Feeling “Safe”

Last night, I went to a talk sponsored by the Multicultural Research and Resource Center (MRRC) where two researchers, Dr. Mary McRae (an associate professor of Applied Psychology at NYU) and Dr. Sarah Brazaitis (a lecturer at Columbia University Teacher’s College and the Director of the Social and Organizational Psychology MA program) presented their work on the intersections of race, gender, and group dynamics. Their main point of inquiry was: How do our identities impact group
dynamics, group relations, and organizations?

The discussion of their research was really interesting, in large part because of their honesty and willingness to put such delicate and difficult issues as racism and sexism out there on the table.

At one point Dr. Brazaitis was talking about stereotypes of white women, and particularly ways of being in relation to white men and to men and women of color. She had many interesting and valuable observations, but one really stood out to me: that white women are criers. Now, she placed this observation in the context of historical stereotypes of white women as pure, naive, delicate; as “angels of the household.” She also situated her contention that, when conflict in areas of interpersonal communication arises, white women cry, in the idea that they feel that they cannot get angry, that they are not allowed to be angry, because to get angry goes against all our notions of femininity. Dr. Brazaitis also spoke quite a bit around traditional ideas of the feminine and how limiting these notions can be.

Although both talks could be the subject of good discussion, I find myself coming back to the assertion that white women cry because they don’t know how to express their feeling of frustration, disappointment, and anger in other ways, or that other ways of expressing these emotions threaten their privileged status as “ideal” white women in the eyes of the true power-holders: white men. Dr. Brazaitis recounted a story of the closing minutes of a group relations conference she has organized.

A young, White woman begins to share her reflections on the conference. She says she wanted to do deeper work in the conference, she wanted to reach out to others who did not look like her, but because it ‘was not safe,’ she was not welcomed…[An] African-American woman begins to speak. She says that White woman always want it to be safe before they act, White women always want the conditions to be just right before they will take a risk, but then it is not any risk at all. She says that waiting to ‘feel safe’ is a privilege of White women. It is never ’safe’ for women of color to speak up, to share their point of view, to ask for what they want or deserve; yet they do it anyway because they have no choice. ( From her book chapter, White Women–Protectors of the Status Quo, Positioned to Disrupt It)

I am far from on expert on either race relations or feminism, and I won’t presume to provide a critical analysis here–but just to say, with studying multicultural education this semester, I am starting to ask a lot of questions about these issues…

 

Where’s the love for working moms?

You might have noticed that I have added a blogroll to this page. I’ve just listed a few blogs that I enjoy.

• Baby Bunching – fun stuff for moms with kids close in age
• Ben & Birdy – my all-time favorite mommy writer; I’ve loved her stories for years now
• Chez Schmanza – a good friend’s adventures in Paris (and now DC)
• Clear Frame – college classmate writing about babyloss, art, and motherhood
• Embedded Librarian – a former colleague, friend, and all-around cool gal
• Healthy Living = Happy Families – my alter ego!
• Organic Mania – an interesting round-up of organic news in the capitol, a DCUM
• There is More to My Life – another former colleague, now friend with babies the same age as Bug and Turtle

What I didn’t include was all the mom-productivity-organization-homemaking blogs that I visit now and again. Although I do get lots of helpful tips from ladies like Rocks In My Dryer, SimpleMom, and many others, the one thing that makes me hesitate is that they are all writing from the point of view of stay at home moms. Now, I’m not one to give any credence to any kind of SAH vs. WOTH mom chasm. I think 90% of our concerns are exactly the same, and I’m always happy to hear about how my SAH mom friends have come up with a new menu planning exercise or chores schedule or how much they enjoy their MOPs group.

But I wonder, where are the working mom productivity tips? Without getting into any touchy areas, we working moms have a lot of homemaking things to do and not a lot of time at home to get everything done. It seems like a lot of the suggestions I hear are for “outsourcing”–get a nanny rather than taking kids to daycare, get a housekeeper once a week, have groceries delivered, have diapers delivered, go to one of those food preparation places and make 12 meals at once to pop in the freezer, get a mother’s helper to be there during the mad evening rush, find a college student to come in the mornings to take the kids to school…all great suggestions. If you fit into the small–and increasingly microscopic–demographic called “those with disposable income.” The assumption that, because you’re a two-income family, you have disposable income is my biggest problem with all these suggestions.

In a time–and location–where paying for preschool is a struggle, I know that there are plenty of families out there for whom two incomes is absolutely necessary to stay afloat, and there’s no wiggle room in the budget for any sort of outsourcing. And the unfortunate fact is that all the money-saving tips–like packing a lunch, bargin shopping, getting and selling clothes at consignment sales, making gifts, eating meals at home–all take more time away from spending time with your kids, much less planning elaborate meal preparation schemes, re-organizing the pantry, or *cough cough* vacuuming.

So, what can we do? Where are the resources for financially and time-strapped parents who have to work, can’t outsource anything, and still want to spend time with their kids?

Waiting for suggestions…

 

A uterus won’t do it for me…

All my life, I’ve thought that if there were ever a female candidate for president, I’d vote for her. And now that there is a candidate who, I think one could fairly argue, is sitting rather much closer to the presidency than most other VP candidates, I won’t be voting for her. Although that still gives me a little pang of regret–just as Hilary’s lost nomination pains me–I’m just going to have to survive. As so many others have much more eloquently argued over the past few weeks, a candidate whose fundamental beliefs are so contrary to my own, whose experience seems so woefully lacking, cannot be ameliorated simply because she is a woman. Whether or not she could–or should– handle the vice presidency is completely irrelevant. I’m happy to let her personal choices remain her own. It’s her choices about what affects the rest of us that have me, frankly, more than a little worried about what the country would look like after another four years of war, failing economy, troubled schools, and increasingly activist social conservatism. I don’t think it’s a country I’d much care to live in.