Friday 5: Skeptic Sexism, Color-Blind Racism in the Era of Obama, Tavis Smiley Censored?, and More

Rebecca Watson

1. It Stands to Reason, Skeptics Can Be Sexist Too (via Slate)

I've been plastering this piece all over Facebook and Google+ this week. (Hat tip to my husband for sending me the article!). Watson's experience seems very similar to those of geeks/nerds of color who've been marginalized at various genre conventions. 

When I first got involved with the skeptics, I thought I had found my people—a community that enjoyed educating the public about science and critical thinking. The sense of belonging I felt was akin, I imagine, to what other people feel at church. (I wouldn’t exactly know—like most skeptics, I’m an atheist.) I felt we were doing important work: making a better, more rational world and protecting people from being taken advantage of. At conventions, skeptic speakers and the audience were mostly male, but I figured that was something we could balance out with a bit of hard work and good PR. 

Then women started telling me stories about sexism at skeptic events, experiences that made them uncomfortable enough to never return. At first, I wasn’t able to fully understand their feelings as I had never had a problem existing in male-dominated spaces. But after a few years of blogging, podcasting, and speaking at skeptics’ conferences, I began to get emails from strangers who detailed their sexual fantasies about me. I was occasionally grabbed and groped without consent at events. And then I made the grave mistake of responding to a fellow skeptic’s YouTube video in which he stated that male circumcision was just as harmful as female genital mutilation (FGM). I replied to say that while I personally am opposed to anynon-medical genital mutilation, FGM is often much, much more damaging than male circumcision. 

The response from male atheists was overwhelming. This is one example:
“honestly, and i mean HONESTLY.. you deserve to be raped and tortured and killed. swear id laugh if i could” 

I started checking out the social media profiles of the people sending me these messages, and learned that they were often adults who were active in the skeptic and atheist communities. They were reading the same blogs as I was and attending the same events. These were “my people,” and they were the worst.

2. Farmers, Workers, Consumers, Unite! New Visions in Food Justice

Like Natasha Bowen, Yvonne Yen Liu is doing some amazing and important work in the fight for food justice. In this piece she explores the origins of the food justice movement and the next steps for its future. 

Twenty years ago, Los Angeles was ablaze. The story of Rodney King’s violent beating by a group of white officers, their subsequent acquittal, and the community uprisings that followed, are widely known. But what you may not know is that the modern food justice movement took root in the wake of the uprisings. 

The 1992 uprisings put hunger and poverty in Los Angeles on the map: in the following year, a group of environmental justice students from UCLA, under the supervision of professor Robert Gottlieb, released Seeds of Change, a report on food security in the South Central neighborhood, which found that more than one out of three residents surveyed lacked funds to buy food. In addition, community members didn’t have access to supermarkets to buy healthy and fresh food because they had no supermarkets nearby or lacked transportation. 

The students placed their findings in a framework they called “community food security.” This concept became the organizing principle for a national movement, which coalesced in the form of the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC). Advocates defined community food security as “all persons obtaining at all times an affordable, nutritious and culturally appropriate diet through local, non-emergency food sources.” The same definition was later embraced by the USDA, and has guided the food justice movement ever since.
These days, we’re seeing signs that this notion may need an update that incorporates increasingly popular ideas about local ownership and environmental sustainability.

3. He Doesn't Get It Because He Doesn't Live It: Discussing Race In My Interracial Relationship

Another article about the ins and outs of discussing race in a black/white interracial relationship. 

Just the other day we were talking about Sheila Johnson’s criticisms of BET (which I think are ridiculous considering BET has never exactly been known for its quality programming) when he mentioned that he couldn’t understand why BET was even necessary. From there we launched into an entire discussion about the whether or not Hollywood all but completely ignores black actors, actresses, artists, producers, writers, and directors, and if it weren’t for BET or other all-Black-everything media outlets, would Black people even be represented in the media at all. Of course that led into a discussion about why it’s important for Black people to be properly represented in the media and whether or not the media really shapes people’s perceptions of minorities. Our take in this discussion was different and I openly chalked it up to the fact that he doesn’t understand because he doesn’t have to understand because everyone he sees on television looks just like him. He doesn’t get it because he doesn’t live it. 

To be clear, this conversation — as well as others similar in nature — are conversations and not arguments. When race is the topic of discussion, we sometimes disagree but he speaks his thoughts and I speak mine without one of us condescending or disregarding the other. When I’m talking about how race plays into something in my life or even someone else’s (like the Trayvon Martin story for example), we disagree but he’s never once accused me of being oversensitive or ridiculous. Though he can’t empathize, I don’t hesitate to express my thoughts and he at least makes an effort to see where I’m coming from. For instance, recently, I’ve become convinced that a news director in a town near ours refuses to hire me for an on-air position only because I’m Black. After explaining why I believed it to be so, my husband agreed with me. Of course, that wasn’t his first thought, because he doesn’t have to think about things that way, but he saw where I was coming from and didn’t wave me off like I was being silly. Some interracial couples may choose to never talk about race so as not to start a conflict, but I wouldn’t be married to someone I can’t talk to, so I’m not shy about talking about my experience or my theories about particular situations.

4. As 4 Stations Cancel His Show, Is Tavis Smiley’s Advocacy Journalism Too Political for Public Radio?

Tavis Smiley

As conflicted as I am about Smiley, his ability to offer a critique of the current administration should not be censored-if being censored is what is at work here. 

It’s not that there are issues too political for Smiley to tackle in his various forums, the treatment is what differs for him. “The treatment of those issues is important but different depending on the forum,” he said via email. “In one instance I will offer my personal commentary about a said issue (“Smiley & West”); in another forum (PBS show or “The Tavis Smiley Show” on PRI) my job is to interrogate the issue and interrogate the guest on whatever issue they’re pushing.” 

Chicago Public Media accused “Smiley & West” of being too one-sided, but Smiley says “our program is as democratic as anything on the radio. We want to give people a chance to respond to us. We don’t believe that we have a monopoly on the truth.” 

Smiley and West pitched their radio show to public radio executives two years ago as something different from the staid fare the stations usually offer; the show would be all opinion. The two men even developed an online component called the Speak Out Network, a place for listeners to voice their disagreement or agreement with issues discussed on the show via voice mail, text messages, or blog posts. 

“The Tavis Smiley Show” (with just Smiley) airs on 85 stations nationwide, while “Smiley & West” airs on 72 stations. “Smiley & West” is being marketed as the second hour of “The Tavis Smiley Show” so that stations can test it out, a PRI spokeswoman told Poynter by phone. Smiley’s public television show airs in more than 200 markets, about 97 percent of PBS stations, a spokesman said.

5. Color-Blind Racism in the Obama Era (via Left of Black)
This interview with Eduardo Bonilla-Silva from Mark Anthony Neal's excellent Left of Black series is on point. A serious must watch.