Remembering Marie (Or, Marie’s and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity)

I am Very Busy these days Writing and Editing Important Work. I have no time to blog these days, and certainly not today. However, my mother is making me write this.

For those who know me, this may seem surprising, since today is the twentieth anniversary of the death of my mother Marie. (Marie was not her real name, but it’s what we called her, for a host of simple and complicated family reasons. I even insisted that it be put on her tombstone along with her “real” name.) In the past, in the years shortly after her death, I marked the days coming up to it and the anniversary itself with copious private tears, with the tears getting more private with every passing year. Big girls (and certainly not big boys) are not supposed to cry, right? I have, correspondingly, trained myself to cry less at her memory. Even now when I cry I think of how my mother used to complain about my crying as a child. I was the cryingist and whiningist child in America, she used to say. My crying and whining by themselves didn’t so much upset my mother; it was the reasons that I cried and whined. Like many children, I cried for many minor matters, assuredly. But I more often cried for things that were beyond my own personal childish grievances. I was always wanting things to be better and different, big things, things for everybody.

So, for example, I used to cry when my mother had to go off to one of her three jobs. I wondered why she had to work so hard and be gone all the time. (I remember, for example, overhearing my mother confiding to a friend that one of her employers owed her a dollar and a quarter from a previous week. She then spent at least half an hour trying to answer my query about what a dollar and a quarter was and why it mattered so much. Once I understood, I ended up crying because I didn’t want us to need the money. ) I didn’t understand that the days of my infancy and early toddlerhood, when she had no job at all and was with me much more of the time, were some of the worst days of her life. As a teen-aged mother she had struggled every day in a home where she contended with her own mother and with a community that looked down on her.

Later, when my mother sent me to live with my aunt while she, as she called it, “got her life together” (she eventually remarried and then spent time smoothing the way for her children to join her in her new home), I used to hide in the closet at my aunt’s house and cry. I cried not only because I felt abandoned but also because my mother couldn’t live like the mothers I read about in Dick and Jane books. When I was finally able to rejoin my mother I almost never cried in front of her. I had learned many things during my time away from her, among them that it was best to be as little trouble as possible if I expected to fit into her new life. She had enough troubles of her own and really didn’t need the added burden of dealing with America’s cryingist and whiningist child. The only time I remember crying in front of my mother between third and twelfth grades was when we were in an auto accident together when I was 14. During those years my tears were in private at all times, and even in private my tears were more like prayers, fervid supplications that my life and her life would be better at some point in the future.

When Marie died I cried incessantly for months afterward, so much so that my toddler twins used to take up stations on either side of me and pat my back while chanting “Don’t cry mommy, don’t cry.” Except at Marie’s funeral, however, I never cried public tears. Mostly I cried at home in front of my children. I suppose that some would say that tears should especially be hidden from young children, so as not to upset them. I felt the opposite, though. My tears were a signal to them and to myself that I was at home and they were at home, and that at home grief should no more be hidden than happiness. Moreover, I cried at the realization that besides me my children now had no other female relative in the world who would adore them, and I blamed myself for somehow not having a large, loving family to give to them. I cried the most at the realization that Marie’s life, and my life, had finally gotten better, and she wasn’t here to enjoy it.

Today for the first time in many years I cried just a little, even with full freedom to give voice to my sadness. Instead of crying I laughed a lot at the joy her memory evoked. In the years right before her death, when I was first starting off in law practice, I began to put away the stoic pose of my late childhood and college years and had taken to sharing with Marie the trials and tribulations of my work life. Marie, bless her soul, would have none of it. At the beginning of any such conversation she would ignore my complaints and engage me on what she felt to be the truly important stuff of life. “What did you eat today?” she would ask. When I persisted on complaining about something at work she would grow exasperated. “Why are you upset about these things?” she would ask. “Don’t whine, work. I raised you so that you could be in a position not to kiss anybody’s [behind. Though Marie could be as polished as a wealthy suburban matron in public, she could at times curse like a sailor when the situation called for it.] Work hard not only for the sake of hard work, but so that you can get out if you must. Vote with your feet.” Then, my mother would go back to her conversation about the real substance of life. “Now, what did you eat today? And did you spend some time outside today?”

I thought at first that the reason my mother refused to engage me in the details of my professional life was that it was too alien for her, too far removed from her own life. My mother had, after all, scarcely attended a regular high school, having studied much of the time at a “continuation school” for pregnant girls and later finishing up at a night school. But I figured out that this wasn’t the reason at all that my mother behaved this way. She was not well educated, but she was certainly bright. She understood the details of my lawyer’s life. The fact was, she understood them better that I did. What she understood was that as important as I thought that my professional life was, it was but a shadow of the seemingly simple but immensely rich and complex internal workings of my personal life. Only when that personal part of my life was well founded could any of the rest of it come together.

I am reminded of a book that I came across recently called Einstein on Race and Racism by Fred Jerome and Roger Taylor. In it the authors discuss one of the lesser-publicized aspects of Einstein’s life, his personal interactions with black people. Notwithstanding the almost shocking absence of black people from the movie “IQ,” a light-hearted fiction that portrays aspects of Einstein's life in the town of Princeton, there were a significant number of black people living in the town during Einstein’s years there, and he had close associations with many of them. The book offers insights from many members of Princeton’s black community on why Einstein was seemingly so comfortable in the black community, both within Princeton and outside of it. It was more than a great man’s admiration for a “simple” folk; after all, he counted among his friends some of the most brilliant and accomplished blacks of the day, such as Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson. What, I think, made Einstein so comfortable was that just walking around Princeton’s Witherspoon Street black community and talking with the residents there about apparently small things, as Einstein often did, made his own scientific work make sense. Such walks and talks were, I would argue, the real stuff of Einstein’s life. As one respondent in the book wrote about Einstein’s walks in the black community, there “he was free.”

So, my mother Marie, like Einstein (she would be tickled by the pairing, because she would know that it was, at the same time, improbable yet highly probable), understood that if life could not be reduced to its smallest elements, then larger structures, such as Law and Science, stood in peril of toppling.

Rest in peace, Marie.

The Examined Life at Age 8 or 98: Dorothy Height Rest in Peace

The New York Times reported today that Dorothy Height, Activist, Educator, Civil Rights Leader, and quintessential black feminist, has died at the age of 98. You can read the NYT obituary of Dorothy Height here.

Miss Height (and she was a Miss, not a Ms.; Dorothy Height reminded us that words such as “miss” and “Negro” need not be relegated to the dustbin) was for 40 years the president of the National Council of Negro Women. Many people are aware of her work as a quiet but determined worker for the cause of black progress. Far fewer understand that she was also instrumental in helping to forge bonds between black and white women and between people of differing religious beliefs. She championed causes both large and small, and was a counselor to presidents as well as an advocate for the rights of poor children. As the New York Times reports, for much of her early life she was pushed to the background by the male leaders of black civil rights groups and the female leaders of white feminist groups. But she kept working nonetheless.

The report of Dorothy Height’s death follows close on an article in the New York Times about Professor Thomas E. Wartenberg of Mount Holyoke College and his program that teaches philosophy to young children. You can read about it here. Professor Wartenberg uses common children’s books to introduce children (many of them apparently children of color) to basic philosophical inquiries, including aesthetics, ethics and metaphysics. It is Professor Wartenberg’s belief that these children, and all children, have the capacity to understand philosophical ideas and to put them into practice in their daily lives. He is quoted as saying: “A lot of people try to make philosophy into an elitist discipline.” He goes on to say, “But everyone is interested in basic philosophical ideas; they’re the most basic questions we have about the world.” In this regard, Professor Wartenberg’s work is of a piece with that of Dorothy Height. Dorothy Height embodied, perhaps better than anyone of her time, Socrates’ (and later Robert Nozick’s) notion of the examined life, for hers was a life involving public discussion of and engagement with life issues both great and small. Moreover, and more importantly, hers was a life of active service to both the great and the small. She reminds us that the seeming proliferation of fake progressives is not new, for there is nothing new under the sun. Our times now call for the same thing called for in Miss Height’s early career: eschewing labels and limelight and putting our shoulders to the wheel to effectuate genuine change.

Miss Dorothy Height, rest in peace.

The Root's "The Blackest White Folks We Know": What is Race?

Recently I commented on The Root's "The Blackest White Folks We Know" over at Feminist Law Professors. You can find my piece here. Below is the intro:

Before I begin, let me announce in advance: even as a progressive, Race and the Law teaching, feminist black woman, I DO have a sense of humor about race, gender and other matters of identity. Really. I’ve even been known to laugh at things that some people find distinctly unfunny. Take for example the “mockumentary” film Borat that I recently watched again for the nth time. I find it hilarious...

It is a follow-on to an original post by Feminist Law Professors' Bridget Crawford, posted here.

Check it out!




Want to Comment? Please do! Comments are moderated so may not immediately appear.

The Courage of Her Evictions (Or, Working on a Night Move)

A recent New York Times article on eviction and low-income black women offered the following:

"New research is showing that eviction is a particular burden on low-income black women, often single mothers, who have an easier time renting apartments than their male counterparts, but are vulnerable to losing them because their wages or public benefits have not kept up with the cost of housing.

And evictions, in turn, can easily throw families into cascades of turmoil and debt.

'Just as incarceration has become typical in the lives of poor black men, eviction has become typical in the lives of poor black women[.]'"

While job losses and the bleak economic picture are to blame in some cases, and tenant misbehavior in others, as the article point out, evictions sometimes occur when tenants complain to authorities about housing violations, making landlords angry. Eviction in these circumstances may be a textbook case of retaliatory eviction, which is, under certain circumstances, a defense to eviction. However, it is sometimes difficult to prove the reasons for an eviction, and, as in many legal matters, poor people of color often lack the resources to raise such defenses. Eviction appears to play a significant role in the cycle of poverty that traps some black women, but, unlike the attention given to foreclosures, evictions sometimes go unremarked and there are few bodies of data enumerating them. Indeed, one challenge to accurately counting evictions is the fact that a large number of evictions are not court-ordered—many people under the threat of eviction move before the process is completed. Some people still engage in what we in my childhood called a "night move"—moving out under cover of darkness to avoid the embarrassment of being seen by neighbors (or the landlord) when there was no hope of getting current on the rent. My aunt, with whom I lived for almost two years, was a night move professional. With her own ten children and the extra children (like me) that she often had residing with her, affordable, suitable housing was a continuous challenge. Note that engaging in a voluntary "day move" doesn't necessarily mean that all is well in your life. My mother used to tell me stoically of the morning that she smiled and waved my father off to work, then packed her personal items and her two children to get away from an abusive relationship. My mother firmly believed that women in situations of domestic abuse did best to avoid confrontation and to disappear while the abuser was away. Sadly, some types of domestic violence "day moves" feature the removal of the entire household even when abused persons don't wish to move out. As the New York Times article remarks, sometimes landlords evict tenants who have made domestic violence reports to police out of fear that authorities will somehow hold landlords liable for tolerating such disturbances.

As the article indicates, some temporary government programs have offered subsidies to those facing crisis in rental housing. The larger, longer term problem, however, goes unaddressed: housing represents a substantial expense even for people with middleclass incomes. This is even more true for the poor, as the cost of housing sometimes means choosing between shelter and food, clothes or medicine. To quote from the article:

"A minimum-wage worker may gross little more than $1,100 a month; a welfare recipient in Wisconsin receives $673 a month, while two-bedroom units start at about $475.

'On $673 a month, how do you buy tennis shoes for the kids, clean shirts for school and still pay your rent?'"

 

 

 

Disney’s The Princess and the Frog: Ain’t Nothing Going on But the Rent (Or, That Old Black Magic)

Happy New Year.

Over the recent holidays I went with my family to see the Disney film The Princess and the Frog. As many of you know, it features a character who has been billed as Disney's "first black princess," Tiana. My whole household had eagerly awaited this as we are to a person enamored of magic and are especially fond of Disney animated magic. My daughter was particularly keen on going, not because the princess was going to be black but because for her any princess is a good thing— I am of like mind (yeah, I'm just a girly girl at heart). That's why I was so sorely disappointed at the film. Movies are supposed to be fun and escapist. This movie struck me as just the opposite, and it has taken me days to mull over my feelings. (Warning: some spoilers below.)

Tiana is established at the outset as a shadow princess, one who is eclipsed by an actual princess. The film opens with two little girls, one white, one black, sitting and listening to a story. Charlotte (rhymes with Scarlet), the white child, is depicted as spoiled and demanding but cute and sweet (gee, how to be all of that at once?). Charlotte is dressed in princess finery while Tiana, the black child, bears but one indicia of royalty: a crown that seems to have been borrowed from the white child. As the scene expands we learn that the story is being read by the black seamstress mother of the black child and that the black child has accompanied her mother to the large, beautiful and indeed almost castle-like home of the white child in order to make for the white child yet another of what we learn are oodles of fine dresses. Job over, the seamstress and her daughter exit and go out and catch the street car back to their modest home in the black part of New Orleans where we see that Tiana is part of that now elusive social phenomenon, the Intact Black Family. Yes, there is a Dad! But he conveniently disappears early in the film, apparently a casualty of World War I. Nobody says so exactly, but the characters seem to sigh over a picture of Dad in his Doughboy uniform and intimate that he isn't coming back, offering an extremely fuzzy epitaph. Combat death is just too real for the folks in the Magic Kingdom--so I'll say it for them, borrowing from Joseph Conrad by way of T.S. Eliot—Mr. Dad, he dead. Of course, being orphaned or partially orphaned is a common trope in fairy tales. But why introduce the Dad at all?

We are in New Orleans during the period circa World War I. There is even a shot of a character reading a newspaper headline about Woodrow Wilson (also vaguely disquieting for me—Wilson had some not often enough discussed racial baggage of his own. See e.g. the segregation of federal jobs during the Wilson administration.) Now, if you're going to feature black folks involved in magic, New Orleans seems like a good choice what with voodoo and all (note that voodoo can be of the black (evil) or white (good) magic variety. ) But New Orleans also has all kinds of other unfortunate associations, lately starting and ending with Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. I reckon though that what they could really use down there right now is some magic, so, what the heck. The problem with establishing the movie in so well-known a contemporary locale is that it cuts into the fantasy like a knife. I don't know about other viewers but my mind was boggled by scenes suggesting a significant degree of interracial social interaction. I have read that New Orleans was in some ways more racially progressive than other parts of the American South, but depicting, for example, mixed race public dining seemed not quite credible. The dining scenes are crucial because we learn that Tiana, even as a child, was a gifted cook. She grows up to work as a cook and waitress at a restaurant where she dreams of owning her own restaurant and she painstakingly saves money towards it. Yuck, money. Is this a fairy tale or what? As one of my sons commented, introducing money into this tale imparts a nasty element of reality. It's one thing to dream (and Tiana's dream was, I have to say, pretty pedestrian for animated fantasy) but it's another to have to work to amass coins towards achieving a dream.

Just as Tiana grew up, so did Charlotte. Charlotte is now a spoiled (but still sweet and friendly—we don't get to dislike her; she's the real princess, after all) big girl who apparently demands and receives everything she wants from Big Daddy. A foreign potentate, Prince Naveen, is coming to town and Charlotte plans to have Big Daddy throw a big party for him at her big mansion in order to romance and marry him (Charlotte has got way bigger dreams that Tiana). Naturally Charlotte will need the services of a great cook so Charlotte comes into the restaurant where Tiana works and engages Tiana to make a large number of beignets for the party by tossing several pieces of paper currency at her. Yes, Charlotte throws bills. (Table dance, anyone?) This money is pivotal for Tiana—she is now, we learn, close to having the money she needs to obtain a building for her restaurant. Of course, like any good fairy tale, several obstacles come between Tiana and the purchase of her building, including racist realtors (In an alternate version of the tale perhaps they could cast Big Daddy and Charlotte as FHA testers or straw purchasers).

Prince Naveen is worthy of much more commentary than I have time to offer in this blog. After reading some of the summaries before seeing the film I wondered how a black princess could vie with a white woman for the same beau. Even in the new millennium interracial romantic relationships exist at the social margins. The prince's name, "Naveen" gave me some hint of what was to come— "Hmm," I thought, "Are they bringing in a guy from India?" Prince Naveen, it turns out, is a light brown guy from a fictional country with a sort of Latin sounding accent (It turns out the actor who voiced Naveen is Brazilian.) There was obvious confusion here on the part of the Disney folks. Which way to go? They couldn't have the white princess trying to romance a black guy. Neither could they have the black shadow princess romancing a white guy. Answer—go for racial ambiguity. Moreover, Prince Naveen's status as a royal is just as ambiguous. Naveen is a Prince without Portfolio—he has been disinherited by his royal parents for being a lazy spendthrift and has come to America to marry into money. Prince Naveen and his white handler?/valet?/pimp? (more ambiguity resulting from entrenched racial hierarchies —a white guy who is subordinate, yet not) are, in effect, seeking to pull a fast one over on poor Charlotte.

The scheme is further complicated by magic performed by a black villain called Dr. Facilier, aka the Shadow Man (who looks suspiciously like the musician Prince, purple clothes and all). Dr. Facilier transforms the homely handler into a replica of the prince and becomes the handler's handler so that now Dr. Facilier can get control of Charlotte's money after the wedding via the faux prince (this is big pimpin' à la Jay Z— "take 'em out the out the 'hood, keep 'em looking good" …sing along if you know it). Dr. Facilier turns the real prince into a frog and the frog then solicits help from Tiana, the shadow princess who gets in the way accidentally and ends up a princess by as twisted a route as ever could be imagined, including spending most of the film in the form of a frog (and you thought the part I described was convoluted). Tiana's initial interest in Naveen is about getting the money for her restaurant—truly, ain't nothing going on for Tiana but the rent at the beginning of their relationship. Naveen agrees that in exchange for Tiana's help he will give Tiana the money she needs. Not having any money of his own, Naveen plans to get the money from Charlotte after he marries. (Hey kids, can you spell "hustler"?) Why couldn't Tiana go straight to Big Daddy or Charlotte, her lifelong friends, for the money? Even my seven year old asked that question.

I offer a course called "Law in Literature and Film" where, in one of the units, I discuss how fairy tales and folk tales function as rule regimes in at least two respects—first, they inculcate social norms and next, though they offer magical, fantastical solutions to problems, these solutions in fact operate via clearly established rules, norms and hierarchies. I suppose that the Princess and the Frog is perhaps partly explained by this—from a race and gender perspective much of the film promotes business as usual stereotypes.

“The Couch of Restitution” (Or, The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea vs. The Devil in Miss Jones)

In a previous blog (feels like ages ago—I really must get out from under this blizzard of work!) I discussed the alienation of various aspects of human capacities and attributes, among them the sale of sexual services and the sale of "caring." I noted that, as per Professor Margaret Jane Radin, one significant reason for banning the sale of sexual services is the notion that commodification of this deeply intimate, personal human capacity could ultimately lead to dehumanization. This is true even in many cases where the seller of the sexual service ostensibly has a choice in whether or not to place her or his body into commerce. All too often "choice" is a slippery concept, and is strained to breaking in situations where the chooser has few viable options.

Consider a recent article in the ABA Journal that describes the case of a lawyer who allowed some clients to discharge legal fees by joining him on what he called his "couch of restitution" for sexual activity. After a client complained to the attorney ethics board in her state, ultimately the Michigan Attorney Discipline Board reviewed the matter and sanctioned the attorney by suspending his license to practice for 180 days. More than one client, had, in fact, complained to authorities that the lawyer had offered them the "couch of restitution" in exchange for legal services. According to the ABA Journal, the board opinion noted, "The high degree of similarity of these separate accounts established respondent's system of making sexual overtures to female clients who were seeking legal assistance in a domestic matter. These overtures occurred during a discussion of his legal fees."

It is perhaps not a surprise that women seeking assistance in domestic matters from mostly male lawyers might be asked to perform sexual services in exchange for a benefit. I first heard of such a thing years ago as a young college student when a middle-aged woman of my acquaintance shared with me all of the details of her sex-for-legal-services exchange with her divorce lawyer. I was horrified—I neither wanted to believe that this sort of thing happened nor that it had happened to someone I knew. This woman was a well-established suburban matron whose separation and pending divorce from her abusive husband had left her with few reserves of either money or self-esteem. She was, it seems, an ideal target. Back then I wrote her lawyer off as an abusive weirdo who represented few members of the legal profession. It turns out, though, that the woman that I spoke to is not alone: one scholar cited a nationwide survey of attorneys showing that 32 percent of the respondents answered that they knew at least one attorney who had engaged in sexual relations with a client. A posting to another blog late last spring, Above the Law, describes another lawyer recently sanctioned for trading legal services for sex.

This sort of thing, it turns out, cuts across professions—for instance, the "casting couch," where hopeful actresses perform sexual services for movie producers and directors, is the stuff of legend. Even in today's post feminist employment climate, successful women are sometimes derided as having "slept" their way up the corporate ladder, whether they did so or not. And last, but not least, stories of female students who exchange sexual favors with male professors for higher grades are still very much a part of the academic landscape, university faculty conduct codes notwithstanding. Part of the barrier to ending these types of behaviors is the way in which this sort of sexual favor trading is viewed in not only in specific professions but by society as a whole. Women who participate in such exchanges are sometimes viewed with scorn and derision, dismissed as calculating hussies who knowingly, willingly, and gladly choose to trade sex rather than money for desired benefits. In contrast, the men who accept the sexual pay outs are rarely subjected to public opprobrium and not very often held otherwise accountable; they are sometimes even lauded by locker-room style banter . This is no less true in legal settings. Just review the comments posed after the ABA Journal article linked above. One poster seems to call women who have made such trades with their lawyers "restitutes," a pun on prostitutes. Other posters mocked the fact that the complainer who initiated the matter complained only after she exchanged sexual services yet still received a bill. Very few postings evinced any sympathy or concern for the women involved.

Acknowledging that sexual contact between lawyers and clients is an ongoing and serious problem, in 2002 the ABA drafted a rule explicitly barring sexual contact between attorneys and their clients in certain contexts. Drafters cited the inherent power imbalance of the lawyer-client relationship, an imbalance that easily leads to the exploitation of clients by attorneys. Nonetheless, such abuses continue, as they occur in settings where few victims are willing to come forward. Especially for women seeking legal counsel in domestic matters, if the choice is between sexual activity with a lawyer or continuing on in a difficult domestic situation, it's the choice between the Devil and the deep blue sea. Or is it, as some would have it, the "Devil in Miss Jones?" that is the apt metaphor here?

 

 

Alienate My Affections: The Market (In)Alienability of Attending to Others (Or, Aynnie Did You Dun?)

I have been away from my blog for quite some days now as I plunge into teaching, writing, editing articles, and finalizing my dissertation. Anyway, with all of the intellectual cross-pollination going on in my life, I find myself thinking about the ways in which a number of the concepts I teach about and write about have value and meaning in my real life—yes, my other, mostly non-scholarly life, the one where I make extra strong lattes and watch the wind blow while hanging out with family and friends. I also inevitably end up thinking about just how limited and valuable time is. Both of these thoughts occurred to me the other day after teaching a Property class on "Market Inalienability."

"Market Inalienability" is an article in which the author, Professor Margaret Jane Radin, discusses the extent to which and whether society should ban (or continue to ban in the case of existing prohibitions) the commodification of certain human activities, aspects or attributes while allowing the non-pecuniary transfer of the same goods (if the use of the word "goods" doesn't beg the question). So, for instance, in the case of prostitution, there have long been rules that forbid such activities. In contrast, certain exchanges of sexual favors without direct payment, such as sexual intimacy in marriage, are completely permitted and even encouraged. Of course, a crucial question in the latter example is what it means to get paid for sexual services (how much marital romantic feeling is premised on the desire for general economic well being or even for more specific economic recompense, after all?), but for the most part our broad, modern social understanding of marriage marks it as the ultimate in sanctioned sexual exchange for non-pecuniary purposes. One significant reason for banning the sale of sexual services is, says Professor Radin, the notion that commodification of this deeply intimate, personal human capacity could ultimately lead to dehumanization. Hence, maintaining a system of non-commodification of sexual services (or, at least, "incomplete commodification" which may allow for some commercial activity in the realm of sex as an acknowledgement that values of autonomy and basic human need may require this) helps to promote "human flourishing" by preventing the objectification of human beings.

Well and good, I say. But does this still hold true when considering the "sale" of other forms of non-sexual interpersonal relations such as affection, caring, concern, or even attending to others in the form of working on their behalf? As to the latter point, isn't working for others for pay a form of human commodification? Indeed, working is one form of commodification that can have truly dehumanizing consequences. Thinkers such as Proudhon and Marx didn't call it "wage slavery" for nothing. We (mostly) non-Marxists in the Western world just call it a "job" and call truly dehumanizing situations "bad jobs." Ultimately, it's mostly all good if you can just get paid enough. "Get paid" has become one of the mantras of postmodernity.

This being the case, what's up with spending time on behalf of others and not getting paid? We generally call such actions by rosy euphemisms such as "volunteerism," "community building," "institution building," and even "homemaking." In what I perceive to be a far less rosy use of euphemism, we sometimes construct unpaid activities as actually being paid, either included in the pay you already receive ("it's a duty that's implied in the nature of your job") or being compensated by intangible, non-monetary personal benefits ("you will be incredibly appreciated if you do this.") But one woman's volunteerism or community building is another woman's unpaid and abusive labor situation.

Now, of course, there is significant value to labor performed without monetary compensation, and this is addressed by a number of scholars and non-scholars alike. Sometimes unpaid labor represents an investment that will pay off in pecuniary terms for the worker at some time in the future. Sometimes unpaid labor is what the worker "pays back" for societal benefits he or she has already received, often times in surfeit. At other times, unpaid "care work" (which I define as work promoting or supporting not just the practical needs of others but their aspirations, ideals or goals, and often heavily laden with an emotional, moral or ideological component) is, as some have argued, an operationalization of a broader "ethic of care" that seeks to address unmet community, institutional or personal needs.

However, in a perverse and inverse operation of the saying "you get what you pay for," all too often those who engage unpaid laborers in "care work" get far, far more than they would ever be willing or able to pay for. In contrast, sometimes unpaid workers in such settings, unless they hold prestigious, high profile positions, are not only uncompensated but devalued and frequently forgotten all together. In short, contributing to human flourishing via selflessness sometimes devolves into an absence of self. As one student said to me the other day after our class discussion of Professor Radin's piece and its implications: "What would Ayn Rand have to say about all of this?" (It was awesome to know that people are still reading Rand, even if, as the student said, he felt as if he had to hide the book from public view).

Is there room for the articulation of a principled Randian "ethic of egoism" in all of this, a positive affirmation of the worth of the individual in certain cases where that ethic is all too frequently being implemented only by the powerful? This is, I think, an especially trenchant question for women of color and women in general, as they seem to do an awful lot of the uncompensated work in our society, be it sexual, social or otherwise.

*This blog entry is a shorter version of one of my current working papers.