Lies I learned growing up in the suburbs

• Food comes from the grocery store. Vegetables come from cans or the freezer.
• No distance is too short to drive.
• All songs are love songs.
• Art is about being cultured, not about expression. It is done by Artists, not by the rest of us.
• Three meals a day. No more, no less.
• A meal is one meat, one starch, and one vegetable.
• Grocery shopping happens once per week, generally on the same day each week.

Assholes & Anchors

It starts here, with this email from a friend:

My best friend's father, a man who I have basically anchored my faith in humanity to and have looked up to as a second father for years grabbed his shit and abandoned his family a few weeks ago, and did so by all appearances to be with another woman. I just found out.

 In responding to him later, I found myself writing about something I've been trying to avoid thinking about for a while. So here's that.

I know this is really throwing you. It's hard when the very few people you let yourself trust are the ones who fuck up in monumental ways. When I was talking about realizing that parents are just humans, I'm sure it sounded like I was brushing this off, so I want to tell you about when I had that realization with my dad.

My brother got married in 2005, which was a few months after I came out to my family and a week before I met my first partner (who's now my best friend). My dad and I hadn't really been connecting (it would be three years before he told me what a ridiculous reaction he was having to my coming out), but he'd always been the laissez-faire, be-my-kids'-best-friend kind of dad. He'd left my mom when I was 6 and my brother was 8, so he did the buying-our-love thing and it worked pretty well.

I drove to Florida for the wedding and spent time hanging out with my dad and brother while they test drove my first car, which I'd just bought. It was a really nice time, and I felt closer to them than I had since my mom moved me and my brother to Florida 11 years earlier. The three of us went to dinner with my brother's then-fiance, and we started talking about the wedding and how things would go, and how my brother had to negotiate the fact that we're close to both of our parents but not at all to our stepparents, but neither of our parents would've wanted to be introduced as if they were a couple. Out of nowhere, my dad says that if he had to walk in with my mom, he would much rather shoot her in the face. Much as I react to your gun violence-related jokes, I told him that wasn't funny. He told me he wasn't joking. I kept trying to get him to understand that that's my mother he was talking about and that was really fucked up to say about anyone, but it was my mother and the mother of his children. He didn't care. He truly meant, 100%, that he would like to shoot my mother in the face. I'm not one for huffing away, but I left the table. Thankfully I'd driven myself, but I couldn't go back to my mom's house to deal with that kind of awfulness.

I ended up pulling into a parking lot nearby and calling T, who talked me through understanding that parents are humans. No matter how much we valorize them, they are humans, and they have the same ability to be awful, confused, scared, or childish as any other person on earth. T said he had that realization about his parents around the same time most people do -- when he was a preteen. It took me a decade longer.

Since the asshole in question in your life isn't the father you grew up with, it's even harder. You didn't have childlike awe of him -- you had young adult-like awe, which feels like it should be far more reality-based. In general, I have a hard time balancing the idea of following my bliss and the idea of honoring commitments. It sounds like this dude had the same struggle, and he eventually came down on the side that makes you wonder what the point of building relationships and honoring commitments is at all. You can't decide he's a Bad Person because that means you were duped for years. You can't decide he just made a bad decision, or even made a decision that's good for his life, because we don't like to think of ourselves as people who can hurt our loved ones so deeply, especially in the service of our own happiness.

I don't have anything smart to tell you because there's nothing smart to do. It sucks. There is nothing that you can do to make it hurt less for yourself or the people you care about, and nothing you can do to un-make his assholic decision. This is going to hurt for a while. But hurt fades, and when it does, you'll find that you're still an introspective guy who can think about how this shook your world and how you can get a hold on it again. You'll get there. I don't know you well yet, but I know that you learn from everything that happens to you.

Take care of yourself. I'll be here for you when you need me.

Being a Supreme Court wife

There's been a lot of fervor over the fact that Ginni Thomas, wife of super-conservative misogynist Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, was running a teapartyish group called Liberty Central. She's recently stepped down very quietly now that the mid-terms are over.

There's been a lot of talk about how when you agree to be a Supreme Court justice, you give up certain rights, like expressing political positions. I agree with this overall, especially since a few of the ultra-conservative justices have been making public appearances at conservative fundraisers. But when we talk about "Supreme Court spouses" and how they agree to give up their rights, I can't help but sense the sexism in this assertion.

Of all the Supreme Court justices in history, four have been women. Three of those currently sit on the Court. Two of them do not have spouses. When we talk about who has to sit down and shut up, especially because their spouses have voices that overpower every law in the country, we are talking about women, though we conveniently call them "spouses." We are talking about yet another reason that women shouldn't just be overshadowed by our spouses' careers, but we should be controlled by them. Because "we" have "agreed" to accept a Supreme Court post.

It's true that spouses' political opinions often give a window into Supreme Court justices opinions, but it's not true that their spouses' actions actually do anything to affect their rulings. The fact that Ginni Thomas founded and headed a super-conservative political group doesn't tell us anything we don't know. Let's take a vote. Raise your hand if you didn't know that Clarence Thomas is a misogynist, conservative asshole.

Right. That's what I thought.

Datafail and Truthiness

Yet another well-respected philanthropy journal, which I am choosing not to name, is marching forward with the same "Generation Y doesn't care" trope that seems to be so popular as my generation goes out on our own and makes our own brand new adult trends. We are the generation born between 1981 and 1991 -- roughly, my brother (1981), myself (1984), and this year's college freshmen and sophomores (1991). In the article entitled "Charities must find multiple ways to persuade people of different generations to give, study finds," the article rightly makes the point that marketing, solicitation, and cultivation tactics work as a multi-pronged single strategy, not as separate strategies for separate demographics. And somehow, they fit this in:

Members of Generation Y...tend to be less loyal to an organization and hold high expectations for online attempts to attract them. But they also have a strong desire to help others and to raise money and attention from friends and acquaintances for their favorite causes.

As datafail to back that up, we get this.

Donors born since 1980 gave an average of $341 to an average of 3.6 groups, while members of Generation X gave $796 to 4.2 organizations.

Anyone else see the problem here? Yes, that's it, in a typical career environment you make more money as your career progresses. Anything else? Right, a good chunk of Gen Y are still in college! Assuming typical matriculation and graduation, the oldest GenYers graduated around 2003; the youngest won't graduate for another three years.


When you report data inaccurately, it doesn't help that you grant that we "have a strong desire to help others." It isn't okay to acknowledge our intentions are good if you're also insulting us based on your own preconceptions about what you'd like to find. So let's remember some things about this generation that is sooo picky about where we work and who we give our money to:

• The total amount of student loans borrowed by students increased by about 25% from the 2007-08 academic year to 08-09 academic year. Compare this to the increase from 1997-98 to 98-99, which was 1.7%.
• Two-thirds of college students take on student debt, with an average of $23,186 after a Bachelor's degree. Compare this to the numbers from 12 years ago, when 58% of students borrowed to pay for college, and the average amount borrowed was $13,172.*
• This burden keeps us from doing things we want to do, like having a kids, buying a house, or throwing a wedding. (Things, I should note, that are big ol' important milestones for adulthood which we're criticized for "delaying.")
• On average (using a median) starting pay for men is $8,400 more than starting pay for women in the same graduating class.**
• More women than men graduate college (this trend is growing); more women than men donate to nonprofits. The bulk of the donors and likely donors in our generation are making less than our peers.
• The third of Gen Y who are still in college are largely living on borrowed money and thus aren't giving as much. Maybe we should count the interest I'll be paying for the money I donated when I was in college, and then see where the averages end up.
• Many of us opt to work in nonprofits as a moral decision, rather than an economic one, and thus make far less money than we would in for-profit organizations. For example, I am in the 16th percentile for jobs similar to mine in responsibility and region. If we consider the $9,312 between my salary and the average market value of my work to be a contribution, I wonder whether we'd still be decrying how stingy and flighty Gen Y is.

I've been reading The Canon by Natalie Angier, and I just finished the chapter on probabilities. The moral of the chapter was a warning that it's easy to be hoodwinked by statistics with poor or, in this case, a lack of analysis. I expected better; perhaps that's foolish. This is truthiness at its best: "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true."


*These data come from the Wall Street Journal article, Students Borrow More Than Ever for College.
**These data come from here and originate in a cnn.com article.

Cream cheese icing and Death By Chocolate cake from The Grit

Though The Grit's cookbook has been out for many years now, it's oddly difficult to find its recipes online if, say, you can't currently find your copy.

So here are recipes for a phenomenal vegan cake called Death by Chocolate and the very un-vegan cream cheese icing.

Death by Chocolate

• 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 cups sugar
• 1 cup cocoa powder
• 1 tablespoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract
• 3 cups strong brewed coffee
• 1/4 cup cider vinegar

Chocolate Icing

• 1 (12 ounce) packages firm silken tofu
• 3 cups semisweet vegan chocolate chips (many semisweet brands contain no dairy)

Directions:

Prep Time: 25 mins
Total Time: 50 mins 

Cake:

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease 3 (9-inch) round cake pans, dust with flour, and line bottom with parchment or wax paper.
2. Sift together dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add oil and vanilla extract. With electric mixer on low speed, blend until fully combined. With mixer on medium speed, gradually blend in coffee. When mixture is smooth, add vinegar and blend on low speed just until combined.
3. Divide batter evenly into prepared pans. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or just until a knife or toothpick inserted in the center of layers comes out clean.
4. Remove from oven and cool 15 to 20 minutes on a wire rack. Remove from pans and allow layers to cool completely before icing.

Chocolate Icing:

1. Drain excess fluid from silken tofu, crush and place in a medium saucepan with chocolate chips.
2. Stir together over medium heat until chocolate is very soft. Transfer to food processor and puree until fully blended.
3. Cool to spreadable consistency and frost between layers, and top and sides of cake.

 

Cream Cheese Icing

• 2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, slightly softened and cut into small pieces
• 1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
• 4 cups powdered confectioners' sugar, sifted
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract  

Directions:

1. Using an electric mixer, beat cream cheese in a large bowl until smooth.
2. Add butter and beat until smooth, creamy, and fully combined.
3. Add powdered confectioners' sugar and vanilla extract and beat slowly until sugar is incorporated.
4. Beat until consistency is extremely smooth and fluffy.

Radical respect

This started as a post about Park51.

I wrote the post and asked a friend to read it, and then tried to revise it based on her feedback. It was a post where I showed a great counterexample of what I was saying. It was the post of a white person trying to tell other white people to stop being mean to non-white people. I don’t think such posts are categorically wrong, but it’s not what I mean.

So this post isn’t about Park51. It’s about radical respect, especially of the religious sort. It’s about how my medically treated anxiety intersects with the racism I was raised on, and creates a very uncomfortable storm in my head that I can only calm through the painful honesty of recognizing that that racism is now my own.

Okay, so maybe it’s a little bit about Park51.

I spent the weekend in Manhattan with my best friends from college – a New Jerseyan guy with Indian heritage, (we’ll call him Rouge), an Ashkenazi Israeli (Turquoise), and a white Alabaman who speaks fluent Arabic as well as some Hebrew and Persian (Daffodil). Then I spent two days with my very loud Italian-American family where each person is perfect and knows what’s best for everyone else. We’re mostly women, except those who married in or are under the age of ten. My brother and uncle weren’t there. My eldest cousin just had a very sweet, very cute baby, and there are four other mothers in the family.

We love each other fiercely, but for most of us, loving doesn’t mean trusting. Years ago, a playwright friend of mine wrote in Thorns of a Rose, “How can you think you know what’s best for me? I don’t even know what’s best for me.” We don’t trust each other to do what’s best for ourselves, or even to trust that we’ll be consulted if we can be a useful conversant. Instead of offering expertise, we are experts at jumping at the opportunity of someone else’s confusion to posit our own opinion, hoping it will be accepted out of sudden lucidity or perhaps simply out of exhaustion. We want to be right; rather, we know we’re right, so we want the shortest route to making you realize it. So we ignore that confusion and struggle are the midwives of intentionality, and get right to our preferred end while ignoring the means. Get people at their most vulnerable, and you don't have to worry about their personhood; you can conveniently supplant their needs with your own.

Fear-mongering uses this same method. Marriage in trouble (as many, many marriages often are)? Blame it on the gays. Crime statistics got you down? Blame it on “urban youth.” Worried about the havoc wreaked by drug addiction? Blame it on gangs in Mexico. Business going down the tubes? Blame it on a federal worker bee who happens to be black. Evangelical methods no longer catching the eye of the vulnerable? Blame it on another religion. Embarrassed that other fear-mongers have succeeded in making you scared? Take it out on Muslims. Rest assured that once you reduce the power of the gays, the urban youth, the entire country of Mexico, all black federal employees (or all black folks entirely?), all other religions, and especially all Muslims, your marriage, property, family, business, religion, and bravado will once again be in tact.

I tend to give the fear-mongers the benefit of the doubt and assume that they really are afraid; they came by their fear honestly. They know they're right, and they want the shortest path to making sure you know that too. It scares me to think this way, because it means we're fighting something genuine, no matter how abhorrent. It seems easier to dismiss people when you assume they're just evil.

What scares me the most is when I see this in myself. I have been raised in a racist* society, and I try to claim my part in upholding the racism that I’ve ingested, willingly or unwillingly. Still, I am alarmed when I catch myself doing the very things that I abhor. Rouge regularly gets selected for extra screening at airports, especially if he hasn’t shaved in a few days. While boarding the flight to Newark last week, a white family behind him in line seemed especially concerned when he began talking to his mother on the phone in Punjabi.

Every time I board a plane, especially if I am flying alone, I look around to see who the other passengers are. I get shaky if I see a young brown man. In my life, I’ve flown most to Newark, Orlando, and Detroit, in that order. Young brown men are pretty common passengers on those flights, as all three states have significant populations of people from Middle Eastern, Indian, and Hispanic families.

Yesterday I boarded a train in Newark that stopped in New York’s Penn Station before continuing on to points north and east, eventually ending in Boston. I found myself having the same fears, stoking the racist flame that I try on other days to ignore. I forced myself to hide it, but the racist fears kept dogging me.

At the same time, my mind whirled. I chastised myself, I felt terrible, I wondered how I could call myself an ally when clearly I’m part of the problem. So long as one part of me knows what's right, I can make proclamations, hoping the "fake it til you make it" method will eventually mean that I'm entirely free of racism simply by saying that I am. If I focus outward, I never have to focus on myself.

This post began as a way to say that Muslims have more of a right than anybody to build a mosque at Ground Zero [despite the fact that no such thing has been suggested] because 9/11 has been used as an excuse to kill millions of Muslims. Yes, of course I believe that to be true. But no, that is not my struggle.

My struggle is that it’s working. The fear-mongering – if not from this particular nontroversy, then from all of the rest of it – has worked. It’s worked despite the defenses I put up and the steel bubble I have built. It's worked despite the fact that I can make a convincing and spirited argument against racial profiling. It's worked despite the fact that my friends, the chosen family who I describe as being part of my soul, are the ones I would be afraid of. It's worked, and I can't make it stop working just by acting as if I'm immune.

I said this post was about radical respect. Radical respect is starting from a place of conscious love, edification, and respect, and honoring others by fighting my own demons. Radical respect is about being intentional. It's about falling back on my belief that other people know what is best for them. It's about trusting that people make decisions rooted in their own experiences. It's about trusting my cousin to be the kind of mother she wants to be, and trusting that she will tell us when she needs something. It's about squelching the urge to grandstand when I want to hide my guilt. It's about fighting my susceptibility to fear-mongering. It's about becoming one fewer person who can be affected by fear-mongers. It's about being proactive about how to be a better part of this world. It's about knowing that "a better world" means a world where individuals treat each other with love, compassion, and respect.

 

*I’m currently using “racist” to be a bit of a catch-all for xenophobia and islamophobia because the way we “determine” who to be scared of is often by what race or ethnicity we assume them to be.
**I expect to be editing this for a while, despite the many many edits it's gone through.

razing public housing

This deserves much much more conversation than I'm going to give it at this moment, but hopefully I'll get back to it.

It's common practice to raze low-income public housing and replace it with "mixed-income housing," where some of the units are reserved for subsidized-rent units for low-income families. (The number of units reserved for low-income families is significantly smaller than the number of low-income units razed.) The idea here is to "deconcentrate poverty." The thing is, this is actually about destabilizing poor people.

Assuming that this will alleviate poverty (or help poor people) requires considering poor people as toxic. If you spread out a toxin, it gets watered down and is less potent. But poor people aren't toxins, damnit. Poor people are people, and if you put poor people in a nicer place, that's super, because poor people deserve to live in nice places too. But if there still aren't jobs, education, and childcare, as well as food stamps, welfare income, enough housing units, and sustainable community structures, you aren't helping anything! You're making the poor invisible, which makes non-poor people feel better. And that's not public policy, that's bullshit.

Fuck that noise.