Words of Wisdom?

On Tuesday, I went to get our car's oil changed. I really like the place that I go, because they give customers free soda, and put a flower on the dashboard for all the women who take their cars there.

While I was waiting, I saw that they had a poster with various motivational quotes on it. And I love me a good motivational quote, so I went over to check them out. Nothing was really jumping out at me until I saw this one:

Never be haughty to the humble. Never be humble to the haughty.

I thought to myself "Oooh, I like that one."

Then I looked down and saw who said it:

Jefferson Davis

Then I thought to myself, "Jefferson Davis?!?"

For those of you not on a big U.S. history tip, Jefferson Davis was the President of the Confederacy during the Civil War.

You know, the side that didn't win.

So anyway, I see that Jefferson Davis wrote the quote, and something very interesting happened. I found myself questioning whether I really liked it as much as I thought I had thirty seconds earlier.

Part of me was saying, "Well what are you supposed to be to the haughty? Haughty back? That's not good. Maybe humble is the best thing to be at all times. But you don't want people to push you around, so maybe it just means stand up for yourself (nicely, of course.) What the hell is this poster company thinking putting a quote from a Confederate leader on their freakin' poster?! Are they trying to send some kind of subliminal message?"

and so on.

But I honestly couldn't say (and still can't,) if my new found questioning of the quote came more from its message, or from its messenger.

Which leads me to this post: How do we acknowledge good things that are done by people that do bad things, and vice versa? Should we celebrate them? Act like they never happened? Or acknowledge that all people make mistakes and no one person is all good or all bad? Does it matter how bad the bad stuff was? Or how good the good stuff?

I was in a really crappy diversity training once that talked about a Neo-Nazi who found a cure for AIDS--I think we were supposed to decide if he should live or die (it was a long time ago, I don't remember all the specifics.)

Besides the fact that I don't think a Neo-Nazi is going to devote his research efforts to finding a cure for that particular disease, it does raise an interesting question. Would this fictitious person deserve to win the Nobel Prize?

Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood ,) was a proponent of eugenics, and gave speeches to the Ku Klux Klan. How should this knowledge influence our view of her and her many accomplishments? Hamas kills people who are riding buses and eating pizza; they also give food and healthcare to people in need--how do we reconcile these two pieces of information?

My free flower is on a vase on our mantle. I wonder if I'll have come to any conclusions about Mr. Davis, or any of these other questions by the time its petals have fallen off. I am also really curious to hear what you all think about the issues I've raised--so leave me a comment.

The more you know...

There are some things that I want to learn more about when it comes to race and inequality. They are (in no particular order,)


The 70's. I know a good amount about the civil rights movement of the 50's and 60's, but what happened in the 70's? I know the Black Power movement started gaining steam, but I'd like more details.

School integration/Busing. How did that work? How long did it go on? Why did it stop?

The War on Poverty.

The history of Government Housing/Housing Projects. Is it universal that the people that live in them think they suck? If so, what are the reasons that they think contribute to their suckiness? If not, what separates a good one from a bad one?

The history of the police in the U.S.

Affirmative Action. What is it? What isn't it?

The history of Homelessness in the U.S.

Health care. How did people pay for health insurance/care before the 1980's?

Back to the 60's snd 70's. I feel like I heard about people taking over administration buildings of Universities and having lists of demands. What were on these lists? And prison riots too (Attica.) What was on the prisoners lists of demands?

I'm sure there are more, but that's all I can think of for now. What are some things that you'd like to know more about re: race and inequality? Have you read any books that cover one or more of these topics that you'd like to recommend?

Lookin' for love in all the wrong places...

I was watching Nightline the other day, they were doing a story on a newish online dating site called ok cupid. It's a free site, and they use statistical analysis to figure out how to set people up with each other. Apparently they are wildly successful; second only to match.com in total number of users.

Part of the story talked about how online dating is much more popular than it was in the past; that it has lost a lot of the uncool and weird stigma that it once had.

Another part of the story talked about how since okcupid does such involved statistical analysis, they can find out a lot of interesting facts about their users and what makes some users more successful than others.

For example, they said that guys who start their messages with "howdy" are more successful than guys who start off with "hey." Take note, single men doing online dating.

Another less fun factoid is that black people who use the site get fewer messages than other racial groups, even though they send the same amount of messages out. As they were talking about this fact, they showed a screen capture of what I guess was their website saying Men don't write black women back. So, black women are perceived as being the least desirable group of people on the site. The co-founder of the site described this info as "not the awesomest thing to find."

This jibes fairly well with my experience with online dating. Ten years ago (back when dating online was uncool and weird,) I tried my hand at it on match.com. I definitely got some emails, but I didn't realize how piddly my action was until I talked to my white friend (we'll call her Polly.) Polly told me how her inbox was flooded with messages from men, and she didn't even have a picture posted! I spent a lot of time on my profile, and you can be sure that my pictures were like most online dating pictures--what I looked like on the best of good days ;)

Alas, the difference in our traffic was probably like, 10 to 1. I also went out of my way to say that I was open to dating people from a variety of backgrounds; that shared values and beliefs were more important to me than ethnic background, religion, etc. At least now I know that I shouldn't have taken it personally; that it was the immutable characteristic of my race that was the most likely to blame for my poor, poor showing.

Something that I think is interesting about this is that if you look at the actual profiles, I would venture that most of them say that the people are open to dating people of all races--because this is something public that other people can see. But when it comes down to actually writing a message to a black person or responding to one that a black person has sent, it's apparently much easier to say, "Um, I'm going to go over here now..." Because it's something the user is doing in the privacy of his or her own home. And said user can rationalize this choice however he or she chooses to.

So that leads me to some questions that I want to ask you to ponder and perhaps share your answers with the group (anonymously, if you so choose)...

Have you ever gone out on a date with/been in a relationship with a person of a different race? Why or why not?

What do you think about a person not being open to dating someone of a different race? What about not being open to certain physical characteristics (hair color, weight, height, etc.?)

What do you think are the reasons for black people getting such low amounts of play on okcupid?

Do you have any funny online dating stories to share?

I want to hear it all--leave me a comment.

Fewer words than usual Wednesday.

This photo is from the most recent Garnet Hill catalog. From what I can tell, Garnet Hill does a lot of business selling sweaters, coats and sweater coats to women in their 30's and 40's. And from this picture, you can see that they also sell Holiday pajamas for kids.

One time, I remember a black model saying that if there are ever three models in a shoot, one of them will be black. I can't remember if it was Tyra Banks or Iman or Beverly Johnson--but it was one of those ladies. But there is something that she didn't say that is also true. If there is a black model, she'll always be flanking the white model in the center.

I don't recall ever seeing a trio of models where the black person was in the center, being supported by two white people.

Now, I know there is someone out there reading this thinking, "What is the big deal? It doesn't matter--why are you being so sensitive, my blackfriend?"

I would say to this someone, " Someone, if it doesn't matter, why is it so consistently one way? If it was just something random, then 33.33333333333333% of the pictures like this would have the person of color in the middle. I've probably seen hundreds (thousands?) of images like this in my life, and they all seem to have this positioning in common. What do you think that's about?"

I'll end it here cause I'm not 'sposed to be typing as much. If you've got something to share, leave me a comment.

Introducing: Wordless Wednesdays

I'm started a new thing here that I've seen on other blogs. Wordless Wednesdays is when you post a picture of something as that day's blog post. I think it is a way to help people post regularly that doesn't require that they actually type something.

But you know me, and you know that I am a woman of many words. So I don't know how the whole "wordless" thing will work out. But "Fewer words than usual Wednesday" doesn't really have much of a ring to it.

So here's my picture:



One perk of becoming a parent (other than the adorable baby,) is that you start getting free magazines. This is my second issue of Parenting and the first time in my 31 years that I have ever seen an Asian mommy model and an Asian kid model on the cover of a national magazine. I asked my husband, and he said it was his first time seeing a cover like this too.

The little girl is so cute, and I love the little dress that she is wearing. This magazine cover makes me happy, and I hope to see more like it in the future.