known since I was
ten that how an adult makes their money influences what they say and
how you say it.

When I saw, one, two and then three women be murdered
because they were either addicted to drugs or were dating drug dealers
and subsequently murdered in double homicides, it became clear to
me then that the notion of who I hung around with and or how I got money
DID and WOULD have an impact on my life.

As an artist, today, I realize as a person who operates in that murky
space of not being a journalist, of writing and soon to be, as a
lecturer and teacher, deciding to not marry my art to my income is a
scary, loaded and freeing act.

As a Black woman, I am particularly attuned to, and have a criticism
for human beings and corporations who make their mortgages
trafficking in the disparity of Black women, Black men and Black
children.

We see what Black people, who have been given a little bit money,
some job titles, but no real power have done. They have pursued their
individual gain at the expense of pursuing our collective advancement.

My preference is for the children to learn from these Black folks and
to do something different. What that something is, I am not sure.

Throwing folks under a bus for investment banking money or crack
money isn’t sustainable, just, nor Democratic.

I believe, today, that to be effective, our new pursuit must be along the lines for
pursuing the collective good over the individual gain. Perhaps we
can discover what that looks like together.

Lets Discuss.

Health Care’s Perfect Storm Brewing

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Frank Rich wrote about President Obama, and the battle
over health care here.

The most insightful comments that I saw was this one:

20.
Diana
New York
August 9th, 2009
8:50 am

There?s a perfect storm brewing: a government that (but for a few ethical souls) only advances the interests of the monied class; a monied class that owns the media; and a media that exploits and advances the fears of millions–millions who are angry and growing desperate over an economy that is short on jobs and big on rewarding the monied class.

Where?s the way out? I’ve always taken pride in being a conscientious, informed citizen, but the last few months have forced me to finally face the fact that our government is beyond repair, beyond redemption. If I had money and a job to go to, I would leave.

This commenter was interesting, in that it became clear to
me how some of us are beginning to analyze what was promised
and what has occurred.

The surefire way to ensure that you have learned
something, is to try and teach it to someone.

Where is the website showing, in a ten point plan, what the
healthcare plan is and is not?

We can not list or teach, what we do not know.

The following comment resonated with me because of
the honesty but also the willingness to still expect politicians
to solve our problems, when it has been made clear that
there is no apparent incentive to do so.

Anya
NC
August 9th, 2009
8:50 am

Until there is universal health care, everyone is set up for failure. If you get sick or even just become one of the millions of people in a car accident, you can lose your finances. Assuming you have good insurance, they can decide to ditch you after they say they won’t pay for an illness.

Say your neighbor has melanoma. Well this neighbor’s insurance will only cover $10k of the cost of treatment, but that treatment can be five to ten times the maximum the insurance company will pay. The hospital wants their money, so you are on the hook for it. What are you going to do? Refuse treatment? But the doctors want to save your life! The insurance company wants to destroy it.

No matter what Suzie Orman says, you can’t prepare yourself for $100,000 in medical bills. The median income for a family of four is around $40000 per year! We expect people to have three years gross salary saved in case they get sick?

That also assumes that once you get so sick, you’ll be able to continue working. Now if you’re on chemo, it’s a lot harder to sit at a desk and answer the phone. It’s even harder if you have a job in a service sector where it is vital that employees stay whole and healthy. You can’t get hours if you’re too sick to stand for eight hours a day. If you can’t get hours, then you’ll have no income. If you have no income, how are you supposed to pay for medical care in addition to the expenses we all have like rent/mortgage, car payment, utilities for the home, and food?

We, the members of the middle class (or what’s left of it), have all been set up. I wish there were a politician out there who would admit it and fix it. However, he or she would face such opposition from much mightier forces than voters that they’d probably never make it to an office of any consequence. It’s why change is easy to promise: we all want a change. It’s probably going to be impossible to deliver a true change. I voted for Obama because I didn’t want to see someone like John McCain who put women’s health in air quotation marks running the country and making decisions that would affect my life.

I’m in my 20s and I don’t have health insurance. I may get some when I go to grad school in a few weeks. I may even be able to get my teeth cleaned after two years of not seeing a dentist. Why have we been abandoned in the last 40 years by our government, and why did people buy Reagan’s nonsense that the government was the problem? My generation is going to be paying for all of it. We’re going to have to work longer, harder, and for less. What we’ve sacrificed is our standard of living to lobbyists.

It’s enough to make me want to move to another country, and I’m lucky enough to speak Spanish. I have my pick of about 25 places to go! I could probably get my teeth cleaned in Cuba for free!

I wish there were a politician out there who would admit it and fix it.
I wish there were a politician out there who would admit it and fix it.
I wish there were a politician out there who would admit it and fix it.

Our coming new way of life will demand that we understand
that it will be our responsibility to solve our own problems.

Thoughts?

Twenty Questions Friday 8.7.09

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1. Why bank fees make me almost have a coronary?

2. Why am I my fathers child?

3. Even though Manaen tells me, what seems like once a week,
why is it so hard to forgive, even if the act is for me, not the
transgressor?

4. Why when someone leave, you miss them, a lot, then you get use to it?

5. What if some of the “birthers” flipped out and got violent with an Asian, Black
or Latino white person?

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read, yet Cuba as a 99% literacy rate?

7. Why did it feel good when I ran into the Graduate, (he has always treated
me like number two) who said I was glowing then proceeded to hit on me.

8. Why isn’t there a Black Michael Moore?

9. Why I still be looking for a modern Pharcyde?

10. Why am I so competitive?

11. Why people try and make money off of everything, when everything
ain’t for sale?

12. Why do i have to resort to crack game metaphors to explain capitalism?

13. Why do I still remember dig dugs pfn number?

14. Why do I want Tony Touch to DJ my going away/birthday party?

15. If Black people don’t save Black children, who will?

16. Why do I love Bianybear for teaching me that I need to be vulnerable
and fearless?

17. Why my honesty make me feel vulnerable and free?

18. When will we have an honest conversation about the fact that
automation is eliminating jobs that will never return?

19. Why we so scared to stand up for what we believe in?

20. Why “he” say that I ain’t follow my heart last night?

I got questions, you, have answers.