11 posts tagged “sociology”

May 13, 2008

Clinton Campaign Brought Sexism Out of Hiding

By Marie Cocco

WASHINGTON -- As the Democratic nomination contest slouches toward a close, it's time to take stock of what I will not miss.

I will not miss seeing advertisements for T-shirts that bear the slogan "Bros before Hos." The shirts depict Barack Obama (the Bro) and Hillary Clinton (the Ho) and they are widely sold on the Internet.

I will not miss walking past airport concessions selling the Hillary Nutcracker, a device in which a pantsuit-clad Clinton doll opens her legs to reveal stainless steel thighs that, well, bust nuts. I won't miss television and newspaper stories that make light of the novelty item.

I won't miss episodes like the one in which the liberal radio personality Randi Rhodes called Clinton a "big f---in' whore" and said the same about former vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro. Rhodes was appearing at an event sponsored by a San Francisco radio station, before an audience of appreciative Obama supporters -- one of whom had promoted the evening on the presumptive Democratic nominee's official campaign Web site.

I won't miss Citizens United Not Timid (no acronym, please), an anti-Clinton group founded by Republican guru Roger Stone.

Political discourse will at last be free of jokes like this one, told last week by magician Penn Jillette on MSNBC: "Obama did great in February, and that's because that was Black History Month. And now Hillary's doing much better 'cause it's White B---- Month, right?" Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski rebuked Jillette.

I won't miss political commentators (including National Public Radio political editor Ken Rudin and Andrew Sullivan, the columnist and blogger) who compare Clinton to the Glenn Close character in the movie "Fatal Attraction." In the iconic 1987 film, Close played an independent New York woman who has an affair with a married man played by Michael Douglas. When the liaison ends, the jilted woman becomes a deranged, knife-wielding stalker who terrorizes the man's blissful suburban family. Message: Psychopathic home-wrecker, be gone.

The airwaves will at last be free of comments that liken Clinton to a "she-devil" (Chris Matthews on MSNBC, who helpfully supplied an on-screen mockup of Clinton sprouting horns). Or those who offer that she's "looking like everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court" (Mike Barnicle, also on MSNBC).

But perhaps it is not wives who are so very problematic. Maybe it's mothers. Because, after all, Clinton is more like "a scolding mother, talking down to a child" (Jack Cafferty on CNN).

When all other images fail, there is one other I will not miss. That is, the down-to-the-basics, simplest one: "White women are a problem, that's -- you know, we all live with that" (William Kristol of Fox News).

I won't miss reading another treatise by a man or woman, of the left or right, who says that sexism has had not even a teeny-weeny bit of influence on the course of the Democratic campaign. To hint that sexism might possibly have had a minimal role is to play that risible "gender card."

Most of all, I will not miss the silence.

I will not miss the deafening, depressing silence of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean or other leading Democrats, who to my knowledge (with the exception of Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland) haven't uttered a word of public outrage at the unrelenting, sex-based hate that has been hurled at a former first lady and two-term senator from New York. Among those holding their tongues are hundreds of Democrats for whom Clinton has campaigned and raised millions of dollars. Don Imus endured more public ire from the political class when he insulted the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

Would the silence prevail if Obama's likeness were put on a tap-dancing doll that was sold at airports? Would the media figures who dole out precious face time to these politicians be such pals if they'd compared Obama with a character in a blaxploitation film? And how would crude references to Obama's sex organs play?

There are many reasons why Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for "change." But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture.

mariecocco@washpost.com

Copyright 2008, Washington Post Writers Group

Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/clinton_campaign_brought_sexis.html at May 14, 2008 - 07:05:18 AM PDT

so i decided to do the optional paper for criminology at 11:15 PM and literally just went off on an unadulterated rant. my professor is either going to hate me more or actually like me. oh well.

            While I can understand how many can be sold on the link between abortion and crime rates, I argue that the wide acceptance of this relationship is peppered with dangerous presuppositions about poverty, crime, and race. Many things are not taken into account; many structural and political factors. The notion of preventing “unwanted babies” is connected with the erroneous theory of the culture of poverty.

Donahue and Levitt are essentially implicating select classes and areas as doomed to an environment of impoverishment, wherein procreation is equated with the breeding of potential criminals. Yes, children born into an otherwise poor environment may be more vulnerable to deviance, but is that a cultural problem? Is aborting them the solution? No - it’s a structural problem of class atomization, changes in social welfare policies that dictate mothers to work after a certain amount of years of receiving aid, etc. Another factor that has not been taken into consideration is the practice of eugenics and involuntary sterilization of poor and Black women - involuntary because many were uninformed of it happening. I believe what they have widely publicized is a spurious relationship. Donahue and Levitt’s thesis, much like an extension of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s analysis of the Black family, dangerously reifies the status of these “undesirable environments.”

While I disagree that abortion is a primary factor in the reduction of crime in the 90s, I agree with Lott and Whitley’s approach in their rebuttal, citing multiple factors that may have contributed the flux of crime. And as some critics argued that the Donahue-Levitt thesis as fraught with a hidden agenda in “pro-abortion,” I disagree that it was primarily advocating abortion. Their constant justification and dogmatic backing of their initial thesis could just be a refusal to concede to errors in analysis. I’m unsure of what their agenda was in repeatedly supporting their thesis, but Freakonomics was an interesting book.

...by way of distraction because i'm cooped up with the cold and taking a break from JD Salinger...

i'm sure i've mentioned before how much i love Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy's Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. but after having the time to watch some parts on Youtube, especially after summer and finals had transpired, it really got me thinking - okay, i know i think too much; it got me thinking even more.

on a train through Europe, Celine and Jesse, total strangers at 23, meet after Celine moves her seat to get away from an annoying German couple. they speak and have the witty repartee, and he's set to get off at the next stop in Vienna while she stays on to Paris. however, he turns around and coerces her into getting the train off with him:

"Jump ahead 10, 20 years and you're married. Only your marriage doesn't have the same energy that it used to have. You start to think of all those guys you met in your life, and what might have happened if you picked up with one of them..."

the entire movie is this great night spent together by two perfect strangers. with no money for a hotel, they walk through Vienna, listen to music together, drink a hustled bottle of wine in the grass in the park. they fall in love - or, met with our skepticism - so they think. the trick is that all the time they have together is until sunrise, when they have to return to their lives. low budget, little editing, no real cinematography. they hug and kiss before she boards the train back, and agree to not exchange phone numbers because it was nonsensical - so they thought. and they agree to meet six months later in Vienna.

nine years later they meet again in Before Sunset, because of circumstances that prevented their six-week reunion. they have one afternoon to catch up on their lives. he's married and a published author, and she's in a loving relationship and is an activist living in Paris. great - idyllic, even. right? no, he is in a loveless marriage that is being kept together by his kid, and she is "dying inside" because she can't commit. it's really a lot more complex - watch the clip, they're in My Videos. by the end of the afternoon, we know nothing. we the audience, that is.

i love these movies because they are so minimalist yet spoke so many volumes about our society today. is this scenario feasible these days? if you read last week's issue of New York Magazine, one of the reasons why we should love New York is because "You can find love underground" - the subway. a page with couples who found each other and found love and marriage waiting for the L train or what have you. and they were really heartwarming stories, but these happened in the 80s and 90s. now you can't even give away real contact information on the train.

technology has truncated the notion of 'six degrees of separation.' and while many know and attest to my ability to track and accumulate info on virtually anyone - prospective dates, friends, employers, dirty laundry - it's not a stellar reflection of how we are. not only do we advertise and proselytize ourselves with facebook, myspace, blogs, countless dating profiles, but we leave very little to the imagination. spontaneity is severely limited. it's all negative, self-preservation; it's about security, gauging the likelihood that your date isn't going to slip a roofie into your drink, or have an irate ex call you. it's about background information, priors, suspicious friends, ex-girlfriends.

nine years later, Celine and Jesse are unhappy and in loveless relationships. he thought about her on his wedding day and she feels that all the romance she was and is ever capable resided in that one night they shared in Vienna. she claims that maybe they would've ended up hating each other if they'd met in Vienna again all those years ago. well i think maybe they wouldn't have hated each other, but given how bogged down our lives are by work, MA's, JDs, HMOs, 401Ks, and what have you, that kind of chemistry straddles the boundaries of idealism versus reason. ideally that chemistry, that wit, that magic between two people can be reproduced, developed into that fairytale relationships, wishes on eyelashes. but reason? cost of living, and more abbreviated "real life" factors that really leave us to question, again, and again, is timing everything?

and another thing i have to address, in light of so much static in my head via conversations and just reading about these things. we've become so spoiled by access, by options, that we can't make a decision. that making a decision about commitment, about slowing down for half a second, is misconstrued as settling or being shackled. guys (and girls, too) seemingly have been in so many "relationships" that they don't appreciate monogamy anymore. i know too many guys who have many ex-girlfriends. is this generation Ex? what took our parents months, and maybe those just a decade or two older, to ascertain - i want to be with this person; that feeling of certainty isn't a commodified representation of love, it's the real thing, it's not flaky - seems unattainable these days, irrational, even.

it's irrational because there's that ever-so-persistent thought, that seed of doubt, that there's more out there. that fear that two people will just get bored and find themselves unhappy, kicking themselves because there are so many options out there. and they feed off of this unhappiness, feed it so much that we have an embarrassing divorce rate. i remember touting the phrase that marriage is a bastardized institution. it's not that i don't ever want to get married, it's just that i wouldn't, given how we are these days. we have silver-haired bachelors and couples getting married for the first time at older ages. and this collective mentality that we have is worse for women, as fertility doesn't improve as time passes.

DM told me about a friend whose high school boyfriend at 16 dumped her and told her "i don't want to be with the same girl from 16 to 80." she's about to get engaged with her live-in boyfriend who'd just graduated med school. and the ex? he still drunk-dials her on occasion, six years later.

there aren't just so many factors that work against committed relationships these days. it would appear that we have more reasons to leave one than to enter one. 

Racism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance
Sexism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one sex and thereby the right to dominance
Heterosexism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one pattern of loving and thereby its right to dominance
Homophobia: The fear of feelings of love for members of one's own sex and therefore the hatred of those feelings in others.

THE ABOVE FORMS of human blindness stem from the same root - an inability to recognize the notion of difference as a dynamic human force, one which is enriching rather than threatening to the defined self, when there are shared goals.

The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation.

But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling.

The fear of our desires keeps them suspect and indiscriminately powerful, for to suppress any truth is to give it strength beyond endurance.

Freedom and future for Blacks does not mean absorbing the dominant white male disease of sexism.

In a society where the good is defined in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, there must always be some group of people who, through systematized oppression, can be made to feel surplus, to occupy the place of the dehumanized inferior.

isn't she great?
*Sister Outsider

i was washing the dishes earlier tonight when i knocked something shiny off the top of the microwave and into the trash bin. i picked it up and it was an anti-nuclear weapon button that fell off my backpack: "arms are for hugging" - get it? i bought it from the man who sells anti-war paraphernalia in Union Square Park, cutting me a deal if i'd smile more. this is just one of the many relics of my year-long stint as what you would call a jaded revolutionary.

i wanted it all: the visions and wishes for a new future. those of Andrea Dworkin, Ruth Sidel, Frances Fox Piven, Cornel West, even Barabara Ehrenreich. understanding Marx and Weber was easier than stringing thread through a needle because I felt it - the immediacy for change. i read the Times, found Cosmo irrelevant, read BBC, and a whole bunch of other literature.

forgive me for waxing nostalgic; i feel like one of those old retired "lefties" i met at the left forum - who'd spent decades in activism, rubbing elbows with Noam Chomsky and myriad lesser-known public figures. and it was an amazing experience, at the time. i volunteered for free entry to over 70 panels led by people who'd written books on which i'd written papers. i served red wine in plastic cups and rolling rock beer bottles to anarchists, writers, veterans from iraq, writers, thinkers, etc. i convinced a photographer to pay the suggested donation to mingle with the many professors. and amidst the frenzy, i'd overhear conversations about materialism and Marx. Cornel West's distinguishable afro caught the attention of many faithful dopplegangers - i even took a picture with my cell phone!

the second night found me bartending atop the Village Voice building in one of the most decked-out NYC apartments where the owner had me write down my info in her little brown book for future parties/internships. and this was before a group of new friends and i had vegetarian food at Cooper 35 as we discussed Cointelpro and Georg Simmel over hummus and chips. and it was great, meeting Heather Gautney and distinguishing panel speakers by how much red wine they'd consumed. a sea of smiles as they watched this girl in bright green get excited about listening to others talk feminism and forums. phone numbers and e-mails exchanged for future volunteering opportunities.

and it all seemed like a great niche for me. such hope and excitement from a college student who wanted what they'd wanted: social change. i would sit at my desk watching videos of Cornel West and the 9/11 conspiracy and bandy insights with whomever i spoke to. and i was adamant, and i had the bite too.

but somewhere along the line, i lost it - the fire. i'm not sure if it was because i wasn't in the throes of my professors at the department or whether this is a kendra-specific quality wherein i immerse myself in one role, excel, and sputter out. and it lasted for a record long time, the part i played. but it was like i was edie sedwick for the lefties - that i was prescribed the poster-child status for this, shrugged my shoulders and went along with it, but then only ended up more confused than ever. catch my drift?

On September 24th, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmahdinejad paid a visit to Columbia University. Opening remarks by the University President, Lee Bollinger, included the following:

When you have come to a place like this, this makes you, quite simply, ridiculous. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated. You should know -- (applause) -- please -- you should know that Columbia is the world center of Jewish studies -- us a world center, and now in partnership with the -- Institute of Holocaust Studies.

While Ahmahdinejad made several unpopular and ill-received remarks regarding the Holocaust, much attention was directed towards the let-me-just-spit-on-your-shoes-while-you're-standing-at-my-threshold speech by Bollinger. What possessed him to be so rude? Earlier in the day, he'd issued a mass-email to the school telling students that they should do their best to represent the University. Yet...he'd delivered this unwelcome speech.

What you should know is that the speech in its entirety - with the saliva slinging - was not completely of Bollinger's volition. Obviously there are political behind-the-scenes people who engineered the aforementioned vile introduction. So that got me thinking, about how we are and how little control we have of how we conduct ourselves around the company of others.

JLC and I had a conversation a few nights ago about eating habits. And how, when we're out or within eyes' view of others, we'll tailor our behavior and follow the norms. But when we're alone, anything goes. We'll eat in bed, eat on the couch, while standing by the kitchen counter, etc.

When the associate director of our office came by parading her newborn and her baby daughter, everyone showered them with warm words and smiles. When I passed by, I obviously smiled and played the over-effeminate gushy girl, but after five minutes, my cheeks were strained and everyone around me was still enamored by this baby.

Could it be that we're all just acting the roles prescribed to us? Obviously, yes. But sometimes it becomes overwhelming because it touches and dilutes almost every page of our character portfolios. So how long, how many years does it take to really get to know someone? How often is the "we" we see just that and not a contrivance or a need to control and sift out the parts we want others to witness?

You help out a couple of people who don't really understand the material and they think you're so nice. But sometimes when they can't seem to grapple the concepts, you're thinking "are you kidding me???" You mention Cointelpro, the Cultural Revolution, and the lack of liberal democracy in the States and everyone thinks you've really got your shit together. But what you're really thinking is how unsure you are if you want to keep playing the "i care" card. That the next year, two years, of being a sociology major may follow just to get the master's degree, to get the paper. He tells you you're a great kisser and that you have a great body. You blush and turn away but what you're secretly feeling is the faintest bit of inadequacy because you're nervous about what happens next. You're told countless times by others that you're amazing and so smart yet you get emotional about it because sometimes you're peppered with self-doubt and uncertainty.

Because there are so many "rules" that dictate how we act in person-to-person interactions. Like how you're supposed to come off as somewhat nervous during job and college interviews. Or how girls are not supposed to come off as over eager. Do we fake confidence or are we so sure of ourselves yet feel the need to feign humility? Maybe we're all acting. Maybe we've gotten so used to playing the parts that we've internalized all of it. Maybe we're just waiting for relief in the form of the following words, "and...scene."

Exeunt.
   

hi. i just got a B on one of my English journals. while i'd relinquished the anal-retentive concern about grades, i haven't gotten a B on an assignment since sophomore year. and that's another thing, i'd say i'm a de facto/self-taught English major in the sense that i'm not a self-important de jure English major. so when i'd scribbled a journal assignment at work and subsequently had the paper graffiti'd with question marks, i didn't know what i did wrong. upon AA's inspection, she told me i had to dumb my paper down. because this is what happens when you're a de facto English major. you can use esoteric words and English professors feel the need to rear their elitist PhD-qualified authority over your usage of the word "palpable." it's the war of paper brains versus scattered brains. i don't like English classes because you end up containing language and have it judged by said self-important authorities.

and another thing. AA told me that the one word that would describe me would be "incorrigible." so it just so happens that i've been a loose cannon in this specific class, Literature and Culture for those of you who seem to retain interest in my pseudo-rant. when posed with the question of whether we have a liberal democracy, i unashamedly chuckled and blurted out 'no!' and when the whole class reared its head at my loaded and blasphemous 'no,' i justified my reflex with an entire diatribe about governmental surveillance, referencing the not-too-recent passing of warrantless wiretapping by the Congress. another knee-jerk retort was followed by the question of what the outcomes or contributions were upon the moment African Americans set foot on US soil. to which i replied, with a sugary and perky voice, 'institutionalized racism!' a lot of blurting and i come to class with a friend asking me, 'you're leading a discussion next week?' what? 'it's in the email.' i quickly scan the email and i'm to lead a discussion about fear as an instrument of control with Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. so this is what what being a sociology major has done to me - it's in my blood and i can't seem to ignore it. eh, i might as well embrace it.

so i had a slew of gender-conscious occurrences today. you should know that, while i don't label myself as a feminist - the reasons for which i will explain in a bit - i subscribe to the ideals and do the reading to boot. i say that i'm not a feminist because, well, personally, i'm not one for labels. and because, while i've read a ton of material on the theories and practicalities, i've still a lot to learn in order to do the label justice.

i remember having a mini high school reunion back in june with people whom i haven't seen in three or so years. and when they'd discovered that i was a feminist - or some rendition thereof - they had a shocked and dismayed look on their faces. "you're a feminist...really? why?" mind you, this was a girl with whom i had nothing in common and truth be told, i wasn't going to bother exhausting myself by getting her to open her eyes a bit. do you ever feel that you can easily gauge and isolate those to whom you can try talking, but to no avail?

i don't like that there is still a stigma when it comes to feminism. better yet, i don't like that there are so many different "types" of feminists. i applaud individuality, but when you're wearing a short dress and sitting at a cafe in the lower east side and judged by the lesbian feminist behind the counter and are probably sized up as completely non-feminist, doesn't that defeat the purpose? and i don't get the whole thing with how some will refuse to have men open doors for them.

anywho, back to today. i sat at a roundtable-type discussion/luncheon at the law school cafeteria. i honestly don't know why i attend these. several faculty members and self-important undergrads attended. AA and i attended as well. it was an hour and a half of people getting self-gratification from listening to their own voices. "i think capitalism is bad and that marketing pressures us to buy certain attire to conform to a certain ideal." duh! "i think males need to be educated such that dressing provocatively isn't an invitation to be sexually assaulted" no shit! "i think airlines have undertaken the task as social regulators." where have you been? and it was disappointing - listening to these professors talk about the most basic basic, sociology 101 in high school basic, things. so this carried on for an hour and a half - i remained silent and annoyed - until it was time to go. no resolution, no organization, no real deep probing. typical.

back at work, we get a huge delivery of boxes waiting to be unloaded and set up in the office. some guys start loading the hand truck and i contribute how i can. eighteen large-ass boxes are to be moved across campus to another office. AA and i move 7 on the handtruck and unload them. two guys follow shortly with the rest loaded up and they leave for class and i back to work. pretty soon, we're told that the previously mentioned office doesn't want the boxes and that we have to bring them back to our office. there are no boys around and the counselor tells me and SE that we'd have to take care of it. shit.

so the three of us girls trek over with two dolleys to pick up the boxes of student dossiers, still uncertain as to how this was going to happen. as soon as we got there and tried moving a box or so, we're showered with warnings and are berated for trying to move the boxes by two older office personnel. the manager makes three or so angry phone calls deriding our superiors for sending two "itty-bitty" girls to transport eighteen heavy boxes across campus. the secretary literally lifts her shirt and showed us a scar she had from a hernia operation. "do you girls seriously want this? a plastic patch inside your stomach and an ugly scar? well then i don't think you should try lifting those boxes." and we honestly must've pulled something while lifting the boxes because i'm pretty sore now. finally reinforcement comes - one of the boys in our office. he moved four boxes back on the vertical hand truck and OS and i moved seven on the horizontal one, still not an easy task.

so my point is this: i'm not sure whether i should be offended or somewhat relieved that we were told not to do heavy-lifting. because i am "itty-bitty" in stature, and so is OS. and was the whole exhibition of a hernia scar really necessary? i've noticed a lot recently of how people react around me when i am lifting what appears to be and is heavy. during the summer i was at Trader Joe's and had a cold, which made me look like death, i'm sure. and as i'm carrying a basket full of groceries and what have you, the man who directs the line of customers, instead of telling me which register to go to, literally took the basket out of my hands and escorted it to the next available register. of course i thanked him. whenever AA or my sister sees me carrying something heavy, they either berate me for holding something heavy and take it out of my hands or express their concern that it's too much for me. i'm not a stick-skinny and frail Asian girl, mind you. so when i appeared annoyed and asked AA, 'why is it that everyone - you, my parents, my sister - think i'll fall apart if i carry something heavy? i'm not that weak!' AA responded that it wasn't because they thought i was weak, it was because they love me. touching.

but back to my point, again. the teacher and i had discussed this, eons ago. he declared his sentiments that females were the "fairer sex" - he didn't necessarily mean better, but fairer. that he felt it criminal to see a woman carrying something large or heavy without in the very least offering her assistance. because there are physical limits as to how much a woman can sustain and endure. and i'm in agreement with this. but i also feel that too many people exploit this and that it's so convenient to pull that line.

and lastly, i carry my own weight, but if i'm visibly struggling to move boxes on a handtruck through campus, you'd better be damn sure i'll be pissed if no one so much as offers assistance. and fortunately someone did. :)

... said AA. had i not been to Canada for the mere three days this past summer, i would've vehemently rejected her announcement.

in one of Patrick's older blog entries, he'd decried the fact that many Americans refer to America as "the best." considering the volume of grievances and embarrassments that we've come to claim ownership of, it's at no fault of his or many others' own to share the discrepant opinion.

however, i won't go so far as to say that the U.S. is completely at the opposite end of the spectrum. i do think that we are *fortunate* to still have some liberties, few as they may seem. women by and large are not forced to wear burqas, have female circumcisions, and we don't involuntarily forfeit our very lives when our husbands die by burning at the pyres. that said, it's still plausible to say that we feel this, the claustrophobia, that the walls are closing in on our liberties.

i didn't know how advantaged i was and am as a native born citizen here until i'd come to bear witness to the hardships entailed by those with whom i'm either close friends or coworkers who are international students. and it's frustrating, to watch people with so much potential to contribute to our morally deficient society struggle to support themselves, to even make sure they'll have enough to feed themselves. to know that short of direct aid in any form, there is little means of helping them. to know that britney spears is a millionaire, a far cry from what a "role model" is, and the best face the prospect of being excessed out.

i was reading an article in New York Magazine that discussed the uprise of deliverymen in various restaurants in Manhattan. that, after working for a paltry $1.75 an hour, biking through inhumane conditions (including the prospects of being mugged), six-day weeks, abusive employers, being fired or quitting is not an option. and it's unfortunate, knowing that the "American Dream" is a fallacy. that it's laced with a labyrinth of red tape and myriad transgressions and stipulations only to find resolution in a studio apartment, living paycheck by paycheck. i've known too many people (including some in my extended family) who, after living here for over a decade, waited an equally long time for their visas to be eligible, question why they'd left in the first place.

because times have changed, and they have. the teacher said that if there was one thing he was thankful for with Reagan was his foreign policy. i'd have to include my parents under this umbrella as well. but while the "American Dream" - working your way up and establishing a comfortable life with the nuclear family in tact - was still existent about 20 or so years ago, it's a wholly different story now. de-industrialization, globalization, privatization, changes in policy and taxation only serve to make the gap between the rich and the poor wider, send jobs overseas leaving many here displaced and with shitty jobs and prospects, etc.

and the institutionalized racism, hypocrisy, lies and whatnot don't help the situation either. i really think that being a sociology major at times only serves to provoke the thought of leaving this place. but that would be completely against the point, the point of social change and social movements.

forty or so years ago, hitchhiking across the country wasn't something that was completely irrational and deathwish-motivated. student activism was the stuff we'd read about with smiles on our faces. just a few weeks ago, i'd read an article in the Times about Hilary Clinton as a college student and how much she'd done and accomplished. we don't have any of that here. here, on this very campus, our "activism" or our vision of such is curtailed to the point of nothingness. it's easy to say 'let's start a revolution or organize a protest.' it's not easy to get the muscle when 70% of those you need are working because they need to, oh, survive.

but getting back to canada. i wouldn't say that i'm totally entertaining the fact of ever living there as an adult, but i did like it when i'd stayed in Quebec. it didn't hurt that i speak enough French to get by, but there's a lack of neurosis that's characteristic of New York. it's quaint, beautiful in ways, and yeah, there's the universal healthcare that's a bonus.

my classes have been OK thus far. yeah, i'm learning a lot - too much, if i were to venture an approximation. too much in the sense that the information becomes heavy such that i just get tired of hearing the dead horse being beaten. we live in an unjust society, racism and corruption has always existed in this history of ours, so and so said this or that and it was politically incorrect, i'll be of the most educated generation but most underpaid, we need to implement change, this can only be achieved with social movement. pretty much the same bass line that's been drilled into my ears since i declared my major. but i realize, much to my dismay, that my brain has been on autopilot. nothing is taking much effort thus far. i'm not being challenged anymore. perhaps it's because it feels like nothing is getting done, and nothing is. we can spend twenty years writing books and educating others but do you ever feel like throwing in the towel?

i'm sure my absence warrants an explanation. needless to say, i was in Quebec for the past few days with my family. more on that in a subsequent entry, i'm sure.

i've been giving this a lot of thought. this being my future and what it entails. this summer wasn't a sham nor was it peppered with accomplishments with which i'd use to think and push potentiality into actuality. i didn't take the GRE like i'd planned, take the NYSTCE (though i should take it later because i'd have to renew it every three years anyway), i didn't compile a list/itinerary or what have you for my honor society, i didn't read for my stats, hell, i haven't really read much to begin with. and as much as i'd bemoaned the lack of discipline that seemed to perpetually classify my summer, my moving back to school and attending classes is met with my ambivalence.

my awareness and keen eye for politics/sociology seems to be effortlessly evaporating before my eyes. even RG conclusively sympathized upon my admission that i wasn't into the whole sociology thing anymore. and it's unfortunate, because we do need more politically/sociologically conscious people to color our pool or degenerates in this country of ours. but i suppose that's the 'thing' with sociology, the fever of it becomes so intense: you read, you learn, you never look at things/the world/people in the same light and you get excited and subscribe to subversive literature, attend the up and coming lecture, and only to realize that all you've been doing with a sociology degree is intellectually masturbating with it. that being politically correct 24/7 is so confining and taking a short albeit temporary departure is somewhat uplifting.

what do you do when you're unprepared for the future? i suppose this has always been the condition i've fallen victim to. well, not necessarily victim. i don't have a hefty savings account, though the money i've made since fourteen is exclusively untouchable until i'm older. i don't pick my clothing out the night before. i didn't know what major i wanted when i started undergrad and picked sociology because the classes looked interesting in the bulletin and i didn't want to take so many labs for psychology. i make life altering decisions in the middle of hot showers. i've spent an entire finals week, from sunday morning until thursday night, on nine hours of sleep. i read two books amounting to 427 pages, typed up the final paper comprising of 50% of my honors class grade in 20 hours. upon typing up the last few pages on Weber for another class, 3 hours before the final was to be submitted, i had a nervous breakdown because a Panic at the Disco! song was running through my head and i couldn't absorb my reading. regardless, i still got that 4.0. i need to stop procrastinating, and i have. but when you're uncertain about a life and career you've envisioned for the past three years, slowing down and processing this is imperative. but living in a city like New York, there is no slowing down. DM is already working in a job in her field, as is DC. and here i am, rubbing cocoa butter on my million mosquito bite scars from nights ago.

this entry's pretty much a mess of superfluous thoughts, i'm sure. but then again, so am i this week. let's hope that it's the weather.