Oh Oprah . . .

Last Thursday’s Oprah Winfrey show highlighted the story of a Zimbabwe woman Tererai Trent who overcame poverty, an adolescent marriage, and an abusive husband to attain her Ph.D. in the United States, fulfilling her lifelong goal of obtaining an American education. Trent is scheduled to receive her doctorate degree in December of this year.

For her achievements Trent (and Oprah) graciously and partially credits Jo Luck, a white woman from Heifer International, who visited her country in 1986 or 1991 (depending on which web site is actually accurate) encouraging Zimbabwe women to fulfill their aspirations. Luck told Trent, “It is achievable” after hearing Trent’s dream of receiving an education. Luck (now Heifer International CEO) made an appearance on the show as well.

Trent’s real-life story was one of several inspirational accounts of female empowerment lifted from the pages of the newly-published book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. The husband and wife author team (Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn) were featured on the show as well. And in true Oprah form, each audience member received a complimentary copy of the book with the option of attending a private book-signing following the show.

Also featured on the show were actor Ben Affleck and his work with rape victims in the Congo and Lisa Shannon, a white woman who sponsored two Congo rape vicitms after viewing a report on rape in the Congo on Oprah’s show in 1995.

On the surface these stories of female empowerment, hope, and outreach are all inspirational and touching but these accounts are couched within layers of exoticism, notions of the white man’s burden, and the elevation of the immigrant narrative.

The works of Affleck, Luck, Shannon and Oprah herself are all laudable expressions of humanity. We at BGTC have no reservations with people helping people, but at the same time we must critically examine everything. It is only through analysis can we make solid reasoned decisions about the world in which we live and navigate daily.

We live in a nation where there 39.8 million people (13% of the pop.) live in poverty. It is important to note that the definition of poverty for the United States Census is extremely low, for instance the poverty threshold for one person on their own is $10, 991.00, basically 916.00 a month, or $30.00 a day. When you compare that with the increasing cost of college education, we have a problem in our own front yard. According to the CollegeBoard the average cost of tuition for in-state enrollment in a two-year college is $2,402.00, or roughly 22% of their annual income. So why is there such push to help those abroad when there is so little effort domestically? Is it because to acknowledge the shortcomings of our society would illuminate the extreme inequities in our social and economic structures? Would it effectively illustrate that the difference between the ruling 1%, in Zimbabwe really isn’t that different from the ruling 1% percent in the United States? It is easier to project inequity onto a foreign locality, another people; but it is a true test of humanity to address the failings of a culture that provides one with comfort at the expense of another’s survival.

And lest we forget Oprah’s thoughts on America’s inner-city youth. When asked why she decided to construct her $40 million school for adolescent girls in South Africa and not in rural Mississippi (where she was born) or inner-city Milwaukee (where she was raised), she stated “I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn’t there.  If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don’t ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school.” According to the US Census 29.4% of the population under the age of 18 live in poverty in Mississippi and  14.5% of the same demographic group in Wisconsin live in poverty.  Perhaps young people in these two states may desire iPods and sneakers like the rest of society, but it is certain that they need all the help they can get to progress.

Meditating on Race, Class, Perception and Information: Analysis of Cambridge’s Skip Gates

Recently, I received an email (birthed from a chain of emails), from someone I respect as a scholar, educator, and social critic. It was drafted in response to the recent arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Ph.D. of Harvard University and the media fallout that followed. It assumed the arrest incident was predicated on race, on racial profiling. I largely disagree. The concept of racial profiling has become a topic in vogue in the media, as well as among the ever-expanding class of black intellectuals that modern America has and continues to produce. It is a worthy thing to critique the concept and the practice of racial profiling; as a dreadlocked young man living in New York City I feel comfortable in saying that I have some familiarity with the idea. New York’s finest have a strong history of getting matters of race and policing wrong, and I am reasonably certain that Boston PD as well as Cambridge’s police have had there issues in the past as well. As a result, I would never want to stifle the critique and examination of an issue that is a very real cause for concern for “minorities” (however long that term will remain accurate for people of color); but in addition I think it would behoove us to cast our net a little wider as we explore what happened between Gates and the department which is sworn and protect both he and his community.

I am not in a position to offer true commentary on what happened on that day at that moment. So I will not speculate on what I guessed happened and will rely on published accounts, primarily drawing from Professor Gates’ account on The Root, a web magazine on African American culture founded, in part by Gates.
Gates’ account reads something like this:

1. Gates gets home from China, door lock won’t open.
2. Has to break open door with the help of his driver.
3. Is on the phone demanding someone at Harvard to come to fix his door.
4. Cop asks him through open (and probably visibly forced) door to come outside.
5. Gates refuses.
6. Demands cop’s name and badge number.
7. Cop refuses, leaves.
8. Gates follows him out of his house demanding his information and insinuating racism.
9. Gates is arrested.

First of all, I’m not surprised when reading Gates’ account that I don’t get any true indication of race coming to the forefront, but rather one of class. The true nature of the altercation began with a call to the police about a possible home invasion, but ended with a black man in handcuffs, not because he was black but rather because he felt being a Harvard Professor placed him above a working-class police officer. Evidence of Gates’ hubris lie thickly across the lines of his own account of the incident. The brusque demand for a locksmith, not a request; and the haranguing of the officer from his home, down his walk stand as evidence to the intractable nature of Professor Gates. Behaving as a modern day Boston Brahmin does not make one exempt from neither the law nor the common courtesies of a civil society.

As a society and as a nation, we in the United States have much work to do to truly attain a society where race does not play a prominent role in dictating one’s social and professional trajectory; fortunately, the over-hyped affair of Professor Gates does not belong in that conversation.

She Says, He Says #1 (The only thing that’s stopping you is yourself.)

“The only thing that’s stopping you is yourself.”

She Says:

I keep hearing that statement on a commercial advertising ITT-Technical Institute. It’s uttered by a black woman of Barbadian descent who recently completed an education program at the school and is now working as a project manager, her seemingly dream job. Her declaration is complete and utter bullshit. Now don’t get me wrong, I believe in hard work, education, and all of the other ingredients needed to prosper in the working world without losing one’s integrity. However, I do not subscribe to the pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality. It takes more than hard work and education to ascend from the abysmal depths of professional mediocrity. STFU!

He Says:

There are several things that I dislike about the commercial as well. To me it strikes the same chord that goes beyond just the Horatio Alger myth, and continues to beat black folks about the brow even further with the myth of the hardworking immigrant, and the entrepreneurial spirit deficient African American. In the commercial the young Bajan woman, is maximizing her potential, working her way to the top; her boyfriend/fiance/significant other, who coincidentally we can assume to be African American says “she’s determined, she’s going to make it to the top and I just want to be there when that happens.” This commercial plays with so many tropes it boggles the mind. First, the notion of the passive, submissive black male in the face of the dominant black woman. Secondly, the more culturally relevant trope in the world of black diaspora and modern black migration–the diligent, hard-working black other immigrant versus, the economically torpid, stagnated ethnic African American. It is such a subtle form of ethnicism, one that goes uncritiqued, and unthinkingly ingested by the masses. “Of course immigrants work harder than native born blacks, that’s why they have more success” is more often than not the pervasive wisdom–ask Chris Matthews.