Dr. Robert Bullard has been fighting alongside the citizens of various cities for their right to a clean environment. He positions himself as a dot-connector who utilizes the central theme of fairness, justice, and equity. He is a seeker of just equity. His fight began with the demand of his wife, Linda, in 1979 after she filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas and BFI, a national company seeking to dump waste in a Black community. Bean vs Southwestern Waste Management Corp. was the first lawsuit to challenge the notion of environmental justice using civil rights law. Bean found that while Blacks made up 25% of the population of Houston during the years prior to 1978, the communities in which they resided became the ‘new residences’ of 82% of the city’s waste. Environmental justice (EJ) reveals the disparate impact of the embedded disrespect White supremacy has for marginalized communities, specifically poor communities of color in the South. It exposes the interdependent relationship among pollution, corruption, and racism. oil containing PCBs dumping travesty in Warren County, North Carolina in 1982, initiated the launch of EJ on the national level. Young Black activists put their lives on the line in protests. In 1983 a study found that 75% of waste sites were in Black communities in seven (7) of eight (8) Southern states. Bullard advocates for community-based participatory research projects.
Using a variety of maps and graphs, Bullard located the roots of environmental injustice to the division of the country during enslavement. The data shows that racism can make people sick. “Your zip code is the most powerful predictor of health and well-being.” A 1994 Clinton executive order reinforced Title IX of the Civil Rights Act and by 1999, the Institute of Medicine found that persons of color were more impacted by pollution and contract more diseases than affluent White communities. The highest concentration of environmental injustices occurs in Southern Black communities, including North Birmingham and Emelle, Alabama. Emelle houses the largest chemical waste management site in the nation. This site receives waste from the lower 48 states and 12 international countries; however, this tiny town is in the heart of the Black Belt, 95% Black, and in a county that borders the AL/MS state line.
EJ is not simply about the release of pollutants into the atmosphere. It is also about the lack of accessibility in neighborhoods and the decreasing proximal distance between vehicles and pedestrians. Health connects to everything. We must redefine the environment, our understanding of it, and our relationship to it. Bullard argues that the environment, though it should be neutral and equally accessible for all, is not when the entitlement of equal protection is not applicable to some members of society. Health equity brings together all the segments which merge into intersections. EJ advocates and activists must call out the normalization of whitewashing in both the history and the present injustices plaguing marginalized communities. We need more equal partnership—with universities and communities, and among the marginalized. Marginalized communities must have a reclamation of space—free from the influence and presence of Whites—for the unshackling of all the ‘isms’ from their narratives to unify their voices and their messages. Whites must make room for, stand aside, and equally distribute finances and resources when confronted with the reality of EJ like Flint and the southern Black Belt. The erasure of history makes people ignorant but the failure to invite and listen to the voices of those most affected by EJ continues the perpetuation of the injustices.
Bullard concludes that justice has not been served in places like Flint because not only does the issue remain, the families are still poisoned, and the government officials have not received justice. For 40 years, Bullard has steadfastly shown that a commitment to EJ specifically, and justice broadly, is lifelong and intergenerational. It also requires an alliance with Whites longing to learn and build relationships. The process of mutual learning, regardless of race or age, must be met with clear expectations and a desire to focus on that which may seem ‘unsexy and unattractive’ because that is where the real need for attention lies. Community health is not just about the treatment of the sick; it is the exacting of liberty and justice for all.
Good food. Source: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons
What is comfort food?
As the name suggests, comfort food is any type of food that brings the individual more contentment. They tend to be associated with nostalgia or something that is familiar that brings you comfort. This can occur with other things such as wearing your favorite pants, watching your favorite movie, or reading your favorite book. Engaging in an activity that you have good connotations with can reduce the negativity surrounding change. There is a level of stability that comes with familiar items. Regardless of what chaos happens in everyday life, you can always have that favorite item.
Comfort food varies depending on the person and their preferences. A survey conducted by Brian Wansink and Cynthia Sangerman asked a population of 1,000 North Americans to choose their favorite comfort food. Generally speaking, the top choices included chips, ice cream, cookies, pizza, pasta, and burgers. However, when looking into gender, the results diverged. Females tended to pick ice cream, chocolate, and cookies. While males would pick ice cream, soup, pizza, and pasta.
Another interesting difference is that women tend to look to comfort food when they are feeling lonely or sad, whereas men seek comfort food as a reward. Women associate comfort food with negative emotions, while men associate it with positive emotions. A study conducted by McGill University found that individuals who have positive emotions in regards to comfort food were more likely to pick healthier options. A common misconception is that comfort foods are unhealthy, but that is not always the case. Instead, comfort food is solely based on what people find comforting.
Is there a benefit to comfort food?
A 2015 study at Sewanee found that comfort food was associated with close relationships. It reminds of us our “social ties” and helps us feel less lonely when we feel isolated. This happens when an individual connects a food item with a social gathering, their family, or people taking care of them. There is a strong association between scents and memories due to the olfactory bulb, which is a part of the limbic system that deals with memory and emotional experience. Thus, nostalgia can evoke a sense of belonging.
Foods that are pleasant to taste can cause opiates to be released. Similarly, when eating sweet, high-calorie foods, opiates and serotonin are released. This can cause a mood elevation or prevent one’s mood from declining. Another example is when you drink black tea, it decreases the amount of cortisol which can reduce stress. A study conducted at the University of Minnesota had college students watch sad movie clips and then eat their favorite comfort food or just food they enjoyed. The results showed that regardless of what people had eaten, their mood improved. This study was repeated, but instead of having the second group eat something they enjoy, they did not eat anything; the results were the same. However, there were some limitations to this study. They only looked at people who watched sad movie clips, when in reality other things can cause a negative mood. Furthermore, researchers did not look at how people eat comfort foods, meaning that going to get the comfort food could have an effect. Either way, while we are not definitively sure of the psychological effects, there is a link between food and memory.
Influence of Comfort Food
Everyone needs to eat; it is a biological necessity. However, what people eat varies depending on certain aspects such as one’s location, culture, and religion. For example, African and Afro Caribbean groups usually eat more meats, whet, and rice, whereas eastern groups will consume more herbs and spices. Something as simple as smelling a freshly baked apple pie or turmeric and onions can cause you to reminisce about a certain memory surrounding the food. Food is an important part of culture. Traditional foods are passed down from generation to generation. Immigrants bring the food they eat with them wherever they go. The food becomes a symbol of their culture amidst the unfamiliarity of their new place. Ultimately, everyone has a right to their culture and their food.
People eating. Source: Flickr, Creative Commons
When people hear the term comfort food, their mind goes to unhealthy food that you eat when stressed or upset. An article by Triosi and Wright pointed out that people either define comfort food as lacking in nutritional value or a food that has meaning, whether it is traditional, familiar, or cultural. They too found that there is a tie between relationships and belongingness in regards to comfort food. The need to belong is so strong that people have associated foods as reminders of others, not necessarily on their mood. Furthermore, their findings also shed light on how comfort food can range in flavor and taste. Thus, the importance is based on what people perceive the food as, not what the food actually is. An interesting finding was that comfort food can reduce loneliness but for those who are securely attached, not for those who are insecurely attached. Additionally, people who are secure tend to eat more comfort food overall especially when feeling lonely.
Importance of Comfort Food
Comfort food isn’t just about eating something because you enjoy it. Instead, it is intertwined with other aspects of one’s life through emotions, memory, and culture. “Food can be nostalgic and provide important connections to our family or our nation.” When you move to a new country, everything is unfamiliar; however, through food have a way to preserve your culture and it can help provide a sense of familiarity. Food and culture “makes up an important part of who we are, how we connect, what we value, and how we express ourselves as human beings.
The ability to be rewarded for making meaningful contributions to society and to choose our own private residence are two facets of life many of us often take for granted. However, many individuals with a form of disability often encounter barriers during their journey locating work and housing. These barriers can arise from social isolation, discriminatory and / or inadequate governmental policies, economic hardship, or simply a lack of awareness of resources designed to aid persons with disabilities to find employment and housing. These material and immaterial barriers fall under the broad umbrella ofableism, defined here as “the intentional or unintentional discrimination or oppression of individuals with disabilities”. The following post explores four case studies surrounding the themes of housing and employment and how various cultures have either failed to address these needs or offered innovative solutions to persons with disabilities. Finally, for the purpose of this blog,disability is defined, in accordance with the Washington Group (2018), as “problems, such as impairment, activity limitation or participation restrictions that include the negative aspects of functioning” in the following six domains: (a) walking; (b) seeing; (c) hearing; (d) cognition; (e) self-care; and (f) communication. This blog post offers an anthropologically-informed context for to upcoming panel ‘Disability Rights, Employment, and Housing in a Cross-Cultural Perspective’at the Institute for Human Right’s Symposium on Disability Rights.
Disability Rights & Employment: South Africa
South Africa’s government of apartheid came to power in 1948 and institutionalized a cultural and political zeitgeist of xenophobia, discrimination, and violence towards the Other. Throughout apartheid’s hold on South Africa, systems of cultural and structural violence were erected both within social life and in bureaucratic policy. Apartheid is most infamous for its impact on racially-motivated violence; however, other forms of discrimination were enabled by apartheid policy and philosophy as well. Engelbrecht (2006) notes that education systems institutionalized apartheid policies in curricula development and inclusivity within schools. This specifically barred children with disabilities from actively participating in the education system, from primary through tertiary levels. Englebrecht (2006) contends children with disabilities were actively excluded from South African governmentally-controlled education systems. This means children with disabilities during the apartheid regime did not receive adequate preparation for entering into the workforce, thus placing these individuals at a low ‘tract’ and preventing them from seeking or acquiring meaningful employment. Englebrecht (2006) emphasizes that discriminatory and / or prejudicial national policies focused on one marginalized population (e.g. apartheid) often seep into the experiences of other marginalized populations as well. In short, government-sanctioned racist policies immobilized the disability community. To repress one group is to repress all groups.
The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) was inaugurated in October of 1995, as mandated by the South African Constitution’s Human Rights Commission of 1994. The SAHRC is charged with monitoring, preventing violations of, and educating the public about human rights within the South African context. A specific function of the SAHRC is to examine how apartheid-era policies impacted South African civil society and how to eliminate the vestiges of structural violence still propagated by the former apartheid regime. The SAHRC provides further evidence supporting Engelbrecht’s (2006) theory that the repression of children with disabilities would negatively impact South African workforce. The SAHRC (2017) summarizes trends of disability employment, demonstrating that workforce equity (equally considering and making efforts to hire marginalized populations, such as the disability community) is nowhere near the South African Department of Labor’s goal of 7% by the year 2030. In 2017, workplace equity was still under 2%, with 8 in 10 persons with disabilities unable to find employment (SAHRC, 2017). A variety of reasons are given for this abysmally low number, including: lack of reasonable accommodation, inequality and discrimination, and a persistent inability to obtain a quality education. The ghost of apartheid, it seems, haunts the disability community within South Africa, preventing a vast majority of persons with disabilities from obtaining education, training, and gainful employment.
“Dublin – The Big Snow of 2010 – Along the Liffey” by William Murphy, Creative Commons
Disability Rights & Employment: Ireland
In 2017, the British Conservative government announced plans to cut the Employment and Support Allowance for persons with disabilities who were deemed ‘capable of preparing to return to work’ by 30£ / week (~$40 / week). The British government implemented this policy as a ‘motivational tool’ for persons with disabilities and as an austerity measure, despite the fact that previous disability allowances (akin to welfare or social security measures in the United States) left 1/3 of allowance recipients struggling to afford food. However, the ministers of Ireland, taking cue from their outraged constituents, have chosen a different path to empower persons with disabilities to find employment. Instead of the ‘pull yourself up by the bootstraps’ strategy of British Conservative MPs, Irish Minister for Social Protection Regina Doherty and Minister of State for People with Disabilities Finian McGrath have chosen to listen to persons with disabilities themselves to assess the best way to promote gainful employment within the disability community. In response to a 2017 policy brief Make Work Pay, Doherty, McGrath, and other policy-makers are distributing questionnaires to adults with disabilities and parents of young children with disabilities to assess the employment needs of the disability community (Clougherty, 2017). This approach to governance, one defined by inclusivity and direct participation of the disability community, shows promise in exploring the complicated relationship between disability and employment.
Of particular importance in the employment-disability nexus is accounting for an individual’s preference for work and her or his form of disability. The Irish ministers understand that low-functioning persons with disabilities will, for the entirety of their life, be simply unable to work. These individuals require assistance from the government thereby ensuring these persons are included in society and are able to participate in decisions regarding their lives and livelihoods. On the other hand, some individuals are temporarily disabled and do not require the same social security from governments. By asking for input from persons with disabilities themselves, the Irish policy-makers are better equipped to make educated, inclusive, and effective policies and programs aimed at insuring equitable and equal employment within the disability community.
“Al-Saraya al-Hamra Fortress, Tripoli” by David Stanley, Creative Commons
Disability Rights & Housing: Libya
The State of Libya, located at the Northern-most tip of Africa and bordered by the Mediterranean Sea, is in the midst of rebuilding civil society following the catastrophic Libyan Civil War of 2011. For over forty years, Muammar Gaddafi ruled over Libya, attempting to introduce a socialist regime and command economy to the Libyan State. During his reign, Gaddafi allegedly sought to implement a political philosophy of jamahiriya(جماهيرية), meaning “state of the masses” in Arabic – akin to ‘direct democracy’. Through this system, Gaddafi created the national General People’s Congress, whose directives (including any form of a Libyan Constitution) could be superseded by the Basic People’s Congress, municipally-led executive and legislative bodies. Hypothetically, this system placed most political power at the local level; however, Gaddafi’s actual dictatorial rule inverted the political equation. In the past half century, this political system (again, on paper) aimed to enshrine the rights of persons with disabilities through the passage of the 1981 “Law on Disabled People”, arranging for “government provision of housing, home care, education, prosthetic limbs and rehabilitation for people with disability in Libya” (Hamed el-Sahly & Cusick, 2016, p. 12). In political practice, Libyan persons with disabilities suffered major human rights violations, including lack of housing and home care, due to insufficient mechanisms of care and cultural taboos.
Although political and economic recovery may well be on the horizon for post-conflict Libya, cultural barriers prevent many Libyans with disabilities from securing independent and safe housing. In a comparative study, many Libyans express unfavorable attitudes towards persons with disabilities along three dimensions: (1) lower ratings of willingness to empower the disability community; (2) higher ratings of exclusion; and (3) lower ratings of similarity between disabled and non-disabled people (Benomir, Nicholson & Beail, 2016). Most pertinent to issues related to housing, Libyan participants scored high on the ‘need to shelter’ persons with disabilities – meaning intentionally secluding these individuals from broader society for fear of communal judgement and the social stigma attached to disability. Furthermore, efforts to facilitate the transition from being ‘sheltered’ (living with a family member) to an autonomous home life is seen as a problem ‘for and by’ the disability community – i.e., it is the responsibility of the disability community alone to solve social issues related to their situation in life (Cusick & Hamed el-Sahly, 2018). This demonstrates that governmental policies intending to enshrine disability rights are insufficient – societies themselves must be willing to tackle these issues head on.
“Grand Canyon Hopi House 0073” by Grand Canyon National Park, Creative Commons
Disability Rights & Housing: Native Americans
Persons with disabilities with another form of marginalized identity (e.g. members of an indigenous group) are placed at a heightened risk for social isolation / exclusion, for physical and mental health concerns, and having disability-related needs go unmet (US Department of Health & Human Services, 2017). Within American Indian / Alaska Native (AIAN) communities, this translates specifically into housing issues, as AIAN reservations already suffer from a lack of resources and infrastructural investment to provide for non-disabled AIAN individuals (US Department of Health & Human Services, 2017). An estimated 21 – 69% of homes on reservations are overcrowded and have serious physical deficiencies compared with 5.9% of non-reservation US homes nationally (US National Council on Disability, 2003). To address these intersecting concerns, the AIAN community, in tandem with the US government, have prepared and started implementing policy prescriptions to provide affordable, safe, and dignified housing to AIAN with disabilities.
Of primary concern in planning homes for persons with disabilities is utilizing principles of universal design – “guidelines for housing construction that would create a livable, marketable environment for everyone regardless of ability, age, or size” (US National Council on Disability, 2003, p. 94). Currently, the American Indian Disability Technical Assistance Center provides assessments of universal design within reservations and makes design prescriptions if the home in question is not fully accessible. Implementation of these prescriptions may fall to the American Indian Disability Legislation Project (AIDLP), a culturally-informed taskforce mandated to draft and pass legislation standardizing disability-related care (including autonomous and accessible housing) on Indian reservations (US Department of Health & Human Services, 2017). The AIDLP, in addition to ensuring reservations adhere to the Americans with Disabilities Act, acts as a cultural liaison between the disability community and AIAN community to ensure disability concerns are handled in a culturally-appropriate manner. Finally, the AIDLP and other AIAN-affiliated, disability-related advocacy groups ground their research and implementation efforts by tackling both material (e.g. physical accessibility) and immaterial (e.g. cultural stigma) barriers (US Department of Health & Human Services, 2017).
Towards a Global Culture of Disability Empowerment
The preceding case studies illustrate that disability rights, especially related to employment and housing, are high complicated issues. Historical events, such as apartheid and civil war, interact with governmental policies, such as austerity measures and indigenous sovereignty. Underlying each of these examples is the ‘culture’ surrounding disability – how peoples across the world value or stigmatize the experiences and perspectives of the disability community. In some cases, such as South Africa, systems of discrimination have erected structural barriers holding back people with disabilities, even though disability-related stigma may have lost its potency. In other cases, such as American Indian / Alaska Native communities, an additional marginalized identity may facilitate an even greater emphasis on seeking justice and equity for persons with disabilities. As local, national, and global disability movements aim to eliminate social exclusion and promote equality in life and livelihood, the myriad cultures of disability must be unpacked and explained. This post argues that moving towards a global cultural of disability empowerment is indeed possible. Once this culture of empowerment has been adopted, disability-related concerns, such as employment and housing, will be addressed and rectified across the globe.
Keep up with the latest announcements related to the upcoming Symposium on Disability Rights by following the IHR on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And don’t forget to tag your Symposium-related posts with our event hashtag: #DisabilityRightsBHM
References
Benomis, A. M., Nicolson, R. I. & Beail, N. (2016). Attitudes towards people with intellectual disability in the UK and Libya: A cross-cultural comparison. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 2016, 1-9.
Clougherty, T. (2017). Make Work Pay: A New Agenda for Fairer Taxes. Cork, Ireland: Center for Policy Studies.
Cusick, A. & Hamed el-Sahly, R. M. (2018). People with disability are a medicalized minority: Findings of a scoping review. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 20(1), 182-196.
Engelbrecht, P. (2006). The implementation of inclusive education in South Africa after ten years of democracy. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 21(3), 253-264.
Hamed el-Sahly, R. M. & Cusick, A. (2016). Rehabilitation services in Benghazi, Libya: An organizational case study. Middle East Journal of Family Medicine, 14(9), 11-18.
South African Human Rights Commission (2017). Research Brief of Disability and Equality in South Africa. Braamfontein, South Africa: South African Human Rights Commission.
US Department of Health & Human Services (2017). Emerging LTSS Issues in Indian Country: Disability and Housing. Spokane, WA: Kauffman & Associates, Incorporated.
US National Council on Disability (2003). Understanding Disabilities in American Indian & Alaska Native Communities. Washington, DC: National Council on Disability.
The shoemaker’s children always go barefoot. Having an issue with one of your shoes? No problem, the old cobbler on the sidewalk corner can help you. There are less and less street workers like that now in China, but is some places of cities, we can easily found plenty of them. They are mainly old people, who I guess has always been doing this, in this place, from winter to summer, even when it is raining. The price is still attractive for clients who prefer deal in the street rather than in shops… but for how long. This is China. Source: Gauthier DELECROIX, Creative Commons
China’s newfound economic prowess since the reform and opening has been shouldered by its massive population of migrant laborers. A significant surplus of unskilled workers and a lax regulatory environment has given Chinese factories, like those in many developing countries, a competitive edge over their counterparts in the Global North. In this troubling “race to the bottom,” a great number of Chinese factories overwork and underpay their rank-and-file employees, at times subjecting them to sordid and dangerous conditions. Although brands such as Nike, Walmart and Apple have been pressured by the international media and human rights organizations to take responsibility for labor rights within their supply chains, it is difficult to separate the profits of these corporations from their habitual exploitation of the weak human rights standards and ineffective enforcement of regulations in countries like China.
For most of China’s 131 million migrant workers, leaving the village and traveling to the city to find gainful employment is the greatest opportunity as well as the most harrowing journey of their lives. The freedom and ability to leave their rural hometown are points of pride for migrant workers, yet the enormous surplus of labor in the urban areas has led to fierce competition in the market, forcing them to accept low wages, no benefits, poor working conditions, strict work regimes, and little job security. In the documentary China Blue, we see employees of the blue jean factory worked for pennies an hour, less than the minimum wage, and are often forced to work overtime – even overnight – to meet shipping deadlines. Some are so exhausted by continuous hours of labor that they fall asleep at their workstations, risking reprimand by their supervisors. Factory workers often do not get paid on time and new workers lose their first month’s paycheck as a “deposit,” a sum of money they never receive if they choose to quit. Furthermore, migrant workers have no access to healthcare or education in the city as a result of the discriminatory hukou system that binds them legally to their rural hometowns. China has a comprehensive set of labor laws including minimum wage, but local and provincial officials rarely enforce them in order to attract foreign businesses and boost their regions’ economic growth. As a result, migrant workers are exploited on dual levels, by the factories that employ them and the state that fails to protect them.
Most migrant workers do not understand their legal rights; they have no organized way to defend them. Workers have some inkling of their rights when it is most obvious. However, they lack knowledge of the comprehensive but unenforced regulations protecting them. In China Blue, the workers at the blue jean factory held a haphazard strike after their pay had been delayed for three months. There have also been some success stories of migrant workers taking legal actions against their employers. Lawyers like Zhou Litai have made triumphant careers from helping injured workers litigate with their employers for rightful compensation. Yet a string of individual cases won by workers has not changed the basic conditions of factories. Because of an authoritarian government that fears the rise of civil society, the Chinese government has not allowed independent labor unions to form in China. In developed countries, these types of organizations undergirded the labor rights movement during the industrialization process. They educated workers, negotiated with factory owners on their behalf, and organized strikes when necessary. If Chinese workers are not empowered to speak up for themselves, then who has the luxury to speak for them?
One might argue that Western consumers have the luxury to speak up for these exploited workers by demanding corporations to “clean up” their supply chains. The anti-sweatshop movement has gained great momentum in the past two decades. Due to negative media attention and pressure from NGOs, many multinational corporations that source overseas have devoted significant resources and efforts to audit the factories in their supply chains, even establishing social compliance divisions solely dedicated to this goal. Brands such as Nike at first defended the conditions in its Indonesian factories, contending that their corporation has created thousands of jobs for people who lack better opportunities. Philip Knight, the founder of Nike, pointed out: “People argued that we were taking advantage of the poor Japanese workers 20 years ago. Now Japan makes no Nikes and imports $100 million of them.” Nevertheless, Nike soon followed cues from other corporations and drafted a code of conduct for its factories.
Happy Farmer. Farmer after working in the morning – getting ready to deliver vegetables to town for lunch. Jiashan, China Source: DaiLuo, Creative Commons.
The global movement for labor rights has brought international attention to the plight of workers in developing countries and put the issue on the table for multinational corporations. However, there is a serious inherent problem in letting corporations police themselves: a misalignment of incentives. The primary aims of private corporations are to make profits, satisfy customers, and reward shareholders. They accomplish these goals by constantly trying to improve cost efficiency, which is what attracts them to developing world factories. Apple, for example, produces its products in China because of the huge economies of scales that can be achieved there as opposed to the United States. The speed and flexibility of the Chinese manufacturing sector has drawn in companies like Apple, but it comes at the price of poorer labor conditions. Cost efficiency puts the corporations’ incentives in misalignment with social compliance divisions. Because social compliance divisions do not usually cooperate with buying departments, multinational corporations are essentially asking factories to improve the conditions for their workers while still demanding the same low prices. This disjunction has led to massive falsification of records by factory owners, undermining the integrity of the audit process. The audit profession itself is also plagued with human capital problems and instances of bribery. Corporations, in turn, have little incentive to investigate fraud so long as they can present a picture of compliance to concerned consumers. They can essentially pay lip service to the human rights movement by going along with the records presented to them. In the case of mass falsification, concerned consumers cannot even be certain that a brand which claims to buy from only factories with good labor conditions is, in fact, doing so.
Instead of simply paying attention to better audits of factories from corporations, consumers who are concerned about the labor conditions in China should also demand “responsible prices” at the manufacturing level. Currently, the prices that brands pay to factory owners in China are so low that they face the dilemma of improving labor conditions and losing business or falsifying records to comply with labor standards. Timberland, for example, will pay only $20 per shoe that it buys from a manufacturer, while selling it to the retailer for $50, which then sells it to consumers for $100. In the $80 of revenue gained after the product has been purchased from the manufacturer, there must be some room to offer the manufacturer a better price without passing on the cost to consumers. Consumer groups should scrutinize the profit structure of brands and retailers and buy goods that pay manufacturers better, so that manufacturers can pass on the generosity to their workers. This requires the buying department and the social compliance division to work together to establish an agreeable price for products that takes into account favorable labor conditions. This doesn’t necessarily have to come with a loss of profits for the brands and retailers. Favorable corporations will gain the loyalty and goodwill of a growing number of consumers who are concerned about emerging market labor conditions.
However, a consumer can only do so much on the demand side. Much of the work to be done on labor rights must come from the workers themselves. NGOs working in this field must continue educating workers on labor rights, encouraging them to organize, and advocating for the establishment of true, independent labor unions. China’s official labor union, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), functions more as a peacekeeping organ between workers and management rather than a labor union truly representing the interests of workers. Although the ACFTU has considerable political clout at the national level and lobbies for labor protection laws, its chapters at various factories rarely make demands on behalf of workers. ACFTU union leaders are generally chosen by the factory management and remain beholden to the management. Chinese workers need unions with democratically elected leaders who will truly represent their interests rather than serving as a “bridge” between workers and the management. Without autonomous labor unions representing them, workers cannot bargain collectively for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. Their rights enshrined by Chinese law will go unheeded.
From one perspective, multinational corporations that choose to manufacture their products in China are giving thousands of Chinese workers opportunities they would never have had in the countryside. Although migrant workers often face laborious conditions in factories, they are earning far more than their rural counterparts and gaining more consumption power. As China becomes wealthier as a result of the economic growth driven by the export-oriented manufacturing sector, workers will naturally begin to demand more rights and better living standards. This process has taken place during the industrialization process in many former developing countries. In the meantime, however, multinational corporations are keen to exploit – for as long as they can – an inherently broken legal system and a profoundly undemocratic culture that has relegated millions of Chinese migrant workers to second-class citizenry. When China introduced in law in 2006 to give labor unions more concrete power, multinational corporations were the first to protest by implying they would move their factories elsewhere. Rather than relying on a social compliance scheme that often tolerates the falsification of records during audits, consumers should also urge corporations to offer responsible prices for manufacturers so that they can give workers better treatment without losing business. Most importantly, the Chinese and international human rights movement must continue their efforts to educate workers on labor rights and promote a political environment that will allow the formation of independent labor unions.
Dianna Bai is a Birmingham-based writer who currently writes for AL.com. Her writing has been featured on Forbes, TechCrunch, and Medium. You can find her portfolio here.
Beautiful woman. Source: Henry Söderlund, Creative Commons
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in three women and one in six men have experienced sexual violence . The term sexual assault refers to “any type of sexual activity or contact that happens without your consent.” Though, the most obvious examples of sexual assault are physical, such as rape and unwanted touching, it can also be found in verbal and visual forms, such as sexual harassment or exposing oneself.
Sexual assault is a particularly significant concern on colleges campuses. It is experienced by one in five college women, and the majority of survivors are women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four. For men between 18 and 24 years old, being a student increases the likelihood that they will be assaulted by 78% in comparison to those of the same age who are not students. Due to the breadth of its impact, sexual assault on college campuses is an issue that urgently needs to be addressed.
Intersectionality and Sexual Assault
When discussing this problem, it is important that we recognize that not all groups experience sexual assault at the same rates. The people who are most at risk are those from minority communities that typically have less social and political power than majority communities.
Title IX is part of the Education Amendments of 1972 and prohibits discrimination based on sex in federally funded schools. Colleges must have systems in place to deal with sexual assault, since it can have a serious impact on an individual’s educational experience. They should investigate every reported incident and make any necessary accommodations to make sure that the education of assault survivors is negatively impacted as little as is possible.
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has proposed some changes for exactly how colleges are to handle reports of sexual assault, but, at the moment, students still have the rights set forth by Title IX and the Clery Act, which include the Campus Sexual Assault Victim’s Bill of Rights. Under the Clery Act , survivors have “the right to receive written explanation of their rights and options,” and colleges must have “a policy on campus disciplinary proceedings” for sexual assault. In these proceedings, both the survivor and the accused have the rights to equal opportunity to have each other present as witnesses, the accompaniment of an advisor of their choosing, and “simultaneous written notification” of any updates.
If you have experienced sexual assault on a college campus, you can report it to your school, get to know your Title IX coordinator and school’s policies, and file a police report.
College student. Source: Yuya Tamai, Creative Commons
Rape Culture
Exacerbating the problem of sexual assault on college campuses is the prevalence of rape culture. Rape culture consists of the behaviors, language, and beliefs through which sexual violence is “normalized and excused.” This can range from victim blaming, to the use of phrases like “boys will be boys,” to sexual assault itself. This is especially impactful on the relationship between women/girls and sexual assault. Rape culture leads to people asking female sexual assault survivors questions about what they were wearing and whether or not they were drinking, as if those factors are the reasons why people are attacked. As girls grow up, they are taught what steps to take to help them stay safe. The responsibility to prevent rape and assault is primarily placed on the people at risk of experiencing these things rather than being focused on teaching people not to be perpetrators. Rape culture is a huge part of why many survivors do not report their assault . Among survivors on college campuses, more than 90% do not report.
Rape culture is also perpetuated by phenomena such as toxic masculinity, which emphasizes the gender expectation for men to be aggressive and dominant. Many people use this traditional view of what it means to be a man to minimize the significance of sexual assault to simply “men being men.” This idea, as well as rape culture as a whole, frames sexual assault as something that is inevitable or a normal part of life rather than a serious problem that needs to be stopped. This also leads to the assumption that men are always the perpetrators and survivors are always women, which is completely untrue. Men and non-binary individuals can be assault survivors. Women and non-binary individuals can be assaulters. People can be assaulted by someone of the same or a different gender. Sexual assault does not always fit the stereotypes we have been taught.
Safety Precautions
If you are one of the many people who worries about their safety and about assault on a regular basis, here are some things you can do that will hopefully help you feel a bit more comfortable. If you are not someone who feels the need to think about these kinds of things, this may be an opportunity to broaden your perspective and learn more about the things many of us have do to in order to feel even slightly safe.
Try to avoid walking out alone at night.
If you have to walk alone at night, consider calling someone and staying on the phone until you reach your destination.
Do your best to walk in and park your car in well-lit areas.
Carry pepper spray with you.
If you are out at night, try to make sure that someone knows where you are going to be and at what times.
Check the back seat of your car before getting in.
Make sure you have a reliable form of transportation if you are out at night.
Avoid jogging alone at night.
Always be aware of your surroundings, especially if you are alone.
Consider taking some classes in self-defense.
If you get a drink at a party or bar, watch them make the drink and do not leave it alone.
Consider downloading an app like Noonlight, which can make it easier to contact emergency services if you feel unsafe or if you are unsure if you should call 911.
Sexual Assault Is A Human Rights Issue
It is vital that throughout the conversation about sexual assault we recognize it is a human rights issue. It is an issue of equality for people of all genders, sexualities, races, and abilities. Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states, “higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit,” but many college classes do not end until it is already dark outside. Safety concerns prevent some people from taking these classes, while other people are able to take any of the available classes they want. According to Article 27 of the UDHR, “…everyone has the right to freely participate in the cultural life of the community,” but many cultural events, such as concerts and educational events, happen at night. If someone fears going out that late and/or has no safe mode of transportation, how can they enjoy this right? How can they use their right to freedom of expression if they are afraid (Article 19)? How can someone live in an environment that supports their mental health and wellbeing if they are afraid (Article 25)? How can they enjoy the equality that all people share if they are afraid?
Disclaimer: This blog post focuses primarily on women and girls who are victims of sexual assault and harassment, though the author acknowledges that both men and women are survivors.
Can You Hear Me Now? #MeToo. Source: Alec Perkins, Creative Commons
The nation was transfixed on September 27 when Dr. Christine Blasey Ford appeared in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify about her memories of sexual assault, she alleges, at the hands of Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh when they were both teenagers. Hailed as a “cultural moment” that is couched in the grander chorus of the #MeToo movement, Ford’s quiet, emotional, and powerful testimony serves as a reckoning for women who have suffered in silence for so many years. After Dr. Ford’s testimony, women and men across the country used the hashtag #IBelieveHer to show their support. Two sexual assault survivors confronted Senator Jeff Flake in an elevator on Capitol Hill, possibly the reason why he decided to call for an FBI investigation before the Senate vote on Judge Kavanaugh.
Whether or not Dr. Ford’s testimony changes the Senate vote, she will be a positive example for legions of women who have been afraid to tell their stories. The #MeToo movement is about women taking back their power. As the movement founder Tarana Burke said, “Everyday people…. are living in the aftermath of a trauma that tried, at the very worst, to take away their humanity. This movement at its core is about the restoration of that humanity… They have freed themselves from the burden that holding on to these traumas often creates and stepped into the power of release, the power of empathy and the power of truth.”
Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault
The prevalence of sexual assault and sexual harassment is staggering in the United States and worldwide.
Sexual assault is any sexual activity that the victim does not consent to, including rape and sexual coercion. It can happen through force or the threat of force or if the perpetrator gave the victim drugs or alcohol as part of the assault.
Sexual harassment is unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature in the workplace or other social situation.
Scores of men in power have recently been exposed for sexual assault and sexual harassment by the #MeToo movement. Sexual assault and sexual harassment are problems that penetrate every level of society and every industry: politics, business, the media, and academia among them. These are only the industries in which women have been most vocal as part of the #MeToo movement. Workers in low wage industries face the most exploitation and are less likely to go public with their stories. According to the National Women’s Law Center, sexual harassment is most severe in low wage industries, including the service industry. In the fast food industry, for example, around 40 percent of women have experienced unwanted sexual behaviors on the job and 42 percent of those women felt that they could voice a complaint for fear of losing their jobs. In the #MeToo era, men in high profile industries have been publicly exposed by the media. In the industries that do not dominate the imaginations of the public, employers are even less likely to take sexual harassment and sexual assault seriously because they do not fear a public relations crisis.
Sexual Assault
The National Crime Victimizations survey estimates that there were over 320,000 incidents of rape and sexual assault in the United States in 2016. Two-thirds of them will go unreported. It is a social phenomenon according to many scholars. The human rights organization, Stop Violence Against Women, puts it this way, “Social conditions, such as cultural norms, rules, and prevailing attitudes about sex, mold and structure the behavior of the rapists within the context of the broader social system, fostering rape-prone environments…”
Culture is pervasive and omnipresent, creating a powerful influence over the everyday behaviors of people. Gendered norms are ingrained ideas that help define the role of men and women in society and what is acceptable or not. Gender studies scholar Melissa Berger argues that despite being a highly developed country, “American culture and society is imbued with gendered norms relating to domination, over-sexualization, violation, and power and control over women and girls. In fact, violence against women is so pervasive that some scholars have argued that America has a culture of rape, domination, and victimization of women.”
Some of these attitudes include:
Men are dominant
Male are entitled to sex
Manhood is tied to sexual conquest
The woman’s body is a sexual object
Women should be pure
Even if a country denounces sexual violence against women on the surface, implicit biases may render such behavior acceptable. These prevailing attitudes, whether implicit or explicit, contribute to the continued oppression of women in American society. A Yale law professor pioneering research on the #MeToo movement emphasizes that sexual assault and harassment are typically manifestations of sexism rather than sexual desire. Some men attempt to prove their manhood or worth by denigrating women.
The controversy over sexual assault has left an indelible mark on college campuses in recent years. From student complaints filed at Columbia University for systematic mishandling of sexual assault allegations to the rape convictions of student athletes at Vanderbilt University, Baylor University and Stanford University in the past five years, universities have had to come to terms with their campus cultures. Twenty to twenty-five percent of college women have been victims of forced sex. A researcher who conducted surveys of college students over two decades found that between 16 to 20 percent of men said they would commit rape if they were certain to get away with it. That number rises to 36 to 44 percent if the question was reworded as “force a woman to have sex.” Many colleges are actively trying to change their culture as it relates to sexual violence, spearheading campus wide campaigns to educate students about sexuality, consent, and intervention.
New laws can affect the culture of sexual assault in a significant way, changing how university administrators respond to sexual assault and encourage or discourage victims from coming forward. Legally, it’s been a delicate balancing act between protecting the rights of victims and the accused. The Obama Administration required the lowest standard of proof, a “preponderance of evidence” in deciding whether a student is responsible for sexual assault. A “preponderance of evidence” means that universities must find the accused to have more than likely committed the crime. The Trump Administration’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has enacted new policies that require a higher standard of “clear and convincing evidence,” meaning that it is must be highly probable that the assault occurred. These new guidelines certainly send a signal that there will be less protection for students who report sexual assault. Critics of the Trump Administration argue that the new policy will discourage students from reporting sexual assaults and give universities the opportunity to drastically decrease its attention to sexual assault without retribution from the government or legal systems.
Sexual Harassment
Sexual harassment is not about sex but the abuse of power. The social psychologist Dacher Keltner writes in the Harvard Business Review that feeling powerful can lead to an increase of sexual harassment. “Powerful men, studies show, overestimate the sexual interest of others and erroneously believe that the women around them are more attracted to them than is actually the case. Powerful men also sexualize their work, looking for opportunities for sexual trysts and affairs, and along the way leer inappropriately, stand too close, and touch for too long on a daily basis, thus crossing the lines of decorum — and worse.” Institutions where systems of power are in place are fertile grounds from which abuses of power arise.
The EEOC reported in 2016 that approximately 1 in 4 women have been sexually harassed in the workplace. Think about the implications of that statistic. Everywhere, women (and men) are wearing the invisible scars of abuse whether in the workplace or school. The National Women’s Law Center estimates that 70 to 90 percent of these cases go unreported since victims do not want to derail their careers, cause themselves embarrassment, or believe that nothing will be done. The attitudes of powerful men and victimized women reveal that sexual harassment is clearly very much a cultural problem. We live in a culture that can denigrate the dignity of women at work and in school.
Source: GGAADD, Creative Commons
The consequences for women
The most distressing aspect of the widespread, societal problem of sexual assault and sexual harassment is the destructive effects it can have women’s physical and mental health in the long run. Aside from the physical pain and discomfort, victims of sexual assault frequently suffer from post-traumatic stress, depression, suicidal thoughts, and low self esteem, among other consequences. One important aspect of Dr. Ford’s testimony was how she described the impact it had on her life. A trained psychologist, she said the trauma caused by her sexual assault “derailed her life” for four or five years and affected her academic performance in the first two years of university. Decades later, she still needed to talk about the incident in therapy and suggested to her husband that they install a second front door — an escape route — for their home.
For women who have experienced sexual harassment on the job, it often means that their careers will suffer. It can lead to a loss of wages from taking leave for physical or psychological distress and sometimes voluntarily leaving the job for a better environment. One recent study showed that about 80% of women who have been harassed leave their jobs within two years. A recent case from the #MeToo movement, the case of Stanford political science professor Terry Karl, is an example. As an assistant professor at Harvard University in the 1980s, she had been sexually harassed by a senior faculty member who had the power to give her a promotion. Although she filed a formal complaint with the university, it was ultimately she who decided to leave Harvard while he stayed on as faculty and gained increasing renown.
#MeToo Around the World & the Inevitable Backlash
The United Nations estimates that 30 percent of all women worldwide have experienced physical or sexual violence from intimate partners or sexual violence by a non-partner at some point in their lives. The sheer number of women who have experienced sexual harassment across the globe is also astonishing. Here is only a sampling: 57% of women in Bangladesh, 79% of women in India, 99% of women in Egypt (from a survey carried out in seven regions), 40% of women in the U.K. have experienced harassment in public places.
Addressing a problem of global proportions, it’s no wonder the #MeToo movement has spread quickly to other countries. In the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, India, Africa, and the Middle East—creative variations of the #MeToo hashtag have caught on and in some cases caused the downfall of men in power such as British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon.
But the successes of #MeToo have been met with plenty of resistance, even giving birth to the hashtag #GoneTooFar. A Bucknell poll in 2018 revealed that Americans are deeply divided about the impact of the #MeToo movement, with 41 percent believing that it was “just about right” vs. 40 percent believing that it had “gone too far.” Many people believe that the #MeToo movement has gone too far in creating a culture where men are publicly shamed and presumed guilty until proven innocent. It can also create an environment where men are increasingly wary of women and more likely to exclude women from social and mentoring opportunities because they fear the consequences of sexual harassment accusations. We can hear echoes of this sentiment in one of the last lines of Brett Kavanaugh’s opening statement: “I ask you to judge me by the standard that you would want applied to your father, your husband, your brother or your son.”
From state capitols to the technology companies of Silicon Valley, men are becoming reluctant to meet behind closed doors with women and thinking of segregating themselves. The counter narrative was especially poignant in France, where the actress Catherine Deneuve published an open letter with over 100 other notable French women in the arts denouncing the #MeToo movement for infantilizing women and denying their sexual power. They argued that seduction is a sexual freedom and that women could discern between sexual aggression and an awkward pickup. Have we empowered women so much with the #MeToo movement that we are now persecuting men? Who is really the victim here and who should decide the fate of the men accused?
The moment of reckoning for Brett Kavanaugh and #MeToo
The question now becomes whether there has been real change in our culture. The current #MeToo narratives and counter narratives are reflected clearly in the partisan atmosphere that permeates American politics. Twenty-seven years ago, Anita Hill made her allegations about the sexual harassment she endured from then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in an eerily similar “moment.” In the end, he was confirmed in spite of her testimony. Will Judge Kavanaugh be confirmed for the Supreme Court? Will more women be inspired to speak up after hearing Dr. Ford’s testimony? Will a new generation of young men who have grown up watching the #MeToo movement unfold think differently about their relationship with women. Or will there be a “chilling effect” in offices, schools, and boardrooms across the country as men react defensively? Is this the “cultural moment” that women everywhere have been waiting for?
To learn more: Tarana Burke, founder of the #MeToo movement, will be speaking at UAB on Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2018 at the Alys Stephens Center.
Dianna Bai is a Birmingham-based writer who currently writes for AL.com. Her writing has been featured on Forbes, TechCrunch, and Medium. You can find her portfolio here.
Welcome to SUMMER 2018!! This is a repost from last Spring.
A Nice Place to Sit. Source: Richard Walker, Creative Commons.
With spring break and summer just ahead, did you know you have a right to leisure and rest? It is in part because of Eleanor Roosevelt and the 18 representatives chosen by the Economic and Social Council in 1948, tasked with drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), a document that would become a cornerstone of peace around the world. Article 24 of the UDHR pronounces, “everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.” Researchers, writers, and business insiders market the right to leisure and rest as work-life balance. Harvard Business Review has an entire section of its current and archive database dedicated to the subject.
What is the right to leisure? Leisure is a part of the second generationof human rights. Roosevelt ascribed each right as a component of the “inherent rights of all individuals, without which no one can live in dignity and freedom.” In other words, it is a basic human right. She notes that the UDHR carries moral weight but no legal weight, thus making it easier for violations to occur. Often, governments through repressive systems and structures are responsible for human rights violations; however, the violation of leisure is often self-imposed.
A 2014 Gallup poll revealed that 42% of the polled full-time employees work 47 hours a week while 40% work 40 hours, and 8% work less than 40 hours. Ran Zilcasuggests more people want community and relationship over a paycheck, but have not verbalized the desire for a job that will bring fulfillment. He concedes that unnamed values magnify discomfort and distress, clouding perspective. Age is also a factor in finding work/life balance. When all is said and done, work happiness depends on several factors, including having a life outside the office and possessing money to enjoy it.
The notion of “work/life balance” is recognized across the world as a difficult goal to attain because the lines between work and life are blurred. Paula Caproni, working wife and mother of two children under four, explains that achieving the Zen-like status of full balance is easier said than done, especially for the well-intentioned. Citing Martin and Knopoff, who assert, “it is not a stretch of the imagination to consider that a root of the work/life balance tension is that caretaking work in one’s own home—typically done by women—is undervalued and unpaid, and until this fundamental issue is resolved most other attempts that try to resolve work/life tensions are likely to be superficial at best”, Caproni hints that work/life balance is more about the flexible sharing of the work/life load, rather than the circular nature of devaluing the half often associated with women, prioritizing individualism over familial (or community) interaction, and misapplied excellence in the workplace. She acknowledges that the disconnection between the idea of work/life balance and the practical application may disappoint many who discover life values “do not fall into clean dichotomies that lend themselves to trade-offs or prioritization.” In other words, every attempt to compartmentalize one part of life from another will create frustration, disillusionment, and isolation since the ideal is unattainable. Caproni established rest amid the unpredictability of the ‘imbalance’ by embracing “tranquility over achievement, contribution over success, and choice over status”, creating an internal dialogue that helped to name essential values, changing both life and work accordingly.
Reading. Source: Marketa, Creative Commons.
David Maume states, “Research has looked at the symbolic meaning of time use and linked it to a person’s identity.” Men and women have different perspectives when approaching and participating in vacations. Gender roles plays a significant role in how often and if vacations happen in the lives of people. Generally, while on vacations with families, women are tasked with meeting the emotional and physical needs while men focus on work-related tasks. On one hand, women sacrifice their personal enjoyment for the sake of others, seeing vacation as an enjoyable ‘disruption of work’ that allows “work on daily family life and cement bonds between family members.” On the other, a man’s career and subsequent job concerns may lead to a limited presence or total absenteeism on vacations. He concludes that men, aware of misplaced values in the past, desire to spend more time with their children–making significant changes to create a more egalitarian home environment or staying home full-time while wives work outside the home. This decision is countercultural and sometimes detrimental to a career.
The acknowledgement of values should remain a priority of an employee, and at minimum, recognized by an employer. Sanghamitra Buddhapriya introduces three key concepts in her essay, “Balancing Work and Life: Implications for Business”: work-family, the guilt complex, and time sovereignty. She argues that work-life balance is not just a reduction in working hours. It is flexibility that allows for the removal of the guilt complex because the control of time has been entrusted to capable, motivated employees, seeking to dedicate themselves to work and family. First, work-family balance seeks out the space achieved when an employer sets, creates, and promotes an environment for an effective balance. The tension of work and family is complicated by typical business culture which emphasizes long hours means more devotion, scheduling conflicts and absenteeism are evidence of noncommitment, and time constraints implies time mismanagement or “role ambiguity”.
Second, the guilt complex magnifies the tension of work and family since domesticity is often attributed to women. Buddhapriya points out that within male dominated organizations and societies like India, women “face a dual burden” of having career aspirations and family goals. “Working women and their spouses continue to regard breadwinning as essentially a man’s job and home management as a woman’s job… women continue to bear the burden of household responsibilities regardless of their employment status.” Due to the weight of the burden, women, especially mothers, may be forced to ‘trade-down’ to part-time jobs, taking jobs for which they are overqualified, or make their career subordinate to that of their husband (Budig 2001, Correll 2007, Gash 2009).
Lastly, time sovereignty places responsibility to organizational commitment in the hands of the employee, citing an ability to manage life stressors and job stressors more effectively, improving work performance and satisfaction. Time sovereignty is not unaccounted time; it is a flexible work arrangement. Using Marriott International, Aetna, UPS, Hewlett-Packard as examples of companies utilizing time sovereignty, Buddhapriya reaffirms that the best employers have cultures and policies which promote a meaningful and supportive workplace, company productivity, movement towards gender equality, and organizational mobility and retention.
Leisure isdefinedas free time. It is an opportunity afforded by free time to do something that renews, refreshes, and destress you. Leisure is unhurried ease. It is sleeping until 10am or gardening or reading your favorite novel. Taking a trip to a foreign country or to Wyoming or learning to play an instrument. It is about binge-watching a television show and stopping to smell the gardenias by yourself, with a friend, or with family. It is your time and right so do what you want with it.
Additional Resources:
Budig, Michelle J.; and England, Paula. 2001. “The Wage Penalty for Motherhood.” American Sociological Review 66(2):204-25.
Correll, Shelly J.; Benard, Stephen, and Paik, In. 2007. “Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?”. American Journal of Sociology 112(5):1297-339.
Gash, Vanessa. 2009. “Sacrificing Their Careers for Their Families? An Analysis of the Penalty to Motherhood in Europe.” Social Indicators Research 93(3):569-86.
A LGBTQ+youth today may look at the world around them and think all hope is lost. It is understandable because the possibility of an entire community losing their civil rightsat any moment is creating a looming fear. As human beings, we all come to terms with ourselves in our own ways; whether itissimply growing into yourself in order to find out who you are, or growing into someone you neverimagined. The process of coming to terms with identity is completely different whenyour sexuality is not the “social norm.” Growing up, I felt scared of myself, and fearful of what the future might hold for people like me.However in2015, whenmarriage equality became law, I thought to myself, “We are finally getting to a place where children will not have to grow up like I did.”
My story is not the same as every LGBTQ+ individual around the country, and certainly not across the globe. Every day, I wake up hoping that I do not hear of another story about aMatthew Shepard orPulse Nightclub tragedy. To live as an open member of the LGBTQ+ community is to live in a constant state of worry. You may not always feel it, but the hum of it, however quiet it may be, still echoes through the back of your mind. It is a worry for your brothers, sisters, others of your community, and for yourself. This infringes upon our right to security, as we are afraid to be ourselves in public spaces. This fear even extends to private places because for many, our families are the main aggressors. For youths who suffer through the pain of oppression at the hands their family, there is never a true sense of peace.
I have faced discrimination throughout the course of my life. Based on my rumored sexuality, I experienced exclusion from many of things. It is a pivotal moment in one’s life when they choose to come out. It is a time that you accept all the ridicule, the torment, and the imminent threat of attack. I have emotional scars from peers and family that still haunt me to this day. Yet, what hurts me most is the look in another person’s eyes when they become aware of my sexuality; it is that look—from people whom I have never met—which is devastating. How can someone who knows nothing about me, judge me?
While the future for American LGBTQ+ youth seems frightening and uncertain, it is nothing compared to those of the LGBTQ+ community across the globe. A LGBTQ+ youth in theMiddle East and Northern Africa has a different perspective based upon cultural experience and a belief that there is no hope and fear that there never will be–an upbringing filled with trials comparatively different to those I suffered as a youth. Living as an open member of the LGBTQ+ community in a Muslim country can potentially turn into a life threatening choice. Imagine that: telling your friends and family who you are, and then fearing that your life could end at that exact moment. That fear, no matter how far from home, affects us all.
Turkey is one of the few Middle Eastern countries where homosexuality is legal. Unfortunately, homophobia is still very prevalent so when a group of members from the community tried to initiate their own Pride festival, local authorities shot them with water cannons, rubber bullets, and sprayed them with tear gas. Across the Middle East, there are standing laws to persecute those of the LGBTQ+ community, including imprisonment for up to 10 years. InAncient Egypt, being gay or lesbian was a godlike quality; however, inmodern times, homosexuality is viewed as sin and punishable by death. When the White House went up inrainbow colored lightsin 2015, the authorities in Saudi Arabia went on the hunt. Children face death around the country for “deviant” behavior by their own governments.A privately run school in Riyadh was fined $26,500(in U.S. dollars) for painting the rooftop in rainbow stripes, and one of the administrators for the school was jailed for allowing such a “monstrosity”. Afghanistanbanned the decorating of cars with rainbow stickers because it “may be misinterpreted.” InIran,Yemen, and other Middle Eastern countries, many face execution for engaging in sodomy.
City Hall. Source: Tom Hilton, Creative Commons.
An assembly was called on in 2015by the United States and Chile to bring light to the attacks on the LGBTQ+ community that are prominent in the Middle East, specifically by the Islamic State. Syrian refugees who fled their war-torn homeland spoke to the United Nations about what their life and the suffering they endured. One man admitted to hiding his sexuality his entire life, saying, “In my society, being gay means death.” Another man told of his witnessing of an al-Qaeda affiliated group taking control of his hometown and began torturing and murdering men that others thought to be gay. Cheering audiences attended the executions of gay men. Some men, tossed from building ledges, meet their death; however, for those who do not die upon impact, the hateful crowd stoned them to death.
In the south and in the US, we feel criminalized; in the Middle East, we arecriminalized.
Being a part of amarginalized communityhas affected me in many negative ways, but also in positive ways. I feel a commonality with people I have never met and will likely never have the luxury of doing. As a part of the community, I am “branded in rainbow”, which is the most fulfilling feeling that I had experienced. I chose to take all of the negativity that surrounded me and channel it into positivity. This community and a shared experience has made me stronger, more confident, and allowed me to channel my anger by turning it into passion. As a member of this community, I implore you to become more accepting of the people around you, no matter where you may be from or what you may practice. It is powerful to feel human, and it is a feeling we all deserve.
** The National Walkout Day last week and the upcoming March for Our Lives protests organized by the surviving students of the Parkland school shooting in February has prompted this blog repost from 2016.
Signs carried by many marchers during March on Washington, 1963. Source: Library of Congress, Creative Commons.
Have you ever considered the pilgrims’ decision to leave England over religious freedoms, as a protest? Or slave rebellions as a protest to the dehumanizing treatment of being viewed as less than human or 3/5 of a person? Or the suffragettes dressed in white marching for the constitutional right to vote? Often most people point to protest images of the Civil Rights movement or Vietnam War as finite examples of protest, believing that protests are a thing of the past and no longer applicable in 2016. What I find fascinating is how quickly a protest is discounted as merely a group of unsatisfied people gathering together under a banner of their perceived oppression.
I use the phrase “perceived oppression” because it was used as a matter of fact, rather than projected opinion, by Facebook webstar Tomi Lahren in an interview two weeks ago. During a segment, Lahren assumed that Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protest was rooted in his “perceived oppression” about how black people and people of color are treated in this country. Aside from The Daily Show audience, Tomi Lahren’s videos boast between 7-17 million views – an incredible feat for someone who doesn’t seem to understand the power of her platform. Lahren is entitled to her opinion. She is granted that right as a human being and a citizen of this country, as written in the first amendment. Additionally, Colin Kaepernick, Black Lives Matter, gay rights activists, and anti-abortionists do too. Here’s where I have issue: the lack of regard for fact and truth. So where does a disregard for truth and fact leave the minorities who are oppressed? They remain outcasts due to opinion rather finding allies through fact.
The fact is oppression is real.
It is not just an impact felt by American minorities; it is an international way of societal coexistence to which the natural response is protest and resistance. **For the sake of this blog, the term ‘minority’ means every group that is not a part of the majority, whether by race, gender, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and/or ability.
Many have concluded that the not-so-silent white majority came out in force in support of Trump over Clinton in this election. The narrative is that for the past 6-8 years, their voices had been silenced under a lack of jobs, healthcare, and education. In this election and with this new president, their voices are now being heard. Yet, what about the voices of the minority groups who have been asking for the same things for longer than 6-8 years… how about centuries? When and how will their voices be heard?
Most major languages have a word for violence; however, the idea of nonviolence is the combination of the words that mean ‘not violence’. The Sanskrit word, ahimsa, means ‘not doing harm’, and Mahatma Gandhi reiterated that ahimsa “does not mean meek submission to the will of the evildoer, but it means pitting one’s whole soul against the will of the tyrant.” Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. are names synonymous to the principle and practice of nonviolent resistance.
Gandhi was the first to explore the expansion of nonviolence from an individual lifestyle into a concerted political and social justice strategy, believing that nonviolence was used with more frequency and brought about more success than violence. Dr. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan analyzed 323 violent and nonviolent resistance movement from over 100 years, substantiating Gandhi’s claim: “nonviolent resistance campaigns were nearly twice as likely to achieve full or partial success as their violent counterparts.” Dr. Stephen Zunes concludes that nonviolent action, in the form of resistance, has been taking place as a part of political life for centuries. It is their success which has garnered attention as the cause of human rights has advanced as a direct result of “toppling or dramatically reforming repressive regimes.” Nonviolence protest is a deliberate tool for social change. It is not an ad hoc strategy. It is, rather, a methodical method of struggle which is no longer simply rooted in religious or ethical principles. Gene Sharp labels it as political defiance.
So what is protest?
Protest is a right. The first amendment of our Constitution grants all Americans the right to peaceful assembly and to express dissatisfaction to the government. Additionally, according to Article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), peaceful assembly has been declared a human right. The clarifying word is peaceful, or nonviolent, in both documents. It is imperative to understand that a riot is not a right.
Protest is different to riot. Dr. King emphasized that the riot is socially destructive and self-defeating but it is also the “language of the unheard,” thus the counteraction to a riot is to organize in nonviolent resistance based on the principle of love.
Kiev monk hearing confession during protest. Source: Jim Forest, Creative Commons.
Protest is not passive. Students in Serbia (Yugoslavia) organized a nonviolent resistance in cities around the country as a means of protesting the dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic. They called themselves, Otpor!. By adapting Gene Sharp’s book as a manual, Otpor! positioned themselves under a threefold banner of unity, planning, and nonviolent discipline. The strategy was nonviolent resistance with concerts, sprayed painted slogans, and ridicule of the government, including a “birthday party for Milosevic”. The resistance which began as a student-led protest became a movement of more than 700,000, resulting in an overthrown government.
Protest is the struggle for recognition of an injustice. By honing in on societal structural violence, which is made manifest through cultural and social institutions, nonviolent protests are not about ‘attacking people’ as much as they are about calling attention to and addressing the “psychological, social, economic, and political weapons applied by the population and the institutions of the society”, believes Gene Sharp. In New York City 1985, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, the gay community and their heterosexual allies took to the streets in protest of governmental failure to fund and research a cure. At the time, millions of people worldwide had succumbed to AIDS-related illnesses. Activists under the banner of ACT UP and TAG sought to bring awareness and solution to governmental decision to penalize human beings for their lifestyle choice. Therefore, not only were they denied their constitutional right to protest but their human right to medical care which is included in the standard of living, identified in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
The UDHR is the international standard for the treatment of human beings. The document sheds light on Dr. King’s pronouncement that “Justice is indivisible. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” What interesting is that the Pledge of Allegiance and the Constitution of the United States of America both speak of liberty and justice is for all, and that all men are created equal. Equality is a misnomer for some citizens of this country and the world.
How does justice exist for all if you are the target of a hate crime or laws designed against you?
Gandhi said, “The first condition of nonviolence is justice all round in every department of life. Perhaps, it is too much to expect of human nature. I do not, however, think so. No one should dogmatize the capacity of human nature for degradation or exaltation.” To find justice all round in every department of life, a person must begin with self. Johann Gottlieb Fichte announced, “if you are to see differently, you must first of all become different.”
Source: Revolution Messaging, Creative Commons.
Protest is the courageous outward expression of inner dissatisfaction or disapproval.Angela Y. Davis asserts that the struggle is exemplified in protest. Grassroots nonviolent movements, or as Diana Francis refers to them as “people power” movements, have consistently challenged repressive and unjust systems for generations. So what can you do to join nonviolent resistance movements which seek to expose and eradicate structural violence directed at minorities in the form of oppression and repression? Adapt four characteristics of a nonviolent ethic as exemplified in Gandhi and King. The four characteristics of identity and ethics from the lives of Dr. King and Gandhi are a compassionate, cosmopolitan worldview, a truthful reality, an educated voice, and love. As students of their work and life, we can possess and impress these characteristics upon others, transforming the world through personal change in order to garner social change.
A compassionate, cosmopolitan worldview:The word cosmopolitan comes from the Greek words cosmo meaning world, as in universe not earth, and polis referring to the city that one owes loyalty. Voltaire says, “Cosmopolitans… regard all the peoples of the earth as so many branches of a single family, and the universe as a state, of which they, with innumerable other rational beings, are citizens, prompting together under the general laws of nature the perfection of the whole, while each in his own fashion is busy about his own well-being.” Therefore, the possession of a cosmopolitan worldview means we have placed ourselves under the loyalty of the world and the citizens who share this common space, with the added dimension of compassion.
A truthful reality: A truthful reality is not a denial of the past. It is the understanding that the past and those who endured it, are the launching pad for those of us living in the present. Davis states, “in the 1960s we confronted issues that should have been resolved in the 1860s. And I’m making this point because what happens when 2060 rolls around? Will people still be addressing these same issues? And I also think it’s important for us to think forward and imagine future history in a way that is not restrained by our own lifetimes.”
An educated voice: William Ellery Channing concluded that “others are affected by what I am, and say, and do. And these others have also their sphere of influence. So that a single act of mine may spread in widening circles through a nation or humanity.” Everett Rogers studies the diffusion of innovations in societies. He has concluded that for an idea–whether true or false, good or bad—to become embedded in society, it only takes 5% of the population to believe it, and if 20% become aware of the idea, it becomes unstoppable. In Rwanda, the genocide of Tutsis by Hutus in April 1994, was because of untruths spewed from the radio.
Love:Dr. King professed that “love is the only creative, redemptive, transforming power in the universe.” The beauty of love is that you can love and disagree. Love is a choice. You choose to be ruled and guided by love, just as you choose to be ruled and guided by fact or opinion, or emotions and feelings.
Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking at North Carolina Central University, Durham, NC, in 1966. From the General Negative Collection, State Archives of North Carolina., Creative Commons.
Martin Luther King, Jr. spent the final summer of his life articulating a way to move the United States from civil rights to human rights, a project that found him criticized from across the political spectrum. Fifty years later, King’s anguished attempt to navigate the complex racial politics of the Summer of Love illustrates many contemporary challenges facing progressives and radicals in the 21st century.
In popular memory, Martin Luther King largely operates on the level of myth, often appearing as a hallowed character in various tales of turmoil and triumph. Indeed, historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall laments the dominant image of MLK—“frozen in 1963”—dreaming endlessly of an America where individuals are judged not “by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Yet in my experience with college students in Chicago and Birmingham, race and ideology continue to influence how Americans interpret King. While racists continue to attack him and his legacy, it is now difficult to find critics of the man in polite circles. Indeed, like other folk heroes and founding fathers, there appears to be a King for everybody. Moderates celebrate his patriotism, piety, and non-violence. Progressives revel in their inside knowledge that the real King was much more militant than grade school portraits suggest. Radicals share and collect his lesser-known writings and speeches. Even conservatives appropriate the preacher’s dream to support color-blind policies anathema to his life’s work. As is their habit, academics live in the nuance and contradictions, depicting a multi-dimensional King that changed over time and remains difficult to capture.
The kaleidoscopic nature of King’s memory owes a great deal to the legacy of his life and times. In the decade-and-a-half of his public existence, MLK’s position often changed with the perspective of the observer. King’s worldview evolved as well. By 1967, King was in the early stages of a public shift to the radical Left, an incomplete journey whose end is impossible to know. At the time, however, King was beset from all sides with judgment, criticism, and ridicule. Conservatives hated him for challenging the racial status quo and for his alleged link to communism. Liberals cautioned him to moderate his demands and contain voices of extremism. Radicals doubted his sincerity and credentials. His own reflections depict a man grappling with uncertainty and doubt.
In the shifting political climate of the mid-1960s, King responded to new developments by reshuffling the movement’s priorities. Following passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the demands of battling Jim Crow moved to the background. In the face of continued racial inequality, King and others renewed their focus on an older set of priorities, principally in the field of economics. While African Americans had long demanded fair access to jobs, housing, education, and housing, Cold War anti-communism silenced an older generation of radicals whose voices sustained the movement prior to World War Two. In post-war America, the relatively safer fight for desegregation dominated the civil rights establishment. By 1967, however, King joined a growing chorus demanding fundamental changes to American society. Never silenced completely, traditions of anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism rose to the fore once again. In the final year of his life, King made explicit many radical values previously left implicit. In his effort to articulate the more radical elements of his dream, King drew much criticism.
In an attempt to challenge the static portrayal of King standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, however, some commentators have exaggerated the degree of change between the younger and older MLK. While King’s public career reveals a noted radical turn after 1965, much of his later philosophy appeared earlier as well. As historian Clayborn Carson writes, “King’s basic beliefs remained remarkably consistent during his adulthood.” Indeed, King’s evolution was less philosophical than it was dispositional, even circumstantial. King always cultivated a radical perspective, but the passage of time—his internal maturation and a changing external opportunity structure—found him more comfortable articulating radical ideas. Analyzing King’s seminary training and roots in the Black church, for example, historian Douglas Sturm contends that King’s late radicalization was more of a “refinement” than a “transformation of his basic orientation.” While associates claim King only began describing himself privately as a democratic socialist in early 1968, King had long practiced a form of collective humanism, even while avoiding Marxist language in his speeches and publications.
An African American man, the victim of assault during Detroit’s race riot tries to escape from a mob before further violence ensues. Source: Tullio Saba, Creative Commons
In the late summer of 1967, however, the momentum of outside events forced King to articulate a radical vision of civil rights—one grounded in a larger framework of human rights—that would anger liberal critics in Washington, alienate moderates within the movement, and arouse skeptical militants. Two examples from July and August serve to demonstrate King’s evolving public position and the volatile context within which he operated. July witnessed two of the worst civil disorders of American history, as first Newark and then Detroit exploded in several days of rebellion, riot, and uncoordinated violence. Dozens of people—mostly Black men shot by the police—died as authorities retook the streets. Distraught and physically fatigued, King placed his name on an official response endorsed by Roy Wilkins of the NAACP and Whitney Young of the National Urban League, two giants of civil rights known for their moderation and restraint.
Uncomfortable characterizing civil disorder as the act of lawless rioters, King issued his own public statement in the form of a telegram to President Lyndon Johnson. Blaming public officials—especially Congress—for failing to invest in the inner city, King insisted, “Only drastic changes in the life of the poor will provide the kind of order and stability [we] desire.” Determined to propose a solution, King implored Johnson, “Let us do one simple, direct thing—let us end unemployment totally and immediately. I propose specifically the creation of a national agency that shall provide a job to every person who needs work” (p. 570). Cautious in his sympathy for participants of urban rebellion, King avoided direct criticism of the president and tempered his support for economic redistribution.
Publicly optimistic, King privately worried that his words might encourage further disorder. In a phone conversation transcribed by the FBI, radical associates of King reassured him that “in taking this position, you are not isolating yourself with a few rioters; you are joining some very distinguished opinion-makers and a very large mass of people who have seen through to the real issue here.” While Wilkins, Young, and other moderates distanced themselves from “rioters” for tearing up their neighborhoods, King joined an influential group of observers—particularly those on the radical Left—who recognized the social and economic roots of unrest. According to the FBI transcript, “MLK described the Detroit riot as ‘an explosion of anger against an invisibility’ resulting from ‘a dull monotony of nothingness’ from which people escape occasionally to go to work but to which they must return.” (1) King would expand on this theme of anomie affecting inner city residents—and the nation as a whole—in a more militant speech a few weeks later.
National Guard and police, Detroit Riots July 1967, Image: Howard Bingham/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty, online: Cris Wild: Remembering the Detroit Riots of 1967. Source: continentcontinent.cc, Creative Commons.
On August 31, 1967, King delivered a keynote address titled, “The Three Evils of Society,” before the National Conference on New Politics (NCNP) in Chicago. Celebrated among King aficionados and radicals today, the speech found King at an emotional low as he faced a divided and occasionally hostile NCNP crowd. Alluding to the audience’s “disillusionment” and sense of “betrayal” with American liberalism, King claimed to share their “blasted” hopes and “shattered” dreams. In the face of an immoral war in Asia and widespread poverty at home, King sympathized with a group of “angry young men of our movement” who booed him the previous summer. King admitted, “I had preached to them about my dream,” only for them to watch it “turn into a frustrating nightmare.” At the heart of their frustration, King contended, was the great American “hypocrisy” whereby policymakers advocate “socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.”
King devoted the bulk of his speech to “a triple-prong sickness that has been lurking within our body politic from its very beginning”—the “sickness of racism, excessive materialism, and militarism.” King argued that a contemporary “white backlash” was not triggered by the recent “cry of Black Power “or the “unfortunate wave of riots.” Rather, racism constituted a core component of “Western Civilization,” a phenomenon “rooted in the same problem that has characterized America ever since the Black man landed in chains on the shores of this nation.” Far from aberrant, he insisted, racism was foundational to the American experiment.
Next, King turned to a second societal evil, the “extreme materialism” of the American economic system. “Capitalism,” King declared, “was built on the exploitation and suffering of Black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor—both Black and white, both here and abroad.” Proposing a federal guarantee of full employment, King called for investment in “education” and “health,” a “radical redistribution of political and economic power,” and a program to “aid in the transfer of power and wealth into the hands of residents of the ghetto.”
Finally, King turned to the “disease of militarism.” As American cities descended into “inexorable decay,” King denounced the “tragic adventure in Vietnam” as a drain on “our wealth and energy.” Not only was the war immoral, King argued, it also robbed vital resources from efforts to alleviate poverty at home. In sum, King diagnosed as “morally bankrupt” a society in which “profit motives and property values are considered more important than people.” Only a “radical revolution of values” could save the United States from impending “spiritual death.” Along with a handful of other notable documents, the July telegram to Johnson and the August NCNP speech reflect King’s efforts to steer the civil rights coalition toward a radical human rights agenda with the potential to bring economic justice and substantive freedom to millions of Americans.
Fifty years after 1967, many human rights advocates in the United States today echo King’s attacks on racism, materialism, and militarism. His efforts to move the freedom movement from civil rights to human rights involved demanding the United States government provide all residents adequate employment, housing, education, and healthcare. Including vocal criticism of war and the criminal justice system, King’s 1967 agenda speaks powerfully to 21st-century problems. Indeed, the 2016 platform of the Movement for Black Lives suggests the direct influence of King and his contemporaries. The radical voice of both MLK and #BLM, of course, inspired strong opposition. In King’s day, Cold War anti-communists labeled his prescription subversive and un-American. While the Cold War eventually ended, the rise of mass incarceration and the bi-partisan triumph of neo-liberalism after 1970 continues to stunt racial progress beyond the minimum of condemning Jim Crow statutes. In 2017, activists who challenge fundamental premises of American institutions or demand equitable employment, housing, education, and healthcare encounter the same oppressive forces attacking MLK half-a-century earlier.
Andy Baer is an Assistant Professor of History at UAB. He teaches U.S. History and African American History with a focus on social movements and criminal justice. He is currently working on a book manuscript titled Beyond the Usual Beating: The Jon Burge Police Torture Scandal and Social Movements for Police Accountability in Chicago, 1972-2015.
Footnote: 1) “FBI surveillance of Martin Luther King, Jr. and SCLC via surveillance of home telephone of King advisor Stanley Levinson, July 21, 1967-July 26, 1967,” accessed through the ProQuest History Vault.
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