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If anyone running for public office needs to swiftly debunk claims that she or he is a Muslim…we are not post-racial.
When pundits gleefully wallow in the stankification of sexism to the extent that an on-air public apology is required…we are not post-gender.
– Angry Black Bitch (a/k/a Shark Fu)
I’ve been thinking all week about this article in the Chronicle Review, written by Mr. Post-Ethnic America himself, David Hollinger, with whom I have had a love-hate relationship since 1998 when I first devoured his now infamous book. In a nutshell, Hollinger argues that in order to get “beyond” race (because, of course, race is bad) we must pay less attention to skin-color and the “limitations” of things like blackness. In his article on Obama (like so many articles on famous mixed-race Americans) he could just have easily said: “see! I told you so! Obama’s popularity is proof that most Americans are beyond race.” “Race? That’s so twentieth-century.” So, yeah, me being the budding critical race theorist that I am (and am now being paid to be), I was naturally perturbed, but not at all surprised by the piece. And I’ve been thinking of a way to address it eloquently and incisively. But Shark-Fu beat me to it. And I’m glad she did. She has a way with words.
So, while I’m happy that OHB might be “our” candidate, I have to admit that so-called Obamamania can get annoying. It is annoying. But also fun. No, I mean hot. Read some of the threaded comments on the popular liberal blogs and you’ll soon discover that there are women aplenty who are hot for Obama. Case in point: a recent comment, posted in one of the Kos’s “open threads” during the Texas Dem debates. “Hillary looks terrible in that black suit. But that Obama. Mmmm. His black is beautiful. I’d speak Spanish for him any day.” Chicks dig the Bama. Apparently, Lorne Michaels agrees:
I’ve always considered it a source of pride that you’ll never find me trash-talkin’ my students behind their backs, unless of course I’m talking to Mr. G (who is perpetually fortunate enough to get the worst of me). While insecure and frighteningly immature in graduate school, I quickly observed a most annoying tendency in my equally-insecure, yet alarmingly arrogant peers: they often put students down to lift their own flagging spirits. One any given Thursday (that’s “Friday” in grad-school) you were bound to find an anxious hive of English grads exchanging bragging rights over who had the “lamest” student essay. “Oh yeah, you think that’s idiotic, check out what my student wrote!” And there I’d be in the smoke-hazed inn, wondering when the yarn would spin towards more juicy subjects: sex, drugs, rock n’ roll, the stuff that got me through graduate school (at least the first four years).
Fast foward six years. Now I’m one of the professoriate. We in the professoriate don’t talk trash. We’re far too good for that. Duh, we’re professionals. And we’ve got more important stuff to talk about. I call bull-shit on that. As of today, I would like to reclaim my rights as a graduate student if only to share this, an email I just received from an undergraduate:
Hello Professor Grubby:
I would like to come to your office hours as soon as possible to discuss my paper proposal. I know you are a very busy lady with a kid and a husband. But I am on the verge of freaking out and really need to talk to you. I would like to write my paper on “the bandido” in “Martyrs of the Alamo” and I would like to talk about Western imperialist expansion in the Southwest, about how the Anglos screwed the Mexicans since the 1800s at least. But I need to know that this will not offend you, being a little Mexican yourself. I guess what I mean is this: is it OK to talk about ideology in our papers? Even if you are one of the victims of the ideology?
Um. Graduate school might’ve trained me to write a book and to teach some literature. But I ain’t got a clue when it comes to stuff like this.
G
Why? Why, instead of going to a Primary, where I could just pop into a booth and vote, do I have to undergo this tortuous affair to vote for the nomination? Mind you, Mr. G has an all-day class in City-to-the-South, so I am to Caucus with the Bump, who’s a high-octane toddler and who will lose his shit, oh about minute after we get there. And I can’t come “at the end,” because then I can’t participate. But I don’t want to participate. I just want to vote.
How Does the Caucus Process Work?
1. Declare Presidential Preference when signing in
2. Tally preferences (1st vote)
3. Calculate number of delegates per candidate
4. Participants lobby each other to get them to vote for their candidate
5. Take second vote; participants may change votes
6. Re-calculate the number of delegates per candidate
7. Elect delegates to the Legislative District Caucus in April, for each candidate
8. Consider resolutions and party platform planks
Read the current platform http://www.whatcomdemocrats.com/platform.php
The reason I can’t keep this an anonymous blog — and why you’ll never really find juicy tidbits of gossip involving friends, family, and colleagues (which many a-bloggers are wont to do) — is because I find my little Bump to be the world’s cutest toddler. And, let’s face it, I wear my badge of motherly pride on the blog — the pictures, the narrative snap-shots, the many Odes to Bump. So, a few weeks ago it dawned on me that the days of carefree nudity are, in the grand scheme of things, relatively short-lived. Take pictures while you can, I thought. So pictures I took. Dozens in fact, with one central theme: Bump’s beautiful 18-month-old body. (I swear the closest I’ve come to cannibalism has been while staring at his perfect pudgy ‘ham-hocks’ — that’s mumspeak for “thighs” and that’s so not perverse and you’d only know this if you already had kids.). I just want to eat him up! One of my favorite shots follows. Note the coy expression and the barely concealed “peter” (another ‘neologism’ — I’ll let you figure out the rest):
