What Frances Fox Piven Can Teach Us All:

When I showed my father the Scripps college campus the fall of my senior year in high school, he was skeptical that it was the right college choice for me. “Doesn’t it seem a bit like a gilded convent to you?” He asked. “It’s pretty quiet…I want to see you somewhere with some political activism like Berkeley. And its awful small, you sure you’re not going to get bored?” Though he named risks Scripps—being a tiny community—must guard against, I can gratefully say that I have received a well-rounded education here thus far. I loved the Core program, and since then have had many opportunities for meaningful political engagement within the greater L.A area.

Sometimes the unabashedly elite feel of the campus (even with the Politics departments' leftward leaning perspectives to counter it all out) makes me reel. I squirm every Tuesday and Thursday when my Race, Gender and the Welfare State class discusses how policy favors certain groups—like widows and veterans--as unconditionally deserving of public support and other groups--like poor, black mothers--as those who must prove their worthiness. But I know that my discomfort is a good thing: it simply means Scripps is successfully fulfilling its mission to provide a thorough education which produces aware, engaged thinkers. 

Similarly, when I read Frances Fox Piven's article on the racism of the welfare system in my 3^rd floor dorm room (ivory tower?), I was acutely aware of my privilege. Pivens describes how our society enacts welfare laws which perpetuate a racist capitalist hierarchy. Over and over, the federal government has passed legislation (most recently in 1996) which allows states to decide who is eligible for social services. Historically, states have used their mandate to ensure a specific race and gender group will be marginalized enough to work under oppressive conditions (capitalism must always have its cheap labor supply). Louisiana was the first state to pass an “employable mothers” rule which denied welfare assistance when seasonal employment was deemed to be available. This flexibility not only perpetuates existing classism and racism, but it actually worsens societal stratifications by putting an official stamp of governmental disapproval on said group, be it single black mothers or Mexican immigrants (Pivens 327).

As a Politics major, I have come to realize how essential it is that I take classes which show how entirely new politicized groups are created within society when policies favor or marginalize certain groups by extending or withholding welfare benefits. The political prominence of Obama’s health care bill brings to the fore how “welfare” debates are often really human rights debates—does everyone deserve medical care? Even those that don’t work here legally? The answer to both those questions is, for me, a resounding yes.

My real question, however, concerns politics of a more local nature: will Scripps continue to educate women leaders who understand how policy can form identities and how a second dialog about the inferiorities of certain race, gender and class groups operates beneath the overt political discourse? Scripps was wise to hire Professor Dionne Bensonsmtih and it would be incredibly foolish to let her slip away because her contract is up at the end of the semester. I urge Scripps to act swiftly to retain the richness Bensonsmith's expertise adds to the intellectual culture offered to Scripps students. She promotes a thoughtfulness in her classes which will train students with unique insights into the world, who can follow in footsteps of politically active women like Gabby Giffords. This generation of Scripps women is capable of correcting many of the institutional failings my seventeen classmates and I have learned about this semester.  But we must first have teachers like Bensonsmith who teach us what we can’t always see from within Scripps’ beautiful walls.

Just Call It Like It IS

In our reading for class this week, I literally laughed out loud at Ira Katznelson’s brilliant observation:

“The almost exclusively white-targeted nature of the extensive federal legislation before 1965 has largely been ignored by policy analysts, just as it was by Lyndon Johnson. Thus, often without realising it, the United States has practised what, in effect, was white affirmative action on a highly generous and widespread basis, followed by a much more modest programme of black affirmative action.”
The problem here was (and is) that the rhetoric of “equality” used in the public sphere didn’t match with the reality of massive inequality between white and black. Thus what was ACTUALLY white affirmative action was just seen as normal. This perception is what made institutionalized racism so resilient--society was so invested in validity of the rhetoric that change was almost impossible to bring about. The same argument which Katznelson makes about our how widespread biases change how policy is perceived can also be made about the recent uproar about contraception and Obama’s requirement that insurance cover the costs for religious institutions (for institutions which object to contraception).

Ok. Disclaimer: I don’t really think sex has any place in politics and people only discuss it because it is a titillating subject, but I must join in anyways (if only to vent some of my anger). Yes, blatant sexism is awful. Rush Limbaugh is a perfect example. After calling the Georgetown University student who testified before congress about how expensive contraceptives were (in support of Obama’s health care bill) a “slut” and a “prostitute,” he continued to hit it out of the park with this comment: “I will buy all of the women at Georgetown University as much aspirin to put between their knees as they want,” The comment refers to an old-school method of birth control which gave his whole tirade a ‘put em in their place’ tone. BUT it is not his comments which bother me so much as does the pervasive belief within American society that ‘oh sexism ended with the women's movement in the ‘70’s!’ No, its still alive and well my friends. But the real danger is that we don’t acknowledge that being a woman is often THE DEFINING aspect of a person’s identity. Limbaugh's crude sexism is preferable to the embedded sexism in our society which is far more difficult to pick out because we’re so wrapped up with our rhetoric of having “achieved equality.”
Here's an example: there have been many articles recently about how more women graduate from college than men these days (‘My heavens! Those gender equality programs are working too well and woman are now outpacing men! Get rid of ‘em fast!’). None of the articles about how women are “out-pacing” men ask the obvious question—what’s is college like as a woman? Is college the same for men and women? They don’t ask the question because education is the same, regardless of gender—we’re equal now right? Or if they aren’t—if a woman’s college life is defined to a greater extent by the fact of her being female—then ‘that was her choice.’ …Well I say bullshit. You want to talk about women and men and college? Fine, but lets do a comprehensive job, shall we? Let’s not take what everyone says about equality as our premise for further assumptions which then too can obscure and further entrench sexism in our society.

To conclude, I’ll bring it back to sex: how many editorials have been about getting boys and men to use condoms in the last year? And how many have been about women and (their rights to use) some form of birth control? See how skewed societal biases lead to the perpetration of these biases?

Jonathan Weisman on Rush Limbaugh: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/02/boehner-condemns-limbaughs-comments/?hp

Katznelson, “When Affirmative Action Was White” http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-36.html

Nytimes on changes in college graduate demographics:
http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/02/24/college-racial-gap-continues-to-grow/?scp=6&sq=men%20and%20college%20graduation&st=cse