Engender Zine Feb 2016

r e d gen

en

february 2016

a p roduction of the

Visit us at the RMC Learn about us on women.rice.edu Like us on facebook.com/RiceWRC Contact us at womenrc@rice.edu

Contents Ab .. ing. inking n r Th inson Mo This ob p ue R q ke U a l o B IW

w To Fello

ou

st t La

ht

Nig

llies White A chilling e Bridg t S

BHM Feminist Playlist Julian Wilson

Black Femin

ism & Whit e Patriarch y Jeff Tang

The V alue of H Khad BCUs ijah E rskin e

This zine is a collection of thoughts, comments, and research on gender and related topics. It is a continuation of the discussions that are already happening within the Rice community and beyond.

The purpose of this zine is to create a platform that consolidates ideas and perspectives to give voice to concerns specific to our Rice community.Our goal is to engage the entire campus by exposing students to conversations on gender and sexuality, among other things, through a unique lens—a lens created by and for our community!

Letter from the Editors

This month’s issue falls very much in line with the national Black History Month, with articles strongly emphasizing the importance and necessity of seeking and preserving civil rights. From addressing the complicated relationship of ally to group member to reflecting on recent and not-so-recent tragedies in the United States, we hope that this issue of Engender brings civil rights issues to the forefront of your mind. Look for problems and solutions here on campus and in the greater Houston community. Regardless of your own identification, we comprise a community committed to acknowledging a tragic history and working to prevent its repetition.

We hope that this zine will engender discussion among friends, classmates, and colleagues about the many ways in which gender and sexuality shape and are shaped by our culture. We welcome your feedback and contributions—contact us at womenrc@rice.edu or stop by the Rice Women’s Resource Center in the RMC. Thank you for reading, and be on the lookout for future issues of engender!

Anna Durham and Julian Wilson Editors-in-Chief

I woke up this morning... ...thinking about last night

By Blaque Robinson

I woke up this morning thinking about last night. I woke up this morning thinking about what was going to happen at Mizzou today, what we needed to say about Mizzou, what was happening at Yale, what needed to be said at Yale, what was going to happen at Rice today, what we needed to say at Rice.

Woke refers, in my definition, to those persons of color that are constantly plugged in. We know about the latest injustices. Some talk about the ails of a capitalistic society. Some talk about power structures meant to keep people of color down. Some talk about the effects of racism on their day to day life. Some speak out. Some have one-on-one conversations with the perennially ignorant on their college campuses. Some work to educate other people of color around them about how the injustices our brothers and sisters face in California affect us here in Houston.

Some just cry in their rooms. Some have to take an information break.

Some can’t even speak.

Some cannot bear the weight of staying woke.

Today, I rest here. I rest fed up, too sad, beyond angry, unable to do homework, can’t think about that thesis, wishin’ I could just go get some ice cream with the besties or cuddle up with the boo thang and pretend that the world is going just the way it should and injustice is not threatening to break down my door.

But I can’t. Even when I’m fed up, I still come face-to-face with injustice because I am a Black female body that just doesn’t mix it up well all the time in a white male society. Every day, even without checking my Facebook feed for the latest on injustice in America today, I wake up “woke” and I can never go back to sleep.

James Baldwin so aptly said, “to be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”

What happens to that Black woman at the back of the classroom who is faced with so much violence by being at an institution of higher learning that she can’t bear to read the next assignment for class? What happens

to that Black boy whose brother was shot and killed last week, yet his teacher is yelling at him for not turning in his paper and he can’t even manage an answer because all he will do is cry? What happens to that black girl who just lost her mother and grandmother, is depressed, doesn’t want to give up her cellphone and as a result gets slammed to the floor by a school police officer?

What does this mean for the Black college student trying to get into DuBois’s esteemed Talented Tenth to lift up the community who walks into her residential college commons at Rice University’s Brown College to see “most likely to be a bitch ass nigga” posted on the wall?

To live in a constant state of rage is also to live in a constant state of the unknown. It is necessary, but it is unhealthy. The Black body does not suffer from the disease of rage, rather, rage is the symptom of constant exposure to the the toxicity of a racist, sexist, homophobic, elitist environment. We suffer because white middle-class cis-hetero able-bodied society has chosen to hate those who are not them.

Yet I, not they, am forced to come face-to-face with the realities of injustice every day.

We wake to the pathologizing of the bodies we inhabit for being perpendicular to “the privileged.”

Our screams, yells, cries, and demands that we be recognized as human are used against us to prove just how valid the claims to our inhumanity are and the necessity of our invisibility.

We are in a constant state of rage.

Some cannot bear the weight of constantly being “woke.”

What happens then?

Note: I identify as a cis black able-bodied woman. So, when I say “we” I am referring to those areas of my identity that are targeted and recognize those areas which are privileged from having to be perpendicular.

To Fellow White Allies:

By Bridget Schilling

As white people, most structures of our society are catered to us: history, television, books, police interactions, political representation, music, etc. It becomes so engrained that if an institution is inclusive of people outside of the demographic we inherently associate with it, that it takes something away from us that is rightfully ours (i.e. affirmative action). The hardest thing about being an ally in any case, but here, specifically about being a white ally, is that we need to actively decide that we are going to let go of what we might believe.

For example: •

It is not our place to decide what is racist. The systems that benefit us are racist; something being made without keeping white people in mind is not.

•

Being pro-something that is not white is not the same as being racist against white people. You can be prejudiced against people in a power majority. You can’t be racist against them. It’s like how you can’t be sexist against men. Racism and sexism are institutions that damage people. Prejudice damages feelings but doesn’t tend to cause systematic poverty or violence.

•

It is not anyone’s job to explain a movement or speak for an entire group of people because we feel like we deserve to understand.

•

Similarly, don’t try to speak for other people. Use your platform to leverage people’s voices, but don’t expect to be their voices.

Things that are our job: •

Listening. Chances are, if someone makes a claim that doesn’t make sense to you about their own experiences, there is a basis behind it.

•

Being anti-racist. Not being racist is not the same thing as actively trying to fight systems of oppression. Complacency isn’t cute.

•

Challenging what we find offensive to white people. It is hard to push off the assumption that things should be made palatable to us in order to be valid, but that’s something we need to do.

•

Be open to being wrong and take steps to actively correct ourselves.

Black Feminism & White Patriarchy

By Jeff Tang

Growing up, my friends were mainly affluent, white males.

Thus, I believe I have attained a certain amount of their cultural capital.

At the same time, my physical identity as a Chinese male contributes to how society perceives me, which, by observing mass media portrayals, appears to be negative. That being said, I still live in a society that vests more power in the hands of men than women.

The “Glass Ceiling” restricts power from minorities and women, as evidenced by their lack of presence as CEOs or members of Congress.

What is even tougher is being a subordinate on multiple levels. For instance, Black Feminist scholars generally agree with the add-ons, the Women’s Liberation movements for whites and the African-American Civil Rights Movement for men. Racism in the former as well as sexism in the latter occurred independently towards black women. Women of color, then, experience an “intersectionality,” which in this case is a doubly lowered, racist and patriarchal Glass Ceiling.

Ultimately, levels of power and privilege are relative. We sometimes speak of such broader categorizations as socioeconomic classes.

However, at the microscopic level, we are all located on a continuum of power and privilege. Whether it derives from race, gender, sexual orientation, finances, family, and so on, we have differing amounts of cultural capital as valued by mainstream society. Fortunately, relativity implies fluidity. Positive social change is possible, and one way to guide this change is by locating not only ourselves but also others on this spectrum. “Check your privilege,” yes, but do not just stop there. Place your privilege in perspective with that of others, and in doing so practice empathy. For example, the mere fact that you can read this essay means you are more privileged than some 785 million people (two thirds of whom are women). Thus, it could be worse for you and me, but it could also be so much better for countless others. This location through relation, then, may also reaffirm our capacity for greater impact, for using the privilege and power that we do have to help those less fortunate.

The Value of Historically Black Colleges and Universities

By Khadijah Erskine I rarely advertise that I went to a historically black college (HBCU) for part of my sophomore year even though it served an instrumental role in my personal growth. Historically, these colleges and universities offered black students the opportunity to earn a higher education in the midst of the racial discrimination that existed at many US universities and colleges. Some Rice students may not have to think about this often, but if you heard of the event 50 years of Black Life at Rice you can guess that Rice University itself did not start admitting black students until 50 years ago. Although the first black students at Rice lived and studied through a very different and hostile political and social climate, current black students still face different challenges at this institution.

My personal testimony and reflection started when I transferred to and spent a short amount of time at Texas Southern University.

Although people questioned my decision (and still do), it turned out to be the place where I truly felt empowered. It was a place where I never questioned my abilities, talents, intelligence and no one else questioned my abilities based in my race. In general I felt that TSU offered me something that I was not getting at Rice. The first clearly being that I was never questioned on how capable I was. Second, I did not feel the almost taboo power gaps between myself, peers, and professors that existed at Rice. There were many times where I advocated for myself to my professors and risked being the most annoying and obnoxious transfer student to step onto the TSU campus yet it worked out in my favor in ways that would not have happened for me at Rice. I was not the only black person in my courses and singled out as the “token” black student. And lastly, I did not have to carry the weight of representing my entire race by my performance alone. If I did poorly on something, it wasn’t because I was a dumb black girl and that black people are naturally inferior in academia. There may be people thinking that I am just making things up to victimize myself, but I cannot count the amount of times that people

told me that I had it easy because Medical Schools would look at me as a black women and automatically lower the standards of acceptance in comparison to my white and asian peers. I never knew how to defend myself from these hostilities because I was always outnumbered (the black student population at Rice is approximately 7%). I even remember when we had a black speaker during O-week and a fellow freshman at my college later told me that the speaker was just “too black” for him.

These were my first experiences with race at Rice. Although I later joined BSA because of my positive experience at Harambe, the residential college system initially impeded my social circle by separating me from the people who would have been a great support network in dealing with these situations in the moments they occurred.

I acknowledge that some of these issues are internal (not advocating for myself) but they have manifested from ongoing interactions with the general population. In the end, I know that my experiences do not speak for everyone, but I am confident that I am not alone in the sentiments about being a black student at Rice. Although TSU is by no means a perfect institution and a utopia for black students, I am forever grateful for the experience and knowledge I gained there.

see you in the next issue of the engender zine!

Editors in Chief

Anna Durham and Julian Wilson

Contributing Authors

Blaque Robinson Bridget Schilling Jeff Tang Khadijah Erskine

Want to submit something to the next edition of engender?

Send your submission to womenrc@rice.edu!