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