Open This Gate, Tear Down This Wall: Charles Ramsey, Rescue and Race

I had to fight back tears when I heard of the rescue of Amanda Berry, Gina De Jesus and Michelle Knight, the three women in Cleveland who were rescued from years of captivity.  The story is here. I came close to tears first out of relief for their safety. But I was also saddened because for the last several years I, like so many others, had frequented the area not far from that Cleveland neighborhood where they were found. Like so many others I little imagined that the women, the youngest two of whom had been the subject of much local searching, were still alive. All while I was glad for the women and their families I worried that the community, that we, that I, had failed them by not finding them sooner.

In the aftermath of the coverage an unlikely hero came to light.  The women were rescued thanks to the concern of one Charles Ramsey who did what too few of us do nowadays: he left the curtilege of his own home to go and see about a neighbor.  My heart swelled with pride as I heard Mr. Ramsey tell of hearing one of the victims calling out for help and of how he went to her rescue.  Thank heavens for neighbors like Mr. Ramsey. He is, as many have pointed out, an Internet sensation thanks to his detailed account of his actions surrounding the rescue.

Charles Ramsey, however, got way too real for some people in his interview.  From an NPR blog:

<< What made Ramsey really blow up on the Internet was his observation at the end of the interview.

"Bro, I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man's arms," Ramsey told a local TV reporter. The local reporter quickly pivoted away.>>

Yes, that’s what Mr. Ramsey said on live television. While it might have been a pretty cringe-worthy comment for many viewers, it is, unfortunately, a pretty accurate assessment of the situation on the ground in many places, including Cleveland. The city has for too long been racially divided by a figurative and geographical line between east and west, with the east side being much blacker than the west. Even in some of the famously integrated, inner ring suburbs of Cleveland, the level of social polarization between blacks and whites is sometimes more reminiscent of 1933 than 2013.  Mr. Ramsey gave voice to something that many of us have been saying for years: the social barriers between the races are as solid as ever in some places. Even where there are breaches in the racially inspired fortifications, too often the social interactions occurring in the breaches are cold, spare, wanting and rare. 

So, besides feelings of shared relief over the rescue, and thoughts of how we might behave to keep each other safe from the types of harms these women suffered, we might also think about how all of us might come together to address this persistent racial boundary that has also come to light.

Of Husband Hunting and Diamond Mines

There has been a tremendous dust-up in response to Susan Patton's (a member of the Princeton class of 1977) letter to the Daily Princetonian.  In her letter, Patton exhorts Princeton women to begin the task of husband hunting in their freshman year, warning them that “[f]or most of you, the cornerstone of your future and happiness will be inextricably linked to the man you marry, and you will never again have this concentration of men who are worthy of you.”

Below is my response, a version of which was also published in the Daily Princetonian:

I have to say that while I disagree with most of Patton’s assertions, I don’t find them especially offensive. After all, women can take Patton’s advice or leave it. While Patton’s tone does seem overwrought and off key in several respects, I don’t find her message much different from any other piece of alumni advice. In fact, I find myself uneasier with the assumption by some women that Patton’s point of view is one that should be suppressed. I don’t agree with much of what Patton says. But neither do I think that Patton’s view should be silenced. Haven’t men told women to shut up long enough without women telling each other (for it is mostly women doing the silencing) to shut up? I for one think Patton ought to speak louder and longer to her points. If she did, we might engender fuller and more constructive engagement on the issue of women’s family lives.

I am especially uneasy with the class and race privilege evidenced in the outraged responses to Patton’s letter. There seems to be at work here an implicit understanding that elite college women who look for early marriage with classmates (or perhaps for any marriage at all) are turning their backs on stellar opportunities or are being untrue to bedrock feminist principles such as autonomy or equality. This is problematic because although women come in all stripes, too often norms of feminism are shaped by the elite few. Feminism has been and continues to be the province of the wealthy, the white and the well-connected. Many of these women want to have it all or want a larger piece of the pie. Other women might be content to get any of it at all or might be content with some of the crumbs from the pie much less a piece of it. It is difficult to frame a broad-based emancipatory feminist program in the face of such starkly contrasting metaphors for female success.

The contrast may be especially bleak when comparing wealthy, white women to black women from poor and working class backgrounds. In the context of marriage, some wealthy white women, for instance, may be far more likely to have access to well-paying jobs or other resources that obviate the need for a spouse’s financial support. Moreover, given a higher rate of placement in elite firms and more frequent residence in upscale neighborhoods, wealthy white women who do choose to marry may have far more opportunity to find a like-minded mate at places outside of the elite colleges or universities that they may have attended.

For poor or working class black women and for some other women of color, there is often less available in the way of career or spousal choice. Even equipped with an elite college degree, highly educated black women from poor or working class backgrounds often earn less than their white, wealthy counterparts, making it harder for them to support themselves alone. Highly educated black women from poor or working class backgrounds are also less likely than their wealthy white peers to live and work in settings where there are large numbers of people who share their interests or values. Yes, it may be possible to find a suitable mate in other settings. I’ll call such mates diamonds in the rough. Then again, it may not be possible. There are far more rocks in the world than diamonds in the rough. While solid and dependable, a rock is, well, just a rock.

This is not to say that elite colleges and universities are brimming over with cut and polished diamonds in the form of highly suitable mates. But I think some of us protest entirely too much when we eschew the seeming elitism of remarks such as Patton’s “you will never again have this concentration of men who are worthy of you.” Certainly I’d adjust that statement to read men or women; heteronormativity is its own form of tyranny. And maybe Patton’s statement it is a bit too emphatic; never is a long time, after all. But the fact is, even if adopting the most anti-elitist stance possible, a lot of us do think this way. We just don’t like to say it and if anyone else says it we cry foul.

Does this mean that I would give my daughter the advice that Patton is proposing? Absolutely not. If my daughter is lucky enough to attend Princeton or a school like it, I want her to view her college years as a momentous first step in a life full of grand possibilities of all sorts. Marriage may or may not be one of them. But, I would also make sure that my daughter understands that for some women, well educated or not, choices and opportunities, if they exist at all, may be narrower and more constrained. Only with this sort of honest acknowledgement of the conditions facing some women can we achieve significant change for all women.

Lean In (Toward the Everlasting Glass)

I think about all the moments I just didn't believe in myself. Every test I was sure I was about to fail, every job I wasn't sure I could do," she says. "It was after watching so many women quietly lean back, after watching myself quietly lean back and miss opportunities, that I started to see the pattern and started to talk about it.

Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, has caused a national discussion of women’s success (and failure) in the workplace with her assertion that women often lose ground because they “lean back,” that is, they choose to forego opportunities. In her upcoming book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, Sandberg details how women can overcome what could, I suppose, be called a pathological unwillingness to power. Women need, per Sandberg, a Nietzschean kick in the butt to get out of their career torpor.

I am, in general, a strong believer in the value and importance of hard work. I know, however, that no amount of hard work and determination can overcome certain types of workplace barriers for some women. The historical and current states of gender, class and racial inequality make leaning in futile in some cases. This is chiefly because Sandberg’s lean in notion relies upon the primacy of ideas such as formal equality and rationality. Lean in ignores the extent to which women have been excluded in shaping the substantive content of equality norms. Workplace standards that are good for the gander are all too often bad for the goose. As to rationality, it has long been clear that many employers will persist in gender or other types of discrimination even where they cause harm to their own interests. In short, employers can and frequently do cut off their own noses to spite their faces.

So, for the Sheryl Sandberg’s of the world I offer this paean to leaning in:

“Lean In Toward the Everlasting Glass” (Sung to the Tune of “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”)

If you seek a job advance or want your career enhanced then

Lean in toward the everlasting glass

The glass is oh so thick

Work, wheedle, politick and

Lean in toward the everlasting glass

Lean in, lean in

Man up and break the glass that bars your way

Lean in, lean in

The glass ceiling shatters and you win the day

Forge those nerves of steel

Wear Manolo Blahnik heels and

Lean in toward the everlasting glass

Learn to negotiate, curse, spit, communicate and

Lean in toward the everlasting glass

Lean in, lean in

Man up and break the glass that bars your way

Lean in, lean in

The glass ceiling shatters and you win the day

Ignore class and race

Peer through, press your face and

Lean in toward the everlasting glass

You just talk the talk

Leave others to walk the walk

Lean in toward the everlasting glass

Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roe

[A version of this essay was published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer on January 20, 2013]

January 22, 2013 marks the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Since the decision was announced Roe has become synonymous with deeply polarized political conflict. Justice Byron White, in his dissent in Roe, may have foreseen this. It is for this reason perhaps that White opined that the issue of abortion should be left with the people of each state and the political processes they devised to govern their affairs. There is nothing particularly untoward about such an assertion: localized communal concerns have long served as the foundation of criminal prohibitions and this has often inhered to the benefit of the many. 

However, there is a danger when either provincial concerns or resistance to social change undergirds legal norms. This is the case with abortion. Abortion became, and continues to be, a battleground in the cultural wars over matters such as sex and sexuality, over continually shifting and increasingly accessible medical innovations that alter when and if a pregnancy begins or ends, and over an atmosphere of pervasive social and cultural change that threatens to permanently redefine established hierarchies. In short, Roe v. Wade, along with other aspects of  reproductive rights discourse, forms a part of a broader contemporary cultural battle that could be summarized as the fight over sex, drugs and rock and roll.

Sex, drugs and rock and roll is a motto that elicits images of free sex, widespread illicit drug use and a new, outsider-created music that upended not only conventional ideals of music and musicianship but also of society. Sex, drugs and rock and roll has, however, been rehabilitated as a general notion. We have come to understand that the phrase conjures not only dystopic images of single-minded excess and anarchy but may also offer the utopian vision of  a broader world of responsibly managed autonomy. The scourge of sex, drugs and rock and roll lay not only (or at all) in the actions themselves but also in the reactionary delimiting responses that fear of the actions engenders.  

In discussing the history of abortion the Roe Court noted that abortion laws were a relatively recent development in the United States. Both church and state had either been silent on or offered little sanction for abortion over much of Anglo-American religious and legal history. The Court cited what has been called the first United States law to explicitly bar abortion, an 1821 Connecticut statute. This is a particularly useful example of how efforts to contain the cultural confluence summarized in the expression sex, drugs and rock and roll became the source of abortion law. According to some, the Connecticut statute was adopted in almost direct response to an alleged sexual scandal that took place in Connecticut in 1818 involving a minister named Ammi Rogers who was accused of impregnating a young woman to whom he was not married and then giving her an abortion-inducing substance.  

Rogers was a charismatic figure who had a substantial following and who was said to have been especially popular among women. Though ordained in New York, he was barred from the ministry in Connecticut. Rogers was accused of impregnating Asenath Smith, a young single woman. Rogers, in response to the claims against him, alleged that Smith had given false testimony as part of a political and religious plot to discredit him. Roger’s claim merited at least some attention given that Smith and some other witnesses were said to have later recanted much of their testimony. Rogers was by all accounts a thorn in the side of the powerful Episcopalian establishment. Though he had been officially barred from the ministry in Connecticut, he persisted in preaching and representing himself as a clergyman, and his popularity showed no signs of abating even in the face of his official religious unwelcome. Rogers was a rock and roll minister of his times.

Despite his protests of innocence, Rogers was convicted of sexually assaulting Smith and was jailed for two years. Though the most lurid aspects of the testimony against Rogers alleged that he had forced Smith to consume a poisonous substance to induce miscarriage, there was no clear proof that Smith had been pregnant or that she had miscarried.  Moreover, even if Rogers had given Smith some substance that caused miscarriage, were no laws at the time that explicitly forbade such conduct. Acting from outrage over Rogers’ relatively mild censure and the difficulties of prosecuting him, the Connecticut legislature enacted the now oft-cited 1821 law on abortion. The statute criminalized the actions of those who provided “deadly poison” or “noxious substances” to cause a pregnant woman’s post-quickening miscarriage and hence targeted the precise means alleged in Rogers’ case.

In the decades subsequent to Rogers’ case, legal barriers to abortion grew. These laws were often framed as public health or moral imperatives. In many cases, however, the laws seemed to be responses to the way that growing numbers of people could exercise sexual autonomy via access to and knowledge of abortion services, thereby controlling their own lives and potentially imposing changes in the fabric of larger culture. In short, it was fear of sex, drugs and rock and roll that often fueled legal limits on abortion.

Happy Boxing Day 2012

Good King Wenceslas looked out


On the feast of Stephen


When the snow lay round about


Deep and crisp and even

Brightly shone the moon that night


Though the frost was cruel


When a poor man came in sight


Gath’ring winter fuel

“Hither, page, and stand by me


If thou know’st it, telling


Yonder peasant, who is he?


Where and what his dwelling?”


“Sire, he lives a good league hence


Underneath the mountain


Right against the forest fence

By Saint Agnes’ fountain.”

“Bring me flesh and bring me wine


Bring me pine logs hither


Thou and I will see him dine

When we bear him thither.”


Page and monarch forth they went


Forth they went together


Through the rude wind’s wild lament


And the bitter weather….

I hope that all who celebrate it passed a happy Christmas holiday yesterday. For some, the holiday goes on, for today is Boxing Day. Falling on December 26, Boxing Day, also called St. Stephens’s Day, is mostly a Commonwealth holiday. I became familiar with it via my British Virgin Islands in-laws. On this day, it is said, the poor received the contents of church poor boxes, collections for the poor, and the servants of great houses, who often had to work on Christmas day, received gift boxes from their masters.

While Christmas Day is a solemn time for many, Boxing Day is often more raucously festive, filled with home visiting, parties, horse races and other sporting events. My fondest memory of Boxing Day was on a hot, sunny day in 2006 in Tortola, British Virgin Islands when my family and I gathered at the home of my late beloved father-in-law, Ta. When we arrived, inside the small house where Ta had been born early in the last century were several members of his church who had come to visit, laugh and pray with him. As his parlor was small, we stayed out on the porch, overlooking the seemingly endless bay. 

To accompany the talk and prayers inside, we began singing Christmas carols and hymns. Some of the church people inside joined in, their voices merging with ours through the open, unscreened door that led from the porch to the darkened, windowless front room where Ta sat, his face etched with joy. He spoke but little that day, uncharacteristic for him. Ta, like Stephen for whom this day is also named, was a man with an active tongue and wit.

Also like Stephen, Ta was a man of grace, wisdom, courage, intelligence, and perhaps above all, justice. Over his long and blessed life, Ta told many stories and jokes, and in the jokes lay the truth, sometimes told straight, sometimes told sideways until it could be told straight. Ta was a lion, of the breed about which abolitionist Wendell Phillips wrote in a now famous letter to Frederick Douglass: “You remember the old fable of 'The Man and the Lion,' where the lion complained that he should not be so misrepresented 'when the lions wrote history.' I am glad the time has come when the 'lions write history.'”

The wind blew gently and strongly that Boxing Day, and we sang on. From time to time we looked out at the vast ocean beyond the bay, dreaming of truth, dreaming of history, and the dream was life and life was the dream.

Happy Boxing Day to one and all! Dream well.

Bakhtin’s Theory of Literary Carnival Meets the Mighty Sparrow

I found myself explaining Bakhtin’s theory of literary carnival to my ten-year-old daughter yesterday. She has been reading over my shoulder as I write about the concept and she finally asked what I was talking about. I decided to make an effort at an explanation, figuring that if I could frame it out for her then it might advance my efforts to explain the concept in my work.

Bakhtin’s carnival, like many ancient and modern social carnivals, is a way of looking at the world that unifies, merges or subverts norms and ideas that are typically thought of as opposites. I describe carnival in more detail in an essay I wrote for the NYU Review of Law and Social Change. I also blogged about the concept previously here.

Carnival often involves subversion of mainstream social, legal, economic or other norms.  In carnival, privileged figures are sometimes mocked, demoted and subverted by the oppressed who then assume power, even though only in pretense and usually for only a short while. Carnival is a sanctioned blowing off of social steam that, while riotous and even sometimes offensive, is often ambivalent in its goals: in carnival the lowly sometimes secretly admire and yearn for the respectability and privilege of those whom they mock.

Bakhtin’s carnival is related to historically instantiated folk carnivals such as pre-Lenten celebrations. Bakhtin’s carnival is also, however, sometimes much more metaphorical in nature, and occurs within certain types of language forms, such as in parodies or satires that are unconnected to any particular instance of a folk carnival. Sometimes the material and metaphoric dimensions of carnival come together, such as in some Caribbean carnivals where raucous folk festival is characterized by carnivalesque songs, poems or chants.

My daughter was frowning in puzzlement at this point so I offered an example of a genre of carnivalistic discourses: calypso songs. Calypso songs provide a duel purpose explanation of Bakhtin’s carnival—they frequently form a part of pre-Lenten or other festivals in much of the Caribbean, and the songs themselves offer a rich tradition of satire and parody that challenges mainstream ideas and figures in society. In my explanation I used a calypso song that my daughter knows, Mighty Sparrow’s “Mr. Walker.”  This was a particular favorite of my late mother-in-law and we sing and play it a lot as we reminiscence during the Christmas season.

Here are the words and a link to the song:

She ugly yes, but she wearing them expensive dress

The People say she ugly, but she father full of money

Oh Lord Mamma, woy woy

Good morning Mr. Walker

I come to see your daughter

Oh, Mr. Walker!

I come to see your daughter

Sweet Rosemarie, she promise she gone marry me

And now I tired waiting!

I come to fix the wedding.

After the wedding day, I don't care what nobody say

Every time I take a good look at she face I see a bankbook

Oh Lord Mamma, woy woy

Good morning Mr. Walker

I come to see your daughter

Hmm, Mr. Walker!

I come to see your daughter

Sweet Rosemarie, she promise she gone marry me

And now I tired waiting!

I come to fix the wedding.

Apart from that, they say how she so big and fat

When she dress they tantalize she, saying monkey wearing mini

Oh Lord Mamma, woy woy

Good morning Mr. Walker

I come to see your daughter

Oy, Mr. Walker!

I come to see your daughter

Sweet Rosemarie, she promise she gone marry me

And now I tired waiting!

I come to fix the wedding.

All I know, is I don't intend to let she go

Cause if she was a beauty, nothing like me could get she

Oh Lord Mamma, woy woy

Good morning Mr. Walker

I come to see your daughter

Oy, Mr. Walker!

I come to see your daughter

Sweet Rosemarie, she promise she gone marry me

And now I tired waiting!

I come to fix the wedding.

My daughter is especially amused that the song seems to offer open insult to the woman being described all while prefacing the insults with a particularly Caribbean aspect of social nicety: “good morning.” Part of her amusement is because this rang true for her. During many of our visits to the U.S. and British Virgin Islands it has become apparent to my daughter that little can be accomplished in business or social settings without starting with a requisite good morning, good afternoon, etc.  However, because of the outlandishness of the insults, my daughter is also clear that there is no way under the sun that a potential suitor is going to show up and say such offensive things to a woman’s father while claiming that he wants to marry her. She also understands that part of the humor lies in the demand from such a seemingly disempowered suitor. So, my daughter reasons, the song must be intended as a never-could-be, sly extended joke.

A troubling part is that the singer seems to assert that the unattractiveness of the woman potentially lowers her to his level. Listening from the perspective of Bakhtin’s carnival, however, my daughter starts to understand that the singer, though he seems to assail the “ugly” woman and her rich father, is partly laughing at himself. The plaintive tone of the music in some sections hints that the singer likely means the OPPOSITE of much of what he says and probably greatly admires both the woman and her father. That the singer says that he will keep the woman is perhaps best understood not as a plan to keep hold of the desire of his head (or wallet) but the desire of his heart.

Ah, this does the trick for my daughter. “Mr. Walker” is Bakhtinian carnival.

From Oz to Bethlehem: Romney's Post Election Take (Or, Gifts that Keep on Giving)

According to a post in The Caucus blog in the New York Times Mitt Romney attributed his recent election loss to the fact that President Obama had “followed the ‘old playbook’ of wooing specific interest groups — ‘especially the African-American community, the Hispanic community and young people,’ with gifts. 

Wow, are we still doing new versions of the 47 percent and  “makers and takers” even after the election? Apparently so.  A Romney breakdown of the “gifts” given to the various groups by President Obama:

To young [white] people, “a forgiveness of college loan interest was a big gift,” said Romney. An added gift was Obamacare since it “also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and that was a big gift to young people.”

To young college-aged [white] women in particular: “Free contraceptives were very big with young college-aged women.”

To black and Latino voters:  healthcare, because “[y]ou can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity, I mean, this is huge.”

To Latinos in particular: “amnesty for children of illegals, the so-called Dream Act kids, was a huge plus for that voting group.”

When I read the report of Romney's comments I thought maybe this was some kind of comedic riff, perhaps a take-off on The Wizard of Oz where young white women, young white men, blacks and Latinos, in the guise of Dorothy, the tin man, the scarecrow and the lion, are all in a self-satisfied post election haze, not because of magic poppies, but because each has received the gifts of their hearts’ desires from Obama the Magic Negro, er, wizard. 

Or, maybe, I thought, this almost being the Season, perhaps this was an inverted, postmodern retelling of the Nativity story where there is one magi, played by Obama, and where there is no gold, frankincense or myrrh. Instead, Magi Obama gives three gifts to not one but three infants: young white people, blacks and Latinos. They all turn out to be political babes in mangers instead of the political babes in the woods that the Romney people thought they were. Those babes are politically anointed ones and grow up into a full-fledged holy electoral triumvirate.  

It’s kind of hard to know if we’re in Oz or Bethlehem; either could work I suppose.