One Drop

Posted on February 28, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

This post is making the rounds and stirring folks up: Why I don’t want to have biracial children.

The “One Drop Rule” previously was used as a method to keep people who had Black heritage down. Once an individual was identified as having Black heritage, it was easy for white people to dismiss and subjugate them. But, today, in many cases, the “one drop rule” is used instead to convince Black people who have a white parent that they, in fact, are closer to “whiteness” and should therefore reject the notion of struggling to dismantle white supremacy.

While some people claim that the term “biracial” allows them to embrace the fullness of their heritage, I think, unfortunately, that white people often use it to keep Black people, who could otherwise be working together to end racism, stratified. It creates a sort of “buffer” zone between white and Black, which is used to convince people that racism/white supremacy is no longer an issue.

Yikes.

As I’ve written before, my daughter is not “bi-racial”. She’s a glorious mix of many things. Her eight great-grandparents hailed from four different continents. Under the old One Drop rule, Heloise would be an “octoroon” (one great-grandfather was from what is now Nigeria.) Because of that history, blackness is a part of her identity. But she is also the great-granddaughter of Holocaust refugees; her great-great-grandmother died in Auschwitz. Is that not something to be claimed as well? She carries within her the blood of indigenous Colombians (probably Muisca); is their suffering not to be part of her story? And yes, she’s got healthy dollops of heritage from history’s more recent “winners”, ranging from dour, business-savvy North German Lutherans to fiery Scots-Irish Presbyterians. I’m the great-great-great-great grandson of a rabbi in a Moravian shtetl, and the great-great-great-grandson of Calvinist slave-owners in East Texas. My wife and I carry the blood of the victims and the perpetrators of slavery and genocide, and we have the gift to know more than many about our family history.

My wife can check a lot of boxes on the census form, and does so. She is proud to be black, and proud too to be the great-granddaughter of hard-working Dalmatian stonemasons. In her closet hang the soccer jerseys of the Nigerian, Croatian, and Colombian national squads. When it comes to her heritage, she fiercely rejects the notion of prioritizing one people and one history. And we are raising Heloise to reject that tribalism as well.

We speak Spanish and English to Heloise, but my mother-in-law easily mixes elegant Castilian with Afro-Colombian expressions that owe more to the Yoruba than to the inhabitants of Iberia. My daughter calls her vulva her “kozumba”, a West African loan word common among black Colombians; that same little one can recite the blessing for Friday night candlelighting. (With her voice, it starts “bah-wook atwah Ah-doe-nigh”.) Her nose is African, her eyes are green, her hair the same light brown as her father’s. She is African, Spanish, indigenous Colombian, English, Scots-Irish, Czech, Croatian, Welsh, German, Flemish and Jewish.

And as we all do, she carries history encoded in her genes. But she is carried by parents who know better than to saddle her with the burdens of that history. We live in Los Angeles, the global capital of self-reinvention, for many reasons: not least to raise a child who can honor her diverse heritage without ever being haunted by the false obligation to elevate one of those ancestries above all others. Heloise may someday feel the call of one aspect of her heritage more strongly than the rest, and that’s fine. She can self-describe as she likes. Until then, she is gloriously, unmistakably, unapologetically multi-racial.

For more, see this post: Kindly Remembrance: of Faith, Ancestors, and Debts to the Past

And: A very long post about Los Angeles, an Eagles song, nationalism, history, self-reinvention and the “club versus country” debate

A Season for Everything Save Shame

Posted on February 28, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

From February 2009. Lots of reprints right now, as I’m working on final edits to the book, due this week.

Note: When our daughter was first born and named Heloise Cerys Raquel, we planned to call her by her second name, Cerys (pronounced “kerris”). Within a few weeks, we changed our minds, but this post was written before that shift.

Amanda Marcotte has a short piece up at RH Reality Check on women and libido. For such a brief post, she manages to touch on two separate but interlinked issues: one, the problem with pathologizing low female libido; two, the root cause of widespread “lack of interest.” Here’s the marvelous final paragraph:

It’s an indicator of how male-dominated our society is that the fact that women have diminishing libidos and don’t seem to care that much about it is treated as the problem, when in fact it’s merely the symptom of a larger problem–that women feel overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, understimulated, and shamed about their bodies. If we treated the actual problems that women face, higher libidos would be the happy result, I’m sure. But in order to do that, we’d have to treat male domination like a problem to be solved, and since few people really want to do that, instead we’re left with articles that note women’s lack of libido, but carefully resist asking why.

That’s spot on.

The great sex therapist, David Schnarch, writes in his Passionate Marriage (the best sex advice book for couples in long-term relationships I’ve ever seen) that we do well to avoid the question “Why doesn’t my wife (or my husband, or my bf, gf, what-have-you) want to have sex with me?” The whole structure of the question, Schnarch says, misses the point. It assumes a strong libido is the default setting in any romantic relationship. Rather, we should ask “Why should my partner want to have sex with me?” And also “Why do I really want to have sex with him or her?”

This can be shaming, of course, if not asked rightly. Schnarch doesn’t want his patients following the “Why should my partner want to have sex with me?” with a sigh and an “After all, I’m unattractive, it stands to reason that they should have no reason to want me.” Buit it is a reminder, as I’ve written many times, that sex is never obligatory. The “I will” of the wedding day is not a blank check to be cashed daily, weekly, or monthly by whichever spouse has a higher libido. We ought to be answering Schnarch’s question not with “Because she’s my wife and it’s her job” or even with “Because we’re in love, and people in love are supposed to fuck a lot.” We ought to be answering it by having an honest discussion with ourselves (before we have one with our partners) about what it is sex means to us, what makes us in the mood, what we see as the purpose of sex in our lives. Continue reading →

Where Does the Suitcase Sleep? A reprint on families and sexual propriety

Posted on February 28, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

From September 2006.

In last week’s post about "sleeping together", I wrote about taking my high school girlfriend for a weekend away at my family’s place in the country. I mentioned how excited she and I were to get the chance to spend the whole night together in the same bed. I wrote:

Though according to family protocol, the "luggage stays in separate rooms", I was able to sneak into her room and we could fall asleep together.

It’s been nearly twenty-two years, but I can still remember my reaction when I first heard my late and beloved grandmother (the matriarch of the family and the final arbiter of what was Good and Right) use the phrase: "The luggage must stay in separate rooms." It’s a line we in the family often repeat today. When my wife and I were visiting the Ranch for a big family weekend last month, one of my college-aged cousins had his girlfriend up for a visit. They were each put in different rooms, just as my high-school girlfriend and I had been all those years ago. But once again, it was made explicitly clear that this was not a prohibition on either sexual activity or spending the night together. It was merely a nod to social convention, but an important one.

I’ve been involved with many people and many different families. (I’ve not only been married four times, I’ve had four different sets of in-laws.) I’ve had ample opportunity in these marriages and other relationships to see the various views families take on sleeping arrangements for unmarried couples. Basically, I’ve noticed most families fall into one of three categories — and I’ve experienced all three many a time.

1. The most conservative families make sure that the two halves of an unmarried couple not only get put in separate rooms, they make it clear that they are to stay in those rooms all night. For these traditionalists, pre-marital sex (at least in the family home) is absolutely unacceptable. I married into one of those families once. It was very frustrating.

2. The liberal families cheerfully put even teenage unmarried couples in the same room overnight. Shortly before I turned 18, I was able to go away with my girlfriend’s family for the weekend to their cabin on the Russian River. My girlfriend (a high school junior) and I were put in the same room with one double bed. No one batted an eyelash. It was deliciously exciting, but a bit bizarre.

3. Then there’s the OKOP way: put the two young people in separate rooms, but ignore any nocturnal traffic. "Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t patrol the hallways, and make sure your little loving noises don’t wake anyone else!" One of the criticisms often leveled at WASPs of my background is that we are more concerned with the appearance of things than their substance. We care more for propriety than for morality. And I suppose, to some small degree, that’s a fair charge.

But honestly, I like the "luggage in separate rooms" policy best. I was deeply ambivalent, even when I was at my most fervently evangelical, about the mandate to remain chaste until marriage. At the same time, I think that marriage (or domestic partnership) is worthy of special recognition — and one way in which my family conveys that recognition is by not only allowing the couple to share a bed, but allowing their bags to be publicly placed in the same room. In my family, we don’t police the sexual decisions of unmarried older teens or young adults. What’s done behind closed doors, whether by 17 year-olds or 27 year-olds, is none of our business. ("Our Kind of People" don’t ask nosy questions.) But we also want to send a message that there is something unique and special about a publicly-professed commitment. Hence, the third option of "separate rooms for the suitcases if not for their owners" seems best.

Thoughts?

Blog updates

Posted on February 27, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

My blog has been dark much of the weekend thanks to a major upgrade in WordPress. I now have a new Disqus commenting system (the sort in use at many blogs). The old comments will eventually be loaded, but for now, only new comments will appear. There are more changes to come here at my eponymous site, but as I was getting nailed by spam, it was crucial to get things updated now.

Friday Random Ten: proud public servant edition

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

Ain’t nobody else out there who knows and likes all ten of these artists. I wouldn’t bet my mortgage on that, but close.

1. “Alabaster”, Oh Susanna
2. “Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song”, B.J. Thomas
3. “People in the Hole”, Catherine Feeny
4. “Playing your Song”, Hole
5. “Walk Away From Love”, Eliza Gilkyson
6. “Follow Me There”, Third Day
7. “Chemo Limo”, Regina Spektor
8. “Barbara Allen”, Art Garfunkel
9. “Shir Hamalot”, Sheva
10. “Heart Collectors”, Leila Broussard

Menarche, Thelarche, Mentoring

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

At Healthy is the New Skinny this morning, my very short weekly column deals with encouraging teen girls to mentor and support their pre-teen little sisters — particularly because of the constellation of cultural and physiological pressures we see today.

A more detailed version of that can be found in this post: Biology Still Isn’t Destiny: Creating Safe Childhoods in an Age of Ever-Earlier Puberty.

Thursday Short Poem: Carson’s “So the Hall Door Shuts…”

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

Anne Carson, a contemporary Canadian poet, is another one of those whose work I’ve known for a while — but from whom I’ve never had a Thursday Short Poem. This devastating piece about the end of things is a fitting offering.

So The Hall Door Shuts Again And All Noise Is Gone

In the effort to find one’s way among the contents of memory
(Aristotle emphasizes)
a principal of association is helpfulâ€”
“passing rapidly from one step to the next.
For instance from milk to white,
from white to air,
from air to damp,
after which one recollectes autumn supposing one is trying to
recollect that season.”
Or supposing,
fair reader,
you are trying to recollect not autumn but freedom,
a principal of freedom
the existed between two people, small and savage
as principals goâ€”but what are the rules for this?
As he says,
folly may come into fashion.
Pass then rapidly
from one step to the next,
for instance from nipple to hard,
from hard to hotel room,
from hotel room

to a phrase found in a letter he wrote in a taxi one day he passed
his wife
walking
on the other side of the street and she did not see him, she wasâ€”
so ingenious are the arrangements of the state of flux we call
our moral history are they not almost as neat as mathematical
propositions except written on waterâ€”
on her way to the courthouse
to file papers for divorce, a phrase like
“how you tasted between your legs”.
After which by means of this wholly divine faculty, the “memory
of words and things,”
one recollects
freedom.
Is it I? cries the soul rushing up.
Little soul, poor vague animal:
beware this invention “always useful for learning and life”
as Aristotle say, Aristotle who
had no husband,
rarely mentions beauty
and was likely to pass rapidly from wrist to slave when trying to
recollect wife.

Honoring risk, honoring ourselves

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

I’ve got another piece up at Sir Richard’s Condom Company today: “From Oh, No to Oh, My!”

Excerpt:

People who insist on using condoms are sending a signal about how they value both themselves and their partners. They recognize the reality that sex is always risky â€“ physically, emotionally, psychologically. Thatâ€™s part of its appeal and its rush, and a huge part of what makes it so exciting.

There are risks from which we can easily protect ourselves, and those we canâ€™t. We canâ€™t put a condom on our hearts. (Would we want to?) But we can put them on our bodies to honor ourselves and the person weâ€™re with. Using a condom willingly says â€œI care. As carried away as I might be, I never forget to take care of myself and of you.â€

For every slacker, a perfectionist: some thoughts on class, sex, and the community college

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

One of the things about teaching full-time at an urban community college is that I have a front-row seat for social, economic, and cultural change. And when it comes to issues of race, class, and gender, the transformations I’ve seen in the last two years have been profound.

California, like so many other states, has been hard-hit by the recession. We’re on our third straight year of draconian cutbacks to higher education, with no end in sight. Fees are rising, class sections are being cut, hiring is frozen. And this has changed the student population, at least in my classes.

My students are whiter and more middle-class than they’ve been in over a decade. From the mid-90s until the mid-00′s, Pasadena City College grew progressively “less white”, with European-American students falling from perhaps 30% of the student body when I began teaching to about 15% by 2005. (And at PCC, we count immigrants from the former Soviet Union and from much of the Middle East as “white”, including students of Arabic and Armenian descent.) But with the coming of the economic downturn, the white middle-class kids are returning in droves.

Students who once would have skipped the community college and headed straight to state universities are coming here first, both because of cost considerations and because spaces have been drastically reduced at California’s public four-year institutions. In our community college district, we have more than a dozen high schools that serve as our feeders. But traditionally, we’ve drawn relatively small numbers of kids from the “affluent” schools (like La Canada and San Marino High Schools). I note — and this is all anecdata — that within the past two years, the number of students coming from those more prosperous communities has climbed.

What this means, of course, is that I have more students than ever in my classes who are “college-ready.” The percentage of my students whose writing and reasoning skills need remedial attention is lower. But the danger is that at a place like PCC, the students from more privileged backgrounds raise the competition level — and make it easier for those who lack basic skills to fall through the cracks. When the average goes up (and in most of my classes over the past two years, the “average” scores on exams have indeed risen), competition grows fiercer. And in an era of declining resources (we’ve had major cutbacks to our tutoring and counseling services), that means it’s harder than ever for the college to function as a ladder into the middle class.

There’s something interesting happening as well around gender. I’m getting more men in my classes again. In my nearly twenty years here, women have averaged around 55% of overall enrollment, though that number is skewed by the high number of men in vocational education classes. In the humanities and social sciences, the percentage of women has hovered around 65% of all students until recently. But we’re seeing more men coming in, no doubt due to the terrible job climate.

But here’s where the sex differences remain stark. It’s axiomatic that the poor economy has ratcheted up anxiety for everyone. But from listening to students in my gender studies classes, that anxiety manifests quite differently for men and women. While both men and women are more likely to live with their parents for longer periods than before, my female students are much more likely to carry full academic loads. While I have roughly equal numbers of men and women in all my classes save for women’s studies, those who are taking more than the standard 15 unit semester load are overwhelmingly female. My female students are also more likely to be working multiple part-time jobs. Continue reading →

On “the number”

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Hugo Schwyzer

It’s the first day of Spring classes at Pasadena City College, and though I’m still feeling frail from this persistent bug, I’m eager to meet a new crop of amazing students.

My regular “Further Up, Further In” column at Good Man Project Magazine runs each Tuesday. This week, addressing a familiar issue to long-time readers here on the blog: what should, and what shouldn’t, we expect to know about a partner’s sexual past? Here’s Why Does it Matter How Many Partners She’s Had?

For much more detail, here are six years worth of posts on the topic of Ex-Lovers.