09.30.08
involuntary and coerced sterilization is still in effect.
[taken from Harriet Washington's book Medical Apartheid]
“African-Americans have always been staggeringly overrepresented in the ranks of the sterilized. When the North Carolina Eugenic Commission sterilized 8,000 mentally retarded persons throughout the 1930s, 5,000 were black. By 1983, when blacks constituted only 12% of the population, 43% of the women sterilized in federally funded family planning programs were African-Americans.
This has been achieved under the auspices of a government fed by the myth of the lazy, hyperfertile welfare mother.”
New Orleans Rep. John LaBruzzo has posited a plan to fight to poverty…sterilization. He believes that offering women $1,000 to have their fallopian tubes tied will ameliorate the effects of poverty by reducing the number of women who have children. It is such a disgusting, immoral, and bigoted proposition that should shame his district. Women of color in the United States have a long history with forced, compulsory, and hidden sterilization methods. Persistent stereotypes based on class and race continue to imbue the attitudes and social policies of this country and permit narrow-minded people like Rep. LaBruzzo to be elected. Sterilization, no matter if it is conspicuously forced or masqueraded as a voluntary choice, is always the antecedent to genocide. LaBruzzo’s proposed method does nothing to mollify the effects or prevalence of poverty. It confirms stereotypes and promotes bigotry. Anyone reading the article, including him, knows that there are better, more effective ways to assuage poverty and its influence on the lives of families and children. His equivocal statements are smokescreens to further his own agenda of racist ideology.
La Bruzzo: Sterilization Plan Fights PovertyTying poor women’s tubes could help taxpayers, legislator saysWednesday, September 24, 2008By Mark WallerWorried that welfare costs are rising as the number of taxpayers declines, state Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, said Tuesday he is studying a plan to pay poor women $1,000 to have their Fallopian tubes tied.
“We’re on a train headed to the future and there’s a bridge out,” LaBruzzo said of what he suspects are dangerous demographic trends. “And nobody wants to talk about it.”
LaBruzzo said he worries that people receiving government aid such as food stamps and publicly subsidized housing are reproducing at a faster rate than more affluent, better-educated people who presumably pay more tax revenue to the government. He said he is gathering statistics now.
“What I’m really studying is any and all possibilities that we can reduce the number of people that are going from generational welfare to generational welfare,” he said.
He said his program would be voluntary. It could involve tubal ligation, encouraging other forms of birth control or, to avoid charges of gender discrimination, vasectomies for men.
It also could include tax incentives for college-educated, higher-income people to have more children, he said.
09.23.08
Happy Singles Week, Folks!
Psychology Today wrote an article on the need for a National Singles Week. I wonder how I should celebrate.
courtesy of… http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/living-single/200809/its-national-singles-week-here-are-14-reasons-why-we-need-it
It’s National Singles Week: Here Are 14 Reasons
Why We Need It
Today is the start of National Singles Week, September 21-27 (sometimes called National Unmarried and Single Americans Week), but don’t expect to find any greeting cards to celebrate it. That’s okay about the cards – I don’t care about them. But I do care about increasing awareness of the truth about single life. We need National Singles Week because we need consciousness-raising.
1. We need it because living single is how we spend the better part of our adult lives. Americans now spend more years unmarried than married. But even if we spent only a sliver of our lives single, we should be able to use that sliver to pick any door or puncture any myth.
2. We need it because what it means to live single has changed dramatically over the past half-century, but our perceptions have been left in the dust. Bogus stereotypes rule, and they need to be dethroned.
3. We need it because fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you, if you are a plastic Barbie or Ken doll or you play one on TV. If you are a real person, you are no more likely to live happily ever after if you get married than you were when you were single. We need to know that.
4. We need it because the media has grabbed onto the Marriage Myth Express and taken it for a long and silly ride. I don’t just mean the dopey shows like The Bachelor or the Bachelorette. The press does us wrong even in reporting the news. As I’ve been documenting on this blog, on the Huffington Post, and in Singled Out, media descriptions of the latest scientific studies consistently add a little glitter to the any results that look good for married people, while batting away any promising findings about single people.
5. We need it because our educational institutions – those colleges and universities that should be at the leading edge of scholarship and critical thinking – have been just as smitten by the marital mythology as the rest of society. Those bastions of higher learning are filled with courses, degree programs, textbooks, journals, endowed chairs, research funding and all the other components of the intellectual industry that is the study of marriage. As for the other 42% of the adult population, we’re still waiting for the scholarly spotlight to shine as brightly on us.
6. We need it because we are shorted on the 1,136 federal benefits, protections, and privileges that are available only to people who are legally married. We need it because there is housing discrimination and there are tax penalties and pay disparities linked to marital status.
7. We need it not just for the privileges and protections but also for the opportunities to give and to care. Because I am single and don’t have any children, no one can take time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to care for me if I fall ill. That’s a missing protection. But I also can’t take time off under the same Act to care for a person who is important to me, such as a sibling, a nephew, or a close friend. Read the rest of this entry »
09.21.08
how i lost 10 IQ points…
I’m still in the land of cableless. So I obtain my entertainment jollies from the internet, particualrly from one message board that I am addicted to. Well, someone decided to post R. Kelly’s Bet interview with Toure. First off, why is R. Kelly being interviewed 3 months after the trial? It’s almost old news at this point. Another point I must make, Toure is hit and miss with me. Sometimes I can tolerate him and other times I can’t. He fell into the intolerable category with this venture. His questions were couched in a cajolery. It was as though he was giddy school girl fan…ugh it made my stomach churn. Only a perverse adult who is sexually interested in children would ask what constitues a teenager and admit to befriending them. R.Kelly PISSED on a teenager and videotaped it. R.Kelly has long sordid history of claims made against from teenage girls who he has paid with hush $$$. R. Kelly married Aaliyah when she was 15-years old. His lack of remorse and accountability is astounding. Why boost his ego when inquiring about his demented behavior? His past “indiscretions” should have been shoved in his face with no easy exit. The interview was a disgrace. By the way, what “spiritual” songs has R. Kelly made? Toure spoke as if R. Kelly had a multitude of uplifting songs. Granted, i have never listened to an entire album but the closest “spiritual” song i can recall is “I Believe I Can Fly”, which was on the Space Jam Sdtrk. I know R. Kelly has the education capacity of an 8th grader, but his answers were convoluted and disorganized (“if you’re found innocent then you can’t be found guilty for being found innocent”, “…made me more stronger and more humble”, and “I wanna do some humanity stuff”). It is evident that this man needs help on various levels and should have been locked up (long ago).
09.14.08
white privilege part 2!
this whole campaign season has got me seriously irritated. palin’s life story can only percieved as positive in this country because she is white. only in this instance would people and the media compare a vice-presidential candidate to the opposing presidential candidate. if obama were white, people in the media would be juxtaposing her absent qualifications to biden’s 200-page resume.
Tim Wise (one of the best arbiters on the sbject and a personal fav) broke down the impact of white priviledge on the treatment of palin.
courtesy of http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/this-your-nation-white-privilege
THIS IS YOUR NATION ON WHITE PRIVILEGE
This is Your Nation on White Privilege
By Tim Wise
For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.
White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll “kick their fuckin’ ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.
White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action. Read the rest of this entry »
