Racialicious Crush Of The Week: rosasparks
Oh my gawd, thank you. I was so infuriated by what the creators of that show have been quoted as saying that I spit that out fueled by rage and caffeine.I have spent a lot of time trying to understand all of this. As a city, New York is so diverse; ethnically, socially, economically, etc…to me, that’s why it’s so interesting and fun and why I always felt so comfortable when I was living there.
I mean, the other side of that is how much economics play into one’s quality of life in New York, or anywhere, obviously. If you have money and resources, you can actually pay your way through an experience that is devoid of all of that wonderful diversity, which plenty of people do. They say, I don’t want to ride the smelly subway, send my kids to public school, live in a diverse neighborhood, and you can bet they don’t. I don’t know that other side of New York, but I saw it, from the outside looking in. It was sterile and depressing. Furthermore, why would you live in a place that had so much culture and diverse people and experiences only to limit yourself to 10 square blocks? In other cities and places, you may not have the breadth of humanity, so your life experiences are limited just because, but to have access to all those things and actively shun them is mind-boggling to me.
And the ‘quirky’ or non-ritzy fantasy display of New York, via television or movies, seems to want to celebrate its diversity without it REALLY being diverse. We’re all ‘poor’ and live in funky or wacky apartments, but we don’t see one person of color or anything that resembles the life that goes along with that world.
I suppose you look at who produces such works and you wonder, well why are you there, then? Both in the medium and real life? I mean, I’m sure there are plenty of people who write shows about New York and don’t know shit about living there because they’ve never had first-hand experiences, but there’s also this weird sense I get that New York life is aspirational, in the sense that people want the Woody Allen New York, the whimsy and the breeziness, without the ‘other’. And they certainly don’t want any brown people messing up their vibes.
Girls, Friends, whatever these single-titled shows….they’re all fairly educated and seemingly open white folks who have no encounters, let alone real relationships with any people of color. To me? That only means one thing, which is their fantasy life or the aspirational life they’d like to lead in New York would be better without people of color since they don’t include them, in any substantive way. And that is extremely troubling.
One of the things I adore about you is your lovingly on-the-real view of motherhood and how it ties into feminism and social policy. (I’m still marinating on your post on SNAP–again, just utterly incredible.) In your opinion, is feminism missing an analysis around motherhood, living on limited budgets, and social policy? If so, why?
Ooooof, this is deep right here. OK.
Sometimes, I feel feminism is limited in its views. My ma is a feminist, but she does not identify as such and part of that comes from, in her world, she had nothing in common with the feminist movement of the 70′s.I also feel like many discussions in and around feminism are academic. I don’t mean that as a slight on academia, but rather, and this is an exaggeration, it feels like discussions turn toward that Damon Wayans character from In Living Color. The proclamation of the emanicipation of the overtization of the….WAT? Intellectually, that may be fulfilling, but translate that to our their daily lives! I don’t see feminism as a theory, I see it as an action plan.
Feminism has issues, I believe, in that it didn’t find its way to weave in the life experiences of women of color and now, there is a schism. I self-identify as a feminist but I find so much of the dogma and practice is deeply problematic because it doesn’t address any of the realities I face as a woman of color. Does that mean all of us can’t fight for equality? Absolutely not. But when the foundations of a doctrine are missing some key components–namely addressing poverty, race and practicality–it is, by default, exclusionary.
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