Writing for a Real World

A multidisciplinary anthology by USF students Program in Rhetoric and Composition

2004-2005 Writing for a Real World 2004 - 2005 a multidisciplinary anthology by usf students

Published by the University of San Francisco Program in Rhetoric and CompositionWRW - 1 Writing for a Real World

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 4

Honorable Mention 7

Essays

LATIN AMERICAN STREET CHILDREN: A TRAGIC RESULT OF AN AMORAL SOCIETY Cassidy Condit 8

SEX SELLS: A MARXIST CRITICISM OF SEX AND THE CITY Dave Rinehart 21

WOMEN IN JOURNALISM Crystal Roberts 28

GENDER EXPECTATIONS AND FAMILIAL ROLES WITHIN ASIAN AMERICAN CULTURE Amy Truong 42

THE HAMITIC HYPOTHESIS: A PSEUDO-HISTORICAL JUSTIFICATION FOR WHITE SUPERIORITY Travis Sharp 52

LIBERTY: A CLARIFICATION OF DEFINITION Kathryn Cantrell 73

A NATION UNITED Faye Por 80

WITH THE CLOUDS Tran Nguyen 88

WRW - 2 University of San Francisco

ARGUMENT PAPER Marisa Keller 94

A QUENCHED THIRST, A CLEAR CONSCIENCE—THE BEST PART OF WAKING UP: THE UNITED STATES AND THE GLOBAL COFFEE CRISIS Katy Kreitler 102

SEX-PISSED PUNKS Miles Braten 117

FOREVER HUNGRY John Dea 125

Science, Technical and Business Writing

MAKING WAVES: FINDING KEYS TO SUCCESS IN THE FAILURES OF THE FISH INDUSTRY Andrew Skogrand 137

EVALUATION MEMO Karin Conrad 149

SINGLE MOTHERS IN MALAYSIA: THE INTERLOCKING SYSTEMS OF DOMINATION Puspa Melati Wan 161

W Cover for WRW by David Holler and Andrew Daniel

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Acknowledgments

ur third annual issue of Writing for a Real World continues to showcase excellent undergraduate writing and celebrate Ooutstanding undergraduate instruction at the University of San Francisco. Our special anthology offers two distinct sections: the first devoted to remarkable examples of the traditional academic essay; the second provide a forum for worthy models of scientific, business and technical report writing. Preceding these essays and reports are introductions from the writers and their teachers. For the first time, the tyranny of production deadlines created some difficult circumstances for faculty who were far from campus or away from their emails; consequently, some teachers were unable to respond to our requests for personal introductions. Alternatively, we asked two of our referees to provide some reader- based commentary. Overall, the commentaries and introductions help elucidate the intentions behind the assignments and give insight into the responses of the students. In last year’s issue, a production error created a misprint of Puspa Melati Wan’s name. To remedy this error, we happily reprint her essay in its entirety. Continuing a project like Writing for a Real World requires the selfless efforts of many people, and we acknowledge the contributions of those who continue to make this publication possible. We are deeply grateful to Jennifer Turpin, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Dean Rader, Associate Dean of Arts and Humanities, College of Arts and Sciences, for their generous financial support and remarkable commitment to reinvigorating undergraduate writing at USF. A large debt, as well, goes to Freddie Wiant, Coordinator of the Program in Rhetoric and Composition, for her generous support. Our gratitude extends to David Holler for designing this year’s cover. Publication committee members Brian Komei Dempster, Devon Christina Holmes and Mark Meritt earn special distinctions for shepherding another edition of this anthology by providing astute editorial support and great and inspiring conversations related to this

WRW - 4 University of San Francisco

publication. Without their support, this publication of WRW would be unthinkable. Choosing the winning entries is a reading-intensive, day-long task that requires the purely voluntary efforts of already busy USF faculty members. Our judges reviewed carefully more than 144 submissions (from which the students’ names had been removed). Every submission was read by at least two readers, and every winning submission had to pass the review of at least four readers. For performing this task with unfailing grace and patience, we humbly thank the superb efforts of our volunteer readers: Brian Komei Dempster, Leslie Dennen, Evan Elliot, Johnnie Johnson Hafernik, Devon Christina Holmes, Leslie King, Mark Meritt, Maureen O’ Sullivan, Darrell g.h. Schramm, Kern Trembath, Sally Vance-Trembath and Freddie Wiant. Our production assistant, Kathryn Cantrell, deserves special mention for managing our submissions and helping us in ways too numerous to describe. Thanks, as always, to John Pinelli and Norma Washington for balancing the budget, and to Johnnie Johnson Hafernik, Chair of Communication Studies, for her encouragement and for helping us get the word out to students and faculty. Finally, our deepest gratitude is reserved for those teachers who encouraged their students to submit their papers and for those many students for daring to accept their challenge. The competition was stiff, and, as our Honorable Mention list illustrates, we received many more commendable essays and reports than we were able to include. Congratulations to those who earned honorable mention—we hope to hear from you again next year. And, of course, congratulations to this year’s winners. Our newest authors bravely enter the realm of published authors writing for a real world. This journal belongs to them.

—David Ryan, Editor University of San Francisco

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Writing for a Real World 2004 - 2005

Editor David Ryan

Publication Assistant Kathryn Cantrell

Publication Committee Brian Komei Dempster Devon Christina Holmes Mark Meritt

Cover Art David Holler

Cover Image Andrew Daniel

Journal Referees Leslie Dennen Evan Elliot Johnnie Johnson Hafernik Leslie King Maureen O’Sullivan Darrell g.h. Schramm Kern Trembath Sally Vance-Trembath Freddie Wiant

Writing for a Real World University of San Francisco Cowell Hall, 4th Floor 2130 Fulton Street SF, CA 94117 on the web at www.usfca.edu/rhetcomp/journal/

WRW - 6 University of San Francisco

Honorable Mention

Kathryn Cantrell Cowards or Heroes: Standing Up for Conscience

Chris Doherty American Intervention

Irene Feliciano Enforced Heterosexism Sells in the Gaming Market

Elizabeth Greenwood The Human Mirror and Recovering an Existentialist Ethic

Amir Karimabadi Beauty: A Western Standard

Marisa Keller Free Will in Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife

Elizabeth Moyer Smoke and Mirrors

Dave Rinehart In Defense of Depravity: The Work of Director Takashi Miike

Alejandra Serret Extreme Makeover: Promoting a Healthier, More Beautiful, New America

Andrew Skogrand The Electric Word

WRW - 7 Latin American Street Children: A Tragic Consequence of an Amoral Society

Cassidy Condit

Writer’s comment: On the last day of Professor Darrell Schramm’s Writing Seminar, we discussed the assignments we had completed throughout the semester, and one by one, explained which assignment we most enjoyed. I distinctly remember saying that I loved writing this paper, yet hated it at the same time. This paper marked the culmination of a semester of intensive writing. Throughout the semester, I acquired many skills, which allowed me not only to communicate my thoughts effectively, but also to fine-tune and customize my style of writing. I was eager to write this final paper, eager to show Professor Schramm all I had learned. However, this assignment proved to be challenging in a way I could not have anticipated. I found it very difficult to read about the horrors, the cruelty, that Latin American street children are forced to endure. The human rights of millions of street children are violated daily, and very few people try to help. As fascinated as I was with this topic, at times the information was just too devastating for me to face. However, Professor Schramm encouraged me to continue, and although it was difficult, I was able to write, using not only my mind but my heart as well. —Cassidy Condit

Instructor’s comment: When Cassidy first enrolled in my Writing Seminar, her writing was intelligent but dense and abstract, given to sesquipedalianism. In short, she invariably chose a multi- syllabic, Latinate word when a one or two-syllable Anglo-Saxon word would have been more appropriate. But because she clearly showed herself to be open to becoming a better writer, I kept challenging her. Like a true scholar, she met my every challenge. This essay on street children is the crown jewel of her accomplishments in the class. I am enormously proud of her essay here, both in style and content. It is indeed a moving essay.

—Darrell g.h. Schramm, Rhetoric and Composition WRW - 8 Latin American Street Children: A Tragic Consequence of an Amoral Society s I sit down to write this paper, Halloween has just passed. Even though the day is over, the aura of the Halloween Aseason can still be felt. It is a time when images of ghouls and goblins fill the air and horror films abound. Each year, it seems, one film promises to be the scariest yet, infused with gruesome, chilling scenes, guaranteed to give nightmares for weeks. I too have felt my hair stand on end and chills run down my spine. However, my terror is not the result of a frightening movie or a spooky ghost story. My terror is caused by something much more serious than a Hollywood blockbuster or an urban legend. In the process of researching my topic, I read a passage from the book, Brazil: War on Children by Gilberto Dimenstein. It chilled me to the bones.

Patrício Hilário da Silva…was nine years old. He went to church every day…On May 1, he failed to appear, and his body was found on the beach soon afterwards. He had been strangled and a note left on his body, ‘I killed you because you didn’t go to school and had no future.’ (31)

The more I read, the more I came to realize that Patrício’s tragic story is not unique in Brazil and other Latin American countries. The violation of children’s human rights, and most specifically, the violation of street children’s human rights, is frightening, and it is a growing problem that must be addressed. Many children in Latin America call the streets their home. In the past, these children were identified as “homeless, abandoned, or runaways,” but in 1979, the year baptized by the United Nations as the “year of the child,” the term street children came to replace the former labels (Scanlon et al. 1596-97). It is important to clarify that not all street children are indeed homeless. Some street children are “home-based;” that is, they spend their days on the street, some working odd jobs, others just loitering, but at night are able to return home. On the other hand, many street children are “street-based,” with no family to support them, no home to return to at night (1597). Regardless of these technicalities, street children identify the streets as their home, their peers family. Among their peers, gangs and issues of territory can at times present problems WRW - 9 Cassidy Condit (1598). However, there seems to be a shared sense of unity among street children, a need to band together against the torture and abuse brought about by the police, death squads, government authorities, and the general public in some Latin American countries. Street children are often subjected to inhumane treatment at the hands of authority. According to Paul Jeffrey, a United Methodist missionary who traveled to Bogotá, Colombia, to report on the social cleansing of the country’s poor, street children “have become targets for those who seek to rid the world of the weak, the ‘degenerate,’ the surplus” (380). Street children are not seen as real children, but rather as a nuisance, a threat; perhaps this is why so many otherwise decent individuals allow street children’s human rights to be blatantly violated day after day, indifferent, immune, even hostile to their suffering. The torture of Latin American street children by the police, death squads, and other individuals directly violates Article Five of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which states, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” (United Nations). In Brazil, for example, police brutality against street children is an all-too- common occurrence. Boys and girls are routinely beaten and harassed by police because they live on the streets. Gilberto Dinemstein is a journalist for Folha de São Paulo, a leading Brazilian newspaper, and the author of numerous books about the corruption and power struggles in Brazil, including Brazil: War on Children. In this book, Dimenstein gives gripping firsthand accounts of the abuses children are forced to endure. Dimenstein writes about how policemen walk the streets at night, kick sleeping children with their steel-tipped boots, force them to eat cockroaches, beat them on the head with clubs, and shoot at them if they try to escape (35-36, 58-60). One boy tells Dimenstein how the police had shot him in the leg as he was running away. He had managed to escape, but several weeks later, sought out their help because the bullet wound had become infected. Rather than take the boy to the hospital, the police beat him and kicked his wound (Dimenstein 60). The police often subject girls to rape and other forms of sexual harassment. If they are pregnant, the police further

WRW - 10 Latin American Street Children: A Tragic Consequence of an Amoral Society violate their bodies and their human rights by forcefully kicking their stomachs. This not only terminates the pregnancy but also causes severe internal bleeding and other complications (35-36). Unfortunately, the tragedy does not end here. Violence against street children follows a vicious, perpetuating cycle. Children are beaten, abused, and tortured by police, so- called authority figures; how can these children safely report their beatings to the very people who are committing these acts? Furthermore, the police often threaten to kill children if they attempt to report the abuse. A boy recalls for Dimenstein a time when “a sergeant put a gun to his head and told him he would kill him if he mentioned anything about what happened” (59-60). Robin Kirk, research associate for the Human Rights Watch/ Americas and author of the book, Generation Under Fire: Children and Violence in Colombia, also reports police corruption and brutality. According to one boy, the police “would beat him and force a plastic bag over his head until he neared suffocation.” However, he never filed a formal report against the police, stating, “You don’t complain or report them, because it will be worse the next time” (qtd. in Kirk 15). Neither of these experiences is unique; tragically they are just two of the many examples of the torture street children are forced to endure. Such threats are typical and widespread, and directly defy Article Five of the UDHR. Article Nine, “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile” (United Nations), shows that Article Five is not the only article in the UDHR that is violated. It is routinely ignored by police and government officials in Colombia, Brazil, and other Latin American countries. In an attempt to “clean” the streets, state governments organize “clean-up campaigns,” in which children are arrested and taken to jails and other correctional facilities (Dimenstein 39-40). Rarely are there definitive charges brought up against the children. Rather, the police, with the preconceived notion that all street children are thieves, drug addicts, prostitutes, and/or violent gang members, unjustly profile these children. The police detain them under the pretense that they are “in need of protection or discipline, which effectively makes children’s poverty and homelessness, or status as children, a crime” (“Promises Broken” par 2). These children are victims in a

WRW - 11 Cassidy Condit situation out of their control. They are arrested without sufficient causes, and are locked up in jail where the violence continues. The violence not only continues but often escalates as well. Many times, children are detained with older juvenile delinquents and even adults who physically and sexually abuse them (“Promises Broken” par 5). Some of these children remain in correctional facilities for days, weeks, even months at a time. These extended stays have been suggested to turn children to a life of crime once they are released. Deodato Rivera, a political scientist and expert on violence among minors, asserts that “the state is responsible for producing juvenile delinquents.” He suggests children “become brutalised by the experience” and “[o]nce released…are ready to turn to crime” (qtd. in Dimenstein 40). These accusations may seem a bit extreme, but given the circumstances of the situation, the accusations begin to make sense. Street children endure police brutality both on the street and in jail, and once in jail, are subjected to horrendous living conditions and even more physical and sexual abuse at the hands of other inmates. In addition, some police force children to pay bribes in exchange for their release; for girls, bribes may be in the form of sexual acts (“Promises Broken” par 5). This corruption, coupled with police brutality and torture, can have devastating effects on children. It makes sense that upon their release, many children turn to crime and violence. When they experience violence every day, it becomes all they know. It was previously stated that many street children are arrested and locked up in jail as a result of “clean-up campaigns.” Jails are one way to rid the streets of children; however, this is only a temporary reprisal, and sooner or later, children are back on the streets. Because of this, some police and government officials have sought out a more permanent solution. This solution has taken on the title “social cleansing” and is being carried out by “death squads” – ruthless, relentless vigilantes who seek to exterminate “los desechables,” the disposables (Jeffrey 380-81). Carlos Rojas, a researcher for Bogotá’s Center for Investigation and Popular Education, has investigated the phenomenon of social cleansing. He believes it began in Colombia in 1979 and is “carried out by a coalition of police and soldiers, paramilitary bands, politicians and

WRW - 12 Latin American Street Children: A Tragic Consequence of an Amoral Society civic leaders” (Jeffrey 381). Social cleansings involve a complex network of people. Some business owners, fed up with street children who beg outside their stores and frighten potential customers, pay corrupt police officers to make street children disappear. Sometimes, the police murder the children themselves. Other times, they turn a blind eye and a deaf ear as death squads – at times comprised of current or former members of the police and military – dressed entirely in black, driving unmarked cars and motorcycles, blatantly murder children in the streets (Jeffrey 380; Kirk 6-15). These events are rarely ever challenged, and the murderers even less frequently held accountable for their actions. Unfortunately, it is not only business owners who bribe the police and death squads, but also civilians who feel threatened by the mere presence of street children in their neighborhood. Because of the secretive nature of these briberies, these situations are infrequently investigated and the individuals involved seldom punished. However, in 1980, a unit of the National Police in Colombia discovered two private security guards who required every household in a Cali neighborhood to pay for the kidnappings and murders of alleged juvenile delinquents (Kirk 8). Although official reports are scarce, it seems highly probable that these are not isolated incidents. It is reasonable to assume many households continue to pay death squad members in exchange for street children and juvenile delinquents in their neighborhood to be eliminated. However, death squads do not always need monetary incentives to kill street children. Many death squads believe their actions will better their city or country. Street children are often targets simply because they inconvenience society. These beliefs have led Hernando Gómez, psychologist and professor of urban studies at Javeriana University, Colombia, to compare these killings to the actions of the Nazis. According to Gómez, “A whole industry of social cleansing has developed here, much like what happened with the Nazis” (qtd. in Jeffrey 381). Mario Madrid-Malo, director of the information section of the People’s Defender, a Colombian agency that monitors human rights, corroborates these claims. He says, “The Nazis believed some lives just didn’t have any value. Here there are…powerful people

WRW - 13 Cassidy Condit who are essentially Nazis...[and would be] very happy running a concentration camp” (qtd. in Jeffrey 380). This is not limited to Colombia. Although Gómez and Madrid-Malo refer to the power structure in Colombia, death squads are influential in other countries as well. When Erasmo Dias, former head of the Justice Department in São Paulo, campaigned for state representative, his slogan read, “We should create concentration camps” (qtd. in Dimenstein 47). Ironically, Dias won the election, partially because he supported the death squads. The death squads of Latin America wish to purify their countries by exterminating the street children, just as the Nazis sought to purify their countries by eliminating everyone seen as inferior to Hitler’s idealized supreme race. Just as the death squads in Latin America may be compared to the Nazis in Europe, the number of people willing to challenge the death squads is similar to the number of people willing to stand up against the Nazis. This is true because advocates for street children often risk their own lives as well as the lives of their family and friends. The death squads feel threatened by those who challenge their power. Peace Brigades International (PBI) has been working to protect advocates from death squads and human rights violators by accompanying individuals and serving as nonviolent bodyguards. Having PBI volunteers present has successfully prevented violence from being directed at advocates (Woodbridge par 4-5). Although PBI volunteers have done work in Colombia and other Latin American countries such as Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala, at the present moment, PBI has not expanded into countries such as Brazil, where advocates for street children are in need of protection from death squads. PBI does its part to protect the lives of advocates, but does not attempt to confront death squads or solve the problems that plague street children. Even when advocates are available and PBI volunteers are present, the lack of government involvement makes it extremely difficult for advocates to bring torturers and murderers to justice (“Street Children” par 7). In order for advocates to make a large-scale difference in street children’s lives, governments need to accept responsibility for the actions of the corrupt police officers

WRW - 14 Latin American Street Children: A Tragic Consequence of an Amoral Society and bring to justice those who violate street children’s human rights and endanger the lives of advocates. Presently it is difficult to establish accountability and bring to justice those responsible for torture and murder because the cleansing campaigns have become widely accepted. Kirk suggests that in order to legitimize these killings, death squads address their victims as “human waste” and “filth;” in essence, social cleansings are how the “decent” members of society tidy up the trash littering their country and tainting their society (8). Derek Summerfield, reporter for The Lancet and author of “If Children’s Lives are Precious, Which Children?” supports Kirk’s claim by stating, “Language…is used to distance and debase those to whom we do not extend our notions of humanity and fraternity. To call street children in Brazil…‘vermin’ is to prepare the way for atrocity” (1955). Both Summerfield and Kirk put forth the idea that language is a very powerful tool. It is astounding that by changing one word it is possible to change the attitude of a society. When street children are referred to as “vermin” rather than human, it becomes much easier for the general public to ignore the children’s suffering and to feel their murders are justified. The general public has been influenced by the beliefs of death squads; many individuals have even adopted these beliefs themselves. However, it is not only death squads who contribute to the general public’s ideas about street children. Much of what the general public believes about street children comes from the media. The media plays into the fears of the public by distorting situations and portraying street children as drug dealers, prostitutes, gang members, thieves, and delinquents. The media twists the truth so that the public believes street children deserve the torture they are forced to endure. Social cleansings are often sensationalized, giving power to the death squads and prestige to the reporters who present the stories (Dimenstein 63). Much of the general public does not have extensive knowledge of street children and therefore relies on the media to inform them. However, the press often manipulates the truth, leaving the public with a one-sided view against street children. How can the general public in Latin American countries such as Colombia and Brazil be expected to speak out against the injustices street children are

WRW - 15 Cassidy Condit subjected to when the available information overwhelmingly portrays these children as having no worth? Latin American street children are subjected to egregious human rights violations at the hands of death squads, corrupt police and government officials, and inadvertently, the media and the general public. They are offered little opportunity to defend themselves against violence and torture, at least partially because the media in these countries manipulates the general public to believe the children deserve to be punished, which perpetuates and legitimizes the vicious cycle of abuse. Furthermore, because the media distorts the truth, most people in other countries are not aware of the severity of the problem. To begin to resolve this tragic problem, one of the first steps which needs to be taken is to make the issue known in the international community. One possible way to do this is to use mass media in the United States to educate the American public; to be more specific, allow non- government organizations to broadcast public service announcements regarding street children on National Public Radio. By making the torture of street children an international concern rather than an issue that can remain hidden, it essentially forces the governments of countries such as Colombia and Brazil to confront the issue or risk being embarrassed in front of the international community. The torture, ill treatment, and murder of street children are overwhelming problems, and unfortunately, there is not a panacea that will resolve these problems completely in the near future. Therefore, the solution needs to be recognized as an ongoing process. The use of mass media in the United States is one of the first steps in this process, which in turn will lead to more long-term goals, including but not limited to making police, death squads, and other human rights violators accountable for their actions. This will only be plausible once the more immediate solutions, such as educating people in the United States through National Public Radio, have been established. Mass media is very influential. Cynthia Kaufman, author of Ideas for Action: Relevant Theory for Radical Change, proposes that mass media is “one of the most powerful mechanisms for creating consent” (252). Whether it is television, commercial and public radio, newspapers, magazines, or the like, mass media has

WRW - 16 Latin American Street Children: A Tragic Consequence of an Amoral Society the ability to reach and influence vast numbers of people. Therefore, it seems logical to use mass media to educate and bring awareness to the general public about the torture and human rights violations of street children in Latin America. Currently, powerful death squads influence much of the mass media in Colombia and Brazil. When this is coupled with not only the fact that the government does not closely regulate the information given to the public, but also that reporters can gain prestige by producing sensationalized stories regardless of their truth, it does not seem plausible at this time to rely on the media in these countries to suddenly report truthful, unbiased accounts of street children. Therefore, education about street children should commence in the United States by reaching people through National Public Radio. Educating people in the United States will reveal how street children are abused, tortured, and murdered, often by people in authority who are rarely brought to justice for their actions, and how a vast majority of people in Latin America feel little or no remorse for these children. Non-government organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Save the Children, and World Organization Against Torture are well equipped to provide extensive information regarding street children. These organizations can use National Public Radio to educate and make appeals to the people in the United States through public service announcements. In addition, they can employ CNN, a mainstream television network, in order to reach and educate a broader audience in the United States. Public appeals can be very powerful, especially the sort of appeals which involve the international community. Children, Torture and Power: The Torture of Children by States and Armed Opposition Groups is a special report published by Save the Children and the World Organization Against Torture. The author, Nathalie Man, suggests that public appeals inform countries that the outside world is aware of the situations within their given countries (94). Leaders of countries are aware of the negative repercussions this can have. Most leaders are unwilling to have their country and their administration embarrassed in front of the international community. The international community will likely lose respect for a country that is aware of a problem but does not

WRW - 17 Cassidy Condit attempt to amend it. With respect to both Colombia and Brazil, their governments have ignored the problems surrounding street children and have gone so far as to cover up the actions of corrupt police officers. At times, the governments have supported death squads – or at the very least, have not punished them for their intolerable treatment of street children. While international disapproval and embarrassment are driving forces to promote change, there exists an even greater incentive for countries to change. If the international community becomes aware of the extreme mistreatment and torture of street children in Colombia and Brazil, it may prompt other countries to decrease or completely sever the foreign aid allocated to these Latin American countries. This is especially relevant to Colombia, a country that receives military and other aid from the United States (Jeffrey 382). With the United States making public appeals about street children and the loss of foreign aid from the United States a constant threat, Colombian leaders will be more inclined to make changes in their policies regarding street children and to more strictly adhere to the articles established in not only the UDHR but also the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Bringing awareness to the United States and indirectly, the international community, through National Public Radio and public service announcements by non-government organizations is only the first of many steps which need to be taken to end the torture and murder of street children. In the future, only after this proposal has been effectively put into place and only after Colombian and Brazilian governments have begun to actively take responsibility for the problems in their countries can more long- term goals be implemented. Such long-term goals include establishing police accountability, educating the general public in Colombia and Brazil, and empowering street children by allowing them to voice their concerns. Currently, such goals are not plausible. In order to end the violence and torture directed toward street children, people need to see street children not as worthless, disposable objects that endanger society but rather as children forced to withstand brutal torture and abuse – torture and abuse which too often goes unnoticed and unchallenged. Street children

WRW - 18 Latin American Street Children: A Tragic Consequence of an Amoral Society are, in essence, a tragic result of amoral societies (Scanlon et al. 1600). It is imperative that people not only become aware of the torture of street children but also recognize that these children are not to be blamed for their situation, that they do not deserve to be abused and even killed simply because they inhabit the streets. Otherwise, street children will continue to meet fates similar to the tragic fate of Patrício Hilário da Silva, the young boy killed by someone who believed he did not have a future.

Works Cited

Dimenstein, Gilberto. Brazil: War on Children. London: Latin American Bureau, 1991.

Human Rights Watch. “Promises Broken: Police Abuse and Arbitrary Detention of Street Children.” 1999. 10 par. 23 October 2004 .

Jeffrey, Paul. “Where the Poor Are ‘The Disposables:’ Social Cleansing in Colombia.” The Christian Century. 112 April 12, 1995: 380-382. ProQuest. U of San Francisco, Gleeson Lib., San Francisco, CA. 24 October 2004 .

Kaufman, Cynthia. Ideas for Action: Relevant Theory for Radical Change. Boston: South End Press, 2003.

Kirk, Robin. Generation Under Fire: Children and Violence in Colombia. New York, NY: Human Rights Watch/Americas, 1994.

Man, Nathalie. Children, Torture and Power: The Torture of Children by States and Armed Opposition Groups. London: Save the Children, 2000.

Scanlon, Thomas J., et al. “Street Children in Latin America.” British Medical Journal. 316 May 23, 1998: 1596-1600. ProQuest. U of San Francisco, Gleeson Lib., San Francisco, CA. 24 October 2004 .

Summerfield, Derek. “If Children’s Lives are Precious, Which Children?” The Lancet. 351 June 27, 1998: 1955. ProQuest. U of San Francisco, Gleeson Lib., San Francisco, CA. 24 October 2004 .

United Nations. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 1948.

WRW - 19 Cassidy Condit Woodbridge, Jonathan. “Peace Brigades International: What We Do.” April 2003. 9 par. 23 November 2004 .

WRW - 20 Sex Sells: A Marxist Criticism of Sex and the City

Dave Rinehart

Writer’s comment: In Dr. Andrew Goodwin’s Media Theory & Criticism class, students applied five different media theories to five different mediums: a content analysis of radio, a semiotic analysis of advertisements, a Marxist critique of television, a psychoanalytic analysis of film, and an application of postmodernism to music. The Marxist critique was easily the biggest challenge to write, due to my shaky understanding of the technique and difficulty in finding an appropriate TV show. Not to mention I had a sizeable chip on my shoulder after writing two lackluster analyses which had, as Dr. Goodwin put it, too many “journalistic flourishes.” So I read and reread our class texts, got to know Karl Marx, and for several nights holed away with my girlfriend’s Sex and the City DVDs and six pints of Häagen-Dazs. When I emerged, I was one paper and 40 pounds richer. —Dave Rinehart Reader’s comment: Dave Rinehart’s deliberately focused paper uses a general kind of Marxist criticism to explicate and analyze the highly ingrained world of a popular television show. In lesser hands, this Marxist approach would have produced merely surface-oriented scorn for a highly commercialized product. In Dave’s hands, however, his critical effort helps the reader understand the show’s explicit and implicit references to consumer capitalism and illustrates how capitalism can, directly and indirectly, empower women socially but also objectify them personally by making them sartorial objects for the hippest designers and fleshly billboards for the newest trends. Dave’s effort illustrates a bright thinker at work: on one hand, he is a keen observer of the material; on the other, he actively participates in creating his criticism. His writing is lively and insightful, happily exhibiting a tuned ear for the cadence of prose. —David Ryan, Rhetoric and Composition WRW - 21 Dave Rinehart Introduction rthur Asa Berger, in his book Media Analysis Techniques, writes: “The bourgeoisie try to convince everyone that Acapitalism is natural and therefore eternal, but this idea, say the Marxists, is patently false, and it is the duty of Marxist analysts to demonstrate this” (51). It will be my duty over the course of this paper to expose and explicate the capitalist, consumerist and classist aspects of the TV show Sex and the City using Marxist criticism. Sex and the City aired its final episode in spring 2004, concluding a massively successful six-season run on the HBO network. The series, created by Darren Star, is based on the sex advice columns of Candace Bushnell. The fictionalized TV version re-imagines Bushnell as Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker): a young, single New York woman who narrates the show and serves as its primary focus. Each episode is based around her weekly column, with the topic typically regarding relationship dynamics between men and women. Over the course of an episode, Carrie will write on her laptop (with accompanying narrative voiceover), wine and dine with her group of closest friends Charlotte, Samantha, and Miranda, and carouse with her boyfriend, who come and go in and out of her life through various episode arcs. I will primarily be focusing on episodes from seasons two and six of Sex and the City, mostly because they happened to be what I had at my disposal. This essay will analyze, using Marxist techniques, Carrie’s role as the “bourgeois hero,” the show’s capitalist and consumerist aspects, the ways in which its characters and viewers may engage in commodity fetishism, and the show’s representation of classism.

Carrie Bradshaw as the “Bourgeois Hero” Karl Marx wrote, “The ideas of the ruling class are, in every age, the ruling ideas; i.e., the class which is the dominant material force in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual force” (italics his) (78). Throughout history, the ruling class has been responsible for the production of the most popular culture industry texts. It makes sense, then, that the ruling class would utilize the

WRW - 22 Sex Sells: A Marxist Criticism of Sex and the City media to glorify and promote themselves, producing texts that celebrate the bourgeoisie lifestyle. The main characters that populate these texts, then, often function as “bourgeois heroes,” who “maintain the status quo by ‘peddling’ capitalist ideology in disguised form and by helping keep consumer lust at a high pitch” (60). (To clarify, Berger separates “bourgeois heroes” and “bourgeois heroines,” but I have made the term gender-neutral.) As the show’s main character and narrator, Carrie functions as Sex and the City’s bourgeois hero. The series details her many travails through high society New York, mingling with wealthy socialites and dating powerful investment bankers and corporate executives – and then getting paid well to detail said interactions in her newspaper column. In a typical episode, Carrie will shop at upscale boutiques, dine in fancy restaurants, sip expensive wines, and/or receive dazzling gifts. While in the first two seasons she is seen wearing rather generic (though good-looking) clothing and flat-soled shoes, from season three on she seemingly only wears designer clothing and stilettos. The show’s producers, however, do attempt to portray Carrie as down-to-earth: she chain-smokes cigarettes, gets hangovers, cries, and ends up in many embarrassing situations. These situations make her relatable to the show’s majority female viewership, while simultaneously placing her on a pedestal of bourgeois taste and lifestyle. While many female viewers might see themselves in Carrie’s various character nuances, they will also be envious of her abundance of expensive possessions. To use an example from the opposite gender: male comic book readers see a little or a lot of themselves in gawky teen Peter Parker, but dream of rising beyond their real-life state and taking to the skyscrapers as Spider-Man.

Capitalism & Consumerism In the six episodes I watched from season two of Sex and the City, it was difficult to find scenes where characters are interacting without simultaneously consuming. Carrie is nearly always smoking a cigarette while writing, she talks to her friends over meals at nice restaurants, and she goes to bars and clubs with her beaus. Even while walking and talking, the friends will also be

WRW - 23 Dave Rinehart sipping lattes or have the obnoxious neon ads of Times Square as a backdrop. One could argue that these types of scene setup are merely a reflection of the kind of interactions people have on a daily basis. I would argue, however, like Berger did in his quotation that introduced this paper, that this is just an example of the bourgeoisie trying “to convince everyone that capitalism is natural and therefore eternal” (51). Sex and the City is a celebration of capitalism, as its characters drift in and out of various capitalist outposts, finding new and exciting ways to consume. It is amazing, then, how rarely we see them actually in the act of spending money; but this is, again, Berger’s argument of natural capitalism. Drinks are poured, food served, and pedicures administered as if this was the way of the world. This style of episode structure fosters in its audience a false consciousness, “in leading people to believe that ‘whatever is, is right’ (Berger, 49). After being beaten over the head with images of the program’s characters interacting and consuming, viewers may be led to believe that the one cannot happen without the other. In order to talk with friends about serious, thought-provoking matters, the characters must do it over drinks or dinner.

Commodity Fetishism Operating at peak popularity with virtually no slowdown for the past several years, Sex and the City has, therefore, been a prominent trendsetter in the world of fashion. Many of the main characters’ clothing, shoes, and various accessories have exploded in real-life as hot commodities among upper-class women. Specific examples include Carrie’s “Carrie” necklace, which inspired women to get their own personalized necklace, and her distinctive Mahnolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo stilettos. The show has functioned as a go-to source for fashion tips among the viewers who can afford to, both financially and physically, wear the same items. But the commodity fetishism Sex and the City inspires in its audience would be nothing if not practiced by its own characters. Indeed, characters will often spend an entire episode wanting a particular commodity, and the majority of their dialogue will even

WRW - 24 Sex Sells: A Marxist Criticism of Sex and the City focus around it. As a grand example of irony, one of the last episodes in season six had Charlotte, the naïve do-gooder of the group, indulging a salesman’s shoe fetish in return for free high heels, so long as she let him fit her. She returns again and again, unwilling to let her personal shoe fetish go and simultaneously satiating his, far more sexual one. Regarding Samantha, the group’s vixen, it is important to bring in the concept of hegemony. The basest definition of the word is provided by Berger as “that which goes without saying,” and in television it regards the different standards of conduct between the genders, races, ages, etc. that are taken for granted. John Fiske, in his essay “British Cultural Studies,” writes: “women, so the hegemonic reading would go, are rewarded for their ability to use their beauty and talents to give pleasure to men” (303). Sex and the City can easily be typified as antithetical to typical TV gender hegemony. While regular programming may portray men going through a series of female partners, Sex reverses this notion by portraying a group of independent, freethinking women who keep men at their mercy. But ultimately, the show’s progressive feminism is canceled out by commodity fetishism, a condition which makes the women vulnerable and willing to lower their typically high standards. For example, Samantha uses sex as a way to satisfy her expensive tastes. Until the final season, she exclusively dates exceedingly wealthy men who pay for her every indulgence. In season two, she even leads on a mid-70s executive-type man, remaining in bed with him so long as he whisper fantasies of dream vacations in her ear. Although Carrie chastises her for this decision, Samantha remains on, dreaming of happiness based on material wealth.

Classism Class is an issue that is addressed on both latent and manifest levels in Sex and the City. Latently, differences can be shown with the four main women interacting with a dichotomy of workers: newspaper or hot dog vendors are usually always Hispanic males and beauty salon workers Asian females, while employees of the upscale restaurants and shops are usually always white men and

WRW - 25 Dave Rinehart women. Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda live life in a vacuum, staying on a narrow track that lead them from event to event with similar working, acting, and looking people. Class differences are made manifest in episodes like one from season two where Miranda, a self-made millionaire, struggles with dating a blue-collar bartender, Steve, who in subsequent seasons becomes her husband and the father of her child. Unlike other TV programs, class is certainly not ignored or overlooked in Sex and the City but, as Berger states, it acts as an apologist “for the ruling class in an effort to avert class conflict and prevent changes in the political order” (51). Sex and the City portrays ethnic men and women doing the “dirty work” and white people enjoying the comforts of the bourgeois lifestyle as the natural, unbreakable order of the American class system.

Marxist Criticism Marxist criticism seems to be the most heavily criticized of the five primary media analysis techniques. Berger has qualms with Marxists in that they are “prisoners of the categories of their thought, and the questions they ask of a work of popular art carried by the media are often rather limited” (66). Similarly, Theodor Adorno writes: “[T]he very intelligentsia that pretends to float freely is fundamentally rooted in the very being that must be changed and which it merely pretends to criticize” (Jay, 116). Since the analysts are so firmly imbedded in the culture they are attempting to critique, their results cannot be trusted for objectivity and truth. I think that Mimi White says it best, however, in her essay “Ideological Analysis and Television.” She writes:

[T]he classical Marxist approach is limited by its inability to account for the fact that…most people watch television, most of the time, because they find it enjoyable. In this sense, classical Marxism does not provide sufficiently subtle critical and theoretical perspectives for dealing with the pleasures of contemporary culture, including watching TV. (166)

My Marxist criticism of Sex and the City is perhaps marred by my personal enjoyment of the show. It is difficult for me to abandon my appreciation of the show’s sharp writing and clever

WRW - 26 Sex Sells: A Marxist Criticism of Sex and the City scenarios to systematically tear down its capitalist overtones. Like White says, my critiques fail to take in the aforementioned ways in which fellow viewers could also enjoy the show, even ignoring its consumerist celebration and commodity fetishism. (For instance, fetishisms for expensive high heels and personalized necklaces are completely lost on me, a straight male viewer.) Methods such as content analysis and semiotic analysis are more conducive to studying television. A content analysis of Sex and the City could count the frequency of scenes where characters are interacting and simultaneously consuming, and compare it to the amount of times they converse without the burden of consumerism. Semioticians could have a field day with the series, analyzing the signs and signifiers in its main titles sequence, analyzing its characters’ evolution over the six seasons using a diachronic perspective, and even applying Propp’s dramatis personae to the main characters and revolving door of supporting characters. These are merely methods of analysis, however. In my opinion, Marxist criticism is best suited as a method for breaking down the series’ most contemptible elements; those rooted in capitalism and consumerism.

Works Cited

Berger, Arthur Asa. Media Analysis Techniques. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2005.

Fiske, John. “British Cultural Studies.” Channels of Discourse, Reassembled. 2nd ed. Ed. Robert C. Allen. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1992.

Jay, Martin. Adorno. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1984.

Marx, Karl. Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy. Ed. T.B. Bottomore, M. Rubel. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.

White, Mimi. “Ideological Analysis and Television.” Channels of Discourse, Reassembled. 2nd ed. Ed. Robert C. Allen. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1992.

WRW - 27 Women in Journalism

Crystal Roberts

Writer’s comment: In nearly every workplace, the men to women ratio does not accurately reflect the population. But in journalism particularly, where the journalists come face to face with the public and are expected to have a fair and accurate view of the world, an extreme gender bias exists. If the media cannot set a proper ex- ample, is it possible for any field to have equality? As a woman and a media studies student preparing to enter the field of journal- ism, there was no other topic that seemed more important or more interesting for me to research and write about for Chris Paterson’s Introduction to Media Studies course. We were given the freedom to write on whichever topic interested us, and I found this to be most appealing to both men and women, journalists or not. —Crystal Roberts

Instructor’s comment: The point of our introductory course in Media Studies is to encourage students to forget everything they thought they knew about media and culture (and where these originate), and to critically dissect media messages and the media institutions which seek to convince us of their version of truth. Crystal rose to this challenge admirably with her original and thorough investigation of gender imbalance in journalism. She especially distinguished herself by consulting, and intelligently interpreting, a good deal of scholarly writing on the topic, a rare combination for an introductory course. Even though most media and journalism students today are women, the balance of power in journalism still favors men, and American news coverage that pays scant attention to women’s issues continues to reflect that. —Chris Paterson, Media Studies

WRW - 28 Women in Journalism hroughout the late twentieth century, American women journalists have struggled to find an equal place in the news Tmedia industry. Although they have made some progress over the past few decades, and despite the significant increase in the number of women in journalism, the news continues to be male-dominated. This has a strong impact on the way that news is presented because news content varies depending upon the reporters and editors of the news, and it is found that in order for women to make a positive difference in journalism, they must be in positions of power. Like many other industries, the number of women entering journalism continued to increase after World War I, and by the 1920s, women represented 25% of journalists in the country (Beasley and Silver, 67). However, they were not equal with their male counterparts, and almost never reported on “hard” news, with few exceptions, because of their male editors. Nearly a century after the First World War, situations have progressed only slightly. Although the number of women in journalism is slowly rising, news continues to be controlled by men. As editors, producers, employers, and owners, men continue to hold power, giving women very little power and only a small degree of influence on news. Research shows that the ratio of women to men in journalism is much less than that of the actual population and that journalism is not an accurate reflection of reality, although it usually claims to be such. Julia Wood states, “Media misrepresent actual proportions of men and women in the population. This constant distortion tempts us to believe that there really are more men than women and, further, that men are the cultural standard” (234). Women are very much underrepresented in journalism, and by this misrepresentation, it leads society to assumptions that women are really in the minority, while this is not the case in reality. There was, however, some growth in the number of women journalists in the 1970s and 1980s. In their book, David H. Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit state, “From 1971 to 1983, the proportion of women in journalism increased notably” from about one fifth to just over one third (177). But by the 1990s, growth seemed to come to a halt, and in 1992, American journalists were

WRW - 29 Crystal Roberts no more likely to be male than female than ten years earlier (Weaver and Wilhoit, 177). Weaver and Wilhoit go on to state, “When compared with the total U.S. labor force, the percentage of women in journalism in 1992 lagged behind by more than 11 points, and was at about the same level as the percentage of women in the total U.S. labor force in 1971 (34%),” despite “dramatic increases in women journalism students in U.S. universities and an emphasis on hiring more women in journalism in the 1980s” (177-8). While journalists’ education was found to be equal among men and women, men were still being hired for the majority of jobs. Men made up the majority of journalists, but Weaver and Wilhoit’s study claims, “By 1992, there was no significant educational gap between men and women journalists, either at the bachelor’s- or graduate-degree level. In fact, just over 83% of the women journalists in 1992 held at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with slightly more than 81% of men journalists” (178). Therefore, although women had just as much formal education in their field as men, they were receiving fewer jobs. A similar study was reported by the United States Commission on Civil Rights, who state, “30 per cent of the work force at television network headquarters and also at network-owned stations in 1977 was female” (qtd. in Gallagher, 87). This figure included not only journalists, but women employees as a whole. By 1994, women only made up 36.1% of TV newspeople on the three big network affiliates ABC, CBS, and NBC (Stone), compared to 58% in the entire workforce (Bunton). This demonstrates that although the number of women in the entire workforce was raising at the time, women journalists were lagging far behind. Thus, the representation of women in journalism is not proportional to the actual population of female workers.

WRW - 30 Women in Journalism

Proportion of Women Journalists to Workforce Population

70% 58% 60% 50% 45% Women 40% 34% 36.10% Journalists 30% Total Workforce 20% Percentage 10% 0% 1992 1994 Year

The stall in growth during the early 1990s is again seen in 1996. According to an article from Media Report to Women, “A survey from the Radio-Television News Directors Foundation and Ball State University indicates that the total percentage of women in TV news (37%) remained the same in 1996-97 as in 1995-96.” However, other data from RTNDA states that the percentage of women in the local broadcast workforce grew in 2000 to 40%, but fell again in 2004 to 39.1%. Growth has virtually stopped, and the article goes on to state that the survey also shows “that women are 14% of news directors, down from 17%,” and by 2004, the percentage only grew to 25.2% (RTNDA). Thus, not only has the number of women journalists remained unchanged, but the percentages of female news directors have also been mostly unaffected, meaning a small percentage of women authorities. According to Barbara Murray Eddings, in the late 1970s, it was almost impossible to find a woman news anchor on television. Barbara Walters says that it was inconceivable for a woman to be “head of the program” (qtd. in Eddings, 4). Today, however, it is much more common to see women as anchors of television news, as well as a few reporters. Many networks have gravitated towards placing women on-air in highly visible spots, such as CNN’s Paula Zahn and ABC’s Barbara Walters, so that it appears that women have a stronger voice in news. However, this is not the case as seen in much of the research done on television news. Television news subjects women to something that Jannette Dates and William Barlow call a “split image,” which means that women “are considered good enough to be seen up front and on camera, but not to be trusted with the reigns of power” (qtd. in Bunton). Also, Teresita Hermano and Anna Turley claim that WRW - 31 Crystal Roberts although women make up the majority of news anchors, it is not the same amongst reporters; 69% of reporters are male. Further research by Edwin Diamond, Stacey Bradford, and Jennie Amato states, “Some of the reporters PressWatch interviewed made the point that the increased presence of women in the campaign press can be misleading, because the big stories still go to men.” But ABC producer Pam Hill says that having women in “highly visible jobs on camera” is not the problem, but rather that they are not in “the real decision-making, producer and executive level jobs” (qtd, in Eddings, 2). Thus, women lack any real power in editorial influence as well as reporting despite what seems to be a greater appearance of women in television news.

Percentage of News Directors

100.00% 80.00%

60.00% Women 40.00% Men

Percentage 20.00% 0.00%

2 0 2 72 8 92 0 04 9 00 0 19 1 19 20 2 2 Year

Men continue to be in control of the news. Joyce Reed, news director at KWTV in Oklahoma City says, “We have a long, long way to go before we dominate newsrooms. But we’ve come a long way since 1976 when I was the only girl in the newsroom” (qtd. in Prato). Women have indeed made some progress in journalism over the decades, and it is now much more likely to find a woman in a position of authority than would have been found in earlier years of television news. According to Gallagher,“[Media Watch’s] most recent study found that women were 18% of all newsmakers in 1990 and only 20% in 1998. In fact, there had been no increase since 1992” (47). One of the most important positions would be executive producers, who are the top decision makers and determine stories others cover as well as content of news programs. In his study, Vernon Stone found that women make up only 32% of executive producers and only 26% of all managerial positions. Women were and continue to be a small minority

WRW - 32 Women in Journalism among those in control of the news. Thus, as John Hartley states, “News is not only about and by men, it is overwhelmingly seen through men” (qtd. in Gallagher, 47).

The roles that women play as editors and other authorities are significant because their influence on news stories is different from a man’s editorial influence. Even if a woman is free to write a particular story, she is likely to be influenced by the owners and head executives of the organization for which she works. In her book, Margaret Gallagher explains this by stating, “Journalists’ output has been found to be conditioned by the reward system and political preferences of their employers.” She goes on to say, “The parameters of success are male-defined and women are not in a position to make the rules” (111). Thus, they are not really free to write what is important to them if their superiors are men, whom find different issues most important and newsworthy. Gallagher also states, “Professional beliefs may indeed undervalue women and women’s interests- for instance, certain topics may be defined as uninteresting and unimportant” (111). Thus, women will conform to male beliefs and practices, and will compromise their personal values for the sake of their jobs, or as Gallagher says, “Allied to a real sense of powerlessness within the decision-making structure, and a need to satisfy perceived male attitudes, this may lead professional women deliberately to ignore what are personally important but professionally difficult issues” (111). Thus is shown that it is essential for women to have decision-making power in journalism in order to be free to produce material in which they believe is important and newsworthy. An instance where women and men find different news stories “newsworthy” would be a report by the Boston Globe’s Jill Zuchman as she covered Bob Dole in a debate for the presidential primary. She found that in a question during the debate, Dole contradicted himself several times. However, while she thought that it would be a key story, Diamond, Bradford, and Amato say that men covering the same debate did not find it newsworthy, but other women did include the story in their reports. Thus, what women find as key stories, and “major blunders” (Diamond,

WRW - 33 Crystal Roberts Bradford, and Amato), are tossed aside by men who do not find such stories newsworthy. When a woman does have power, she will have a different influence on what is important for the public to know. The output will be different because the individual journalists are influenced by their female employer. Belinda Hopkins, a project consultant at the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), claims, “It’s only when people are in decision-making positions… that they have any influence on the programming or orientation of the media” (qtd. in Pantin). Thus, it is essential for women to have decision-making power in order to make a difference in the news. WEnews correspondent Laurence Pantin states, “When women do have decision-making power, the news often looks different. The obvious stories are still there, but there is more texture, more nuance, more about women.” Since the news is predominantly controlled by men, news stories and agendas change depending upon who is in control of the news- men or women. When women make the decisions, much more of the stories focus on social issues rather than politics; more stories feature women as the subjects of news as compared to men as the priority of news stories. According to a study by Doris A. Graber:

Women show somewhat greater concern than men about social issues… refer more often to economic issues, especially inflation… talk less about foreign affairs and defense matters than men and show less concern with energy and other resource conservation… are less concerned with problems of national prestige and government credibility, and they talk less about current political problems… Women are somewhat more likely than men to express general feelings of like or dislike for the candidates and to mention demographic characteristics like age and occupation. They are less likely to discuss the candidates’ political philosophy. (18-20)

Thus, women and men differ in what they find is important to convey in the news. Women focus on social issues that concern the greater society, while men prioritize politics and government affairs. Peter Hart of the University of Pittsburgh argues that a reporter’s gender does indeed make an important difference in news. He discusses how being a woman reporter was an advantage WRW - 34 Women in Journalism in the 2000 senatorial campaign for Hillary Rodham Clinton. In this campaign, former Associated Press reporter Beth J. Harpaz interviewed Clinton, and found that they had a lot in common with each other because of their experiences as women. Harpaz states:

As more women get into the position of reporting the news, the definition of what is news has changed. A generation ago, a story about breast cancer would probably not have been on the front page or the subject of editorials in all the major newspapers. I think what we might be seeing here is that the definition of what is newsworthy has changed as women are more prominent in the media, reporting the news and producing the news. (qtd. in Hart)

Thus, as women become reporters and producers of news, the news content changes and priorities shift. Women also increase the number of positive portrayals of women in news, according to Lee Jolliffe and Terri Catlett whom did a study on women’s magazines and their content depending on the presence of women editors. In this study, Jolliffe and Catlett describe their study of gender stereotypes in women’s magazines based on women being in control of the content. They found:

[The] presence of women editors was correlated with more positive portrayals of women… As the proportion of women editors increased, the number of articles describing women as active masters of their environments, as independent, as knowledgeable, and as self-reliant increased. (806)

However, the study also found that a rise in stories about women may also have been due to the feminist movement during the study period. Thus, having women editors contributed to positive portrayals of women but was not the “sole cause of them” (807), and the women’s movement at the time of the study was a likely influence of the results found. Also, Julia Wood says, “Some media analysts believe that if more women had positions of authority at executive levels, media would offer more positive portrayals of women” (235). It is only when women are free to write what they believe despite executive opinions will they be able to break professional and cultural barriers and present women’s views more accurately.

WRW - 35 Crystal Roberts Women also see news topics differently than men and present them to the public in a different style. Karen Tumulty claims, “As a woman, I bring certain sensitivity to certain issues” (Diamond, Bradford, and Amato). Diamond, Bradford, and Amato also quote Lisa Anderson by stating, “Because women process certain information differently from men, ‘they are more likely to burrow through the rhetoric’ and find the human dimension—‘what it means to ordinary people.’ Female reporters… ‘are less romanced by the political b.s.’” Thus, women convey a meaningful message to their audience; not to say that men do not, but women make the material less complicated by putting the information in simple terms, so that the audience can grasp and understand what they are trying to say. Many of the obstacles that women have faced in journalism (and still face today) were the same as the rest of the women’s struggle in breaking the barriers of traditionally male professions. Journalism is no exception for this struggle. Judith Gelfman says that “traditionally, television news broadcasting has been a male occupation. The major news of the world, events that concern men and women equally, has long been assumed to be a masculine perogative” (1). In an interview with Gelfman on March 12, 1973, Virginia Sherwood of ABC-TV said, “Women are new in this field… women are new in a lot of fields” (87). Three decades later, women are no longer new, and few things have changed. As Hermano and Turley state, “While women are more present in the newsroom, they continue to be victims of harassment and discrimination.” They still face discrimination based on gender, such as stereotypes, unequal pay, and suppression under male authority. Gender plays a significant role in television news. Despite the majority of gender differences resulting in discrimination, some women have found that being a woman in journalism has a few advantages. For instance, many stations will hire women just because they are looking to “increase the number of on-air women in their ranks at [that] time” (Gelfman, 82), so being a woman is a plus. There are also some instances where women have an advantage because they are not seen as “a threat,” says Gelfman. Gelfman goes on to state, “These people tend to be more open and

WRW - 36 Women in Journalism trusting than they would be with a male reporter” (83). Thus, gender has a few advantages in television news. On the other hand, the majority of women in television news find that being female is a definite disadvantage in their profession. One newswoman says, “I don’t think men respect women… I don’t think they really respect their opinions” (qtd. in Gelfman, 85). Besides being disrespected as reporters, women are taken less seriously. Hermano and Turley state that “women journalists are often confined to reporting local news rather than national or foreign news and ‘soft’ topics such as entertainment or health more often than politics or crime.” This idea of women reporting on “soft topics” is frequently mentioned by other research studies. A counter argument is sometimes made, saying that the stories are assigned because the subject matter is appropriate for the gender of the reporter. However, Teresa Brown on WPIX-TV explains that she often gets food stories despite the fact that she does not know a thing about cooking (Gelfman, 89). Former CBS White House correspondent Deborah Potter says, “Women journalists often think they must avoid being perceived by their male colleagues in the newsroom as ‘soft,’ so they may resist raising ethical questions about invasion of privacy” (qtd. in Bunton). Women run the risk of being labeled “aggressive,” so they may back down because they feel the “constant need to fight preconceived notions of what a women can do and what she looks right doing” (Gelfman, 84). Gelfman also states that women in news are finding that they have to prove themselves to show that they are worthy of their jobs as reporters (87). Because they are being assigned to report on “soft” issues, they are taken less seriously, and therefore must struggle to be seen as equals. However, as they rise to the challenge of becoming an equal, they must face the obstacle of finding the balance of being taken seriously but not discriminated against as aggressive, unprofessional, or inappropriate. An instance of such discrimination and women being assigned to certain roles is WNEW-TV’s Ted Kavenau’s statements on sex- role distinctions. He says that women will “perform well” if they are put “into a role which is suitable for [their] sex” (qtd. in

WRW - 37 Crystal Roberts Gelfman, 93). This demonstrates the stereotypes into which women are labeled as having a distinct role apart from men. But top television news correspondent Al Primo opposes this belief, stating, “A good reporter can cover any story” (qtd. in Gelfman, 93). Thus, there are many contrary beliefs about women’s role in journalism. Women also face a double standard on television news based on appearances. Marlene Sanders and Marcia Rock state, “It is undeniable that television is an entertainment medium and that one’s appearance does affect one’s reception by an audience… There is no doubt that women face more pressure than men do on television in terms of appearance, age, and demeanor” (147). The same criterion is not applied equally to men and women. Bernard Shaw of CNN says, “There are men, over age 50, on television, reporting news. They are gray, some are wrinkled, some are balding, but their graying hair is ‘distinguished’… I defy anyone to name one woman in television news who has been allowed to wrinkle and gray and lose hair on-camera” (qtd. in Bunton). And so, women, unlike men, are pressured to remain young-looking and attractive in a society that “glorifies youth” (qtd. in Wood, 251), for the sake of their jobs, while men can look old and gray and still be considered wise because of their old age. As Shaw says, “They are ‘experienced’” (qtd. in Bunton). Although not very substantial, there is also discrimination in equal pay for women journalists, just as in most other industries in which men dominate. Weaver and Wilhoit’s study found, “The salary gap [in 1982-1983] between men and women had decreased somewhat from 1970. From 1981 to 1991, that gap decreased even more… Overall median salaries in 1981 were 81% of those for men, compared with 64% in 1970” (181). They go on to say that “the strongest predictors of U.S. journalists’ income in 1992 were number of years of experience, size of news organization, type of news organization, and holding managerial positions” (181). This shows that incomes are primarily based on levels of experience and power. However, being that the majority of those holding such positions are men, it indicates that women must receive lower incomes.

WRW - 38 Women in Journalism And so, women have made some progress in journalism over the past few decades. They started out as a small minority, and now have a greater representation than in the past. However, their increased presence in news has not overcome the continuing dominance of men. Men continue to be in control of news content as editors, producers, managers, and directors, thus making the majority of decisions. Women have somewhat advanced in this area, becoming more present in the decision-making process, but they are only a small portion of a larger whole. It is shown that when women are in control of the news, the news is different because definitions of what is “newsworthy” changes. As women become more in control of the news, the news focuses more heavily on social issues with less emphasis on politics and foreign affairs. But in order for women to make these changes in news content, they must be in positions of authority. As they continue to struggle for a more powerful voice in news, women face obstacles of gender discrimination. They must overcome traditional stereotypes of women’s roles and fight to be respected as equals in the field of journalism. In time, women will become more powerful and more in control of the news, and the news will more accurately reflect the proportions of the population in terms of gender, as well as views of society. But until then, as Jinx Melia says, “Men [will continue to] control the media, and therefore, our views of the world” (27). Works Cited

Beasley, Maurine and Sheila Silver. Women in Media: A Documentary Source Book. Washington, D.C.: Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press, 1977.

Bunton, Kristie. “A Case Study: Gender and Media in the US.” Common Concern Magazine. Sept. 1997. World YWCA. 1 Nov. 2004. .

Diamond, Edwin, Stacey Bradford, and Jennie D Amato. “As reporters, women have come a long way, but is it far enough?” National Journal. 25 May 1996. ProQuest. Gleeson Lib., San Francisco, CA. 31 Oct. 2004. .

WRW - 39 Crystal Roberts Eddings, Barbara Murray. “Women in Broadcasting.” Women and the Media. Ed. Helen Baehr. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980.

Gallagher, Margaret. Gender Setting: New Agendas for Media Monitoring and Advocacy. London: Zed Books, 2001.

Gallagher, Margaret. Unequal Opportunities: The case of women and the media. Paris: The Unesco Press, 1981.

Gelfman, Judith S. Women in Television News. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976.

Graber, Doris A. “Agenda-Setting: Are There Women’s Perspectives?” Women and the News. Ed. Laurily Keir Epstein. New York: Communication Arts Books, 1978.

“Growth of women in TV appears stalled, study suggests.” Media Report to Women. Winter 1998. ProQuest. Gleeson Lib., San Francisco, CA. 31 Oct. 2004. .

Hart, Peter. “There are some differences when women are covering the campaign.” University Times. 21 Feb. 2002.

Hermano, Teresita and Anna Turley. “‘Who makes the news?’ The Global Media Monitoring Project 2000 finds great disparities in news coverage of men and women.” Nieman Reports. Winter 2001. Gale Group Databases. InfoTrac. Gleeson Lib., San Francisco, CA. 31 Oct. 2004. .

Jolliffe, Lee and Terri Catlett. “Women Editors at the ‘Seven Sisters’ Magazines, 1965-1985: Did They Make a Difference.” Journalism Quarterly 71 (1994): 800-8.

Pantin, Laurence. “When Women Run Newsrooms, Women Are in the News.” Women’s eNews. 6 Apr. 2001. 1 Nov. 2004. .

Prato, Lou. “Women Move Up in TV Newsrooms.” American Journalism Review. Nov. 1996. Gale Group Databases. InfoTrac. Gleeson Lib., San Francisco, CA. 3 Nov. 2004. .

Radio-Television News Directors Association and Foundation. RTNDA/F Research. 18 Nov. 2004 .

Sanders, Marlene and Marcia Rock. Waiting for Prime Time: The Women of Television News. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988. WRW - 40 Women in Journalism Stone, Vernon. “Minorities and Women in Television News.” Television and Radio News Research. Missouri School of Journalism. 1 Nov. 2004. .

Stone, Vernon. “Who Does What in TV News?.” Television and Radio News Research. Missouri School of Journalism. 1 Nov. 2004. .

Weaver, David H. and G. Cleveland Wilhoit. The American Journalist in the 1990s: U.S. News People at the End of an Era. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1996.

Wood, Julia. Gendered Lives, Communication, Gender, and Culture. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1994.

WRW - 41 Gender Expectations and Familial Roles within Asian American Culture

Amy Truong

Writer’s comment: Growing up in a predominantly African American neighborhood, I often had trouble identifying with other Asian Americans and sometimes felt ostracized from them. Those within the Asian American community assumed that my isolation from our culture and our people was due to a lack of pride—as if I were “ashamed” of my origins. Upon coming to USF, I found myself surrounded by Asian Americans. The university and civic environments aroused a curiosity in me that never existed before: I wanted to become more aware of the culture and society to which I belonged. As a result, I decided to pursue a minor in Asian American Studies so that I may better understand myself and address the concerns of my community. These courses—including Professor Dempster’s Asian American Literature Survey, English 211class—have offered me so much insight that I was able to form ties between myself and other Asian Americans. These connections have made me more passionate about my writing by allowing my audience to look into my private life. Writing has also given —me the opportunity to do something that other women in my culture have not been allowed to do: speak. —Amy Truong

Instructor’s comment: In this essay, Amy makes a strong statement not only about Asian American womanhood and the restrictions of female cultural and gender roles but also about the clash between the older generation’s traditional values and the younger generation’s individual desires. I admire the synthesis of literary analysis and family history in this piece, how well the layers resonate with one another. Breaking through social codes that enforce silence, Amy’s piece articulates—with courage and hon- esty—the tensions between familial responsibility and personal freedom, the challenges to the Asian American female who is compelled to speak. —Brian Komei Dempster, Rhetoric and Composition

WRW - 42 Gender Expectations and Familial Roles within Asian American Culture

In Mercy Lake he started his new job as a photocopy machine repairman . . . He maintained the new Chevrolet sedan—changed the oil, followed the tune-up dates, and kept good records of all repairs. . . He labored on the yard. (Chang, 135-136, 140)

She laundered Ming’s new work clothes: permanent-press shirts with plastic tabs inserted in the stiff, pointed collars; bright, wide ties . . . In the kitchen, Sansan learned to cook with canned and frozen foods. She made cream of tomato soup for lunch, and stored envelopes of onion soup mix for meat loaf or quick onion dip. More often . . . Sansan consulted the Betty Crocker cookbook. (138-139)

re these from an episode of Leave It to Beaver? No. These are excerpts from Lan Samantha Chang’s, “The AUnforgetting.” Ask yourself what these excerpts mean to you. They may just simply remind some of you of an episode of Leave It to Beaver because these were the characteristic roles of men and women some decades ago when television sets only came in black and white—men were the breadmakers while women were the caretakers. For others, including myself, they are reminders of the life that still exists . . . a life that is representative of many Asian American families today. In many Asian cultures, gender plays a role in dictating what you do. Certain members of the family are designated specific responsibilities that compliment their respective gender roles much like the characters in Leave It to Beaver. The males support the family financially and control the household, and the women take care of the family and household chores. Lan Samantha Chang’s novella, “Hunger,” parallels the events in my life and shows how gender roles are still very apparent in today’s Asian American families. Within Asian culture, women are raised and taught to be silent and obedient. I am a first generation Vietnamese American and growing up, I was told, “Do not comment or speak up,” whenever I wanted to voice my opinion. My opinion was considered unimportant. And for many years of my life I believed that this was true. I never spoke a word unless I was asked to speak or spoken to . . . until I finally became tired of being mute. As a young teenager, my parents were going through difficult

WRW - 43 Amy Truong times with their marriage. One night, my mother, father, grandmother, brother and I sat down to have a family meeting about the issues between my parents. My dad did all the talking while my mom sat in silence like she always did. “Your mother has committed terrible sins and has destroyed our family,” he said to us sternly in our native language. Not once during the entire family meeting did anyone in the family speak other than my father. Before the meeting ended, I finally worked up the nerve to defend my mother since she refused to defend herself. “Daddy, you shouldn’t speak about Mommy like that in front of us,” I declared. As soon as I said it, my father slapped me hard on the back of my head and told me, “Do not ever speak unless you have been instructed to.” I immediately received a scolding from my mother and grandmother as well. Ironically, it was my mind that they thought was poisoned, and they blamed America for my “rebellious” breaking of silence. The characters in Lan Samantha Chang’s “Hunger” also suffer from silence. Min, the wife, very rarely speaks a word when she does not agree with her husband. Instead, she lets him do as he pleases and remains quiet as a good Asian wife. For instance, her husband treats their youngest daughter in ways that she does not particularly agree with. Her husband places a lot of pressure on their daughter and that is not how she wants their children to grow up. Yet she remains silent, because she believes that it is her place to let her husband control their family and their daughter in the way that he wants. For example, the mother’s silence is demonstrated on one occasion when her daughter and husband are screaming:

Baba, let me stop! You go ahead and cry! . . . You cry all you want! . . . You cry! But—play! . . . As I ironed I watched Anna fiddle with the frayed towels that had once been pink but now were faded to a creamy white . . . I opened my mouth but my throat was dry. (59)

She wishes to protect her daughter and attempts to speak, but chooses to refrain from doing so due to her respective role as a woman and wife. Ironically, it is only after her death that she is able to voice her thoughts. In essence, the novella’s point-of-view WRW - 44 Gender Expectations and Familial Roles within Asian American Culture is symbolic and emphasizes how a woman’s voice can be silenced due to her gender role. Ruth, the youngest daughter, is also silenced and lets her father live vicariously through her. Though she hates it, she does not speak against his wishes. For example, her father makes her play the violin and has her practice for hours on end. She practices so much everyday that it brings her to tears and causes her to resent her father, because she cannot do or say anything that will prevent him from forcing her to play. For instance, when she and her father are locked in the practice room, he tells her,

Do you understand? From now on, you work. You practice everyday . . . No no no no—Her voice rose to a shriek. There was a slam as he closed the door, and they were trapped inside the room together. . . . He clapped and counted. She played and cried. (60)

Though she cries and screams, she continues to play because this is her father’s desire. Irony once again occurs. Just as Tian leaves his family to pursue his passion for music, Ruth’s passionate hate for that same music drives her to leave her family as well. As a woman, she is put in an impossible position: her breaking of silence and fighting back is a form of defiance and shows a lack of respect towards the male figure, causing the destruction of this family. In Vietnamese culture, the oldest daughter is also expected to play a major role in the house—she is expected to handle household chores and responsibilities in the absence of a mother. My mother is the oldest daughter and was only fourteen when she arrived in the United States after the Vietnam War. My mother came to this country with her older brother, Nihn (age 18), her two younger brothers, Can (10) and Toan (4), and her younger sister, Ngoc (5). “Life was very hard and unbearable sometimes,” she said. My mother had to take on the difficult responsibility of taking care of all her siblings. At the tender age of fourteen, she assisted her siblings with their schoolwork, put food on the table and clothes on their backs, attended school, worked a part-time job, and attempted to learn the English language. My grandparents finally arrived in the United States (along with two more children) when my mother was 22 years old. “I thought it was over,” she WRW - 45 Amy Truong told me. But this was not the case. My grandparents expected more from my mother because after eight years in the United States she spoke the English language, understood how the system worked, and already seemed to have things under control. My grandparents soon developed a bad gambling habit and left my mother to take on the burden of caring for her six siblings. I ask my mother why she continued to put up with it. She responded only by saying, “I am obligated, Amy.” Till this day my mother is the one who holds her family together, and one day she expects me (the oldest and only daughter) to do the same for my siblings and our family. In “Hunger,” Anna is the oldest daughter who, like my mother, has the responsibility of taking care of the home in the absence of her mother. She hires men to work on the home, decorates it so that it will be more presentable, and even gives tours to interested buyers. Strangely, she denies bids on the house and does not move out into a beautiful loft, a comfy townhouse or spacious condominium. As much as Anna longs to sell the house in order to rid of all their unhappy memories, a part of her feels obligated to stay there. For instance, Anna’s mother watches her as she lays in bed and notices, “through all this, Anna sleeps; but on some nights, as the melodies fade away, she shudders and sits up in bed . . . Perhaps she has been dreaming of her greatest hope and fear—that the house is gone, that it is destroyed, and nothing more remains of it” ( 114). Anna’s personal desire to forget her family’s past conflicts with her duty to her family to keep their home. Anna stays loyal to her gender and familial role by remaining in that home, resulting in restless nights due to her split conscience. On the other hand, men play a very different role in an Asian family. They are the primary (and often only) breadmaker in the family. My father came to the United States when he was 23. Because of his limited knowledge of English, he found it difficult to obtain good work or even go back to school. “No one would hire me because my English was very hard to understand,” he explains. This affected him ten years later when he and my mother married. Because my father did not know the language well, my mother was the breadwinner in their relationship. This made my father “lose face.” Not being able to contribute to the household as

WRW - 46 Gender Expectations and Familial Roles within Asian American Culture much as your wife was a shameful thing and made him lose a lot of his pride. “I was very embarrassed that your mother made more than me. I was too ashamed to even go out because I worried that others would see me and speak badly of me,” my father states, no longer embarrassed. Not being able to provide for the family financially, my father expressed his “manliness” in other ways. Though my mother made most of the money, he decided where that money would go and how it would be distributed. He was also very strict, held strongly to Vietnamese traditions, and made sure we knew that he still wore the pants. He made sure that I was never out late, because traditionally it was not appropriate for a young lady to be out past dark. Even to this day, I am expected to be home and in bed at 10 p.m. He made sure that we never spoke English in the house so that we would remember where we came from and so that others would know that we were still very Vietnamese even though we were born American. When we spoke English, he either ignored what we said or scorned us for doing so. “You must remember your origins. This house is not a white man’s house,” he droned in our native language. He also made sure of this by having my mother cook traditional Vietnamese meals everyday and restricted us from having things such as burgers, fries and sodas. He told us, “Vietnamese food is healthier than American food . . . tastes better too. All Americans know how to do is fry their food. The Vietnamese, on the other hand, are real chefs.” My father is now trying to regain his respect and honor by taking night courses and practicing his English with my mother and his children. He hopes that by doing this he will earn a better job with better money so that he can fulfill his duty as a man and father. Tian, the father in “Hunger,” is the breadwinner and the head of his household, much like my father. He provides the only source of income and does so by first working as a music professor, then in a restaurant. He also calls all the shots and makes all the decisions for each member of his family. For example, he decides that Ruth is going to play the violin and that she is going to play it well by forcing her to practice whenever she has free time. According to the novella, “All morning during summer vacations, plus two evenings a week, he sat in the tiny

WRW - 47 Amy Truong room for hours and helped her practice” (62). Though the text indicates that he is helping Ruth, no normal teenager wants to be locked in a room practicing a craft that he/she has no interest in. Therefore, force is used on Tian’s part to get her to do so. He also decides that she is not going to attend the university where he once taught even after they offer her a scholarship. They have an argument and he demands,

You’re staying here. Let go of my arm! You’re hurting me! You are not leaving this house as long as you are still a child. Do you hear me? I’m not a child! You’re my daughter and I’m your father! (72)

It is not traditional among Asian families for a child to leave the home to attend school. His refusal to succumb to this American tradition represents his need to control the family. Tian also tells his wife Min what to do. One such incident occurs after his recital. Tian’s colleagues want him to stay and have some drinks. He tells them that Min is tired, but it is she who insists that they stay. He hushes her quickly and tells her that they are going to go home. Min urges him,

It is okay. My [Min’s] voice cracked against the words . . . Come on, said Tian. He took my arm and pulled me around the corner, to the coatrack. I’m not that tired; I could have gone out with them . . . Why did you want to leave so much? . . . I want to go home. (22)

Though Min is persistent that her husband mingle with his American friends, his desire is apparently more important than hers, displaying both his power and her silence. Tian, like many other Asian men, including my father, is the money-earner and controller of the family. They both support the family financially and make all the decisions pertaining to each member of the family whether or not protest occurs. Male sons also have a respected role in the Asian family. They are expected to bring in income and help with the household expenses as well. My younger brother, Tim (19), lives with my

WRW - 48 Gender Expectations and Familial Roles within Asian American Culture parents and has paid rent every month since he was seventeen and received his first job. My parents do not like to call it rent. They prefer to term it “duty” or “obligation.” Tim is still young and would prefer to spend his money to go out and have fun with his friends. He and my parents constantly argue about this topic but my parents do not budge. “Tim, it is your responsibility to contribute to the needs of the family. This is only preparing you so that one day you can handle the responsibility of being a father, the man of the house, when it is your time,” they continually insist to him in Vietnamese. Likewise, they tell Tim that American traditions have made him ungrateful and lazy. In due time, they will be lecturing the same thing to my other younger brother, Will (5), as well. In “Hunger,” all of the characters, like my brother, struggle between achieving their individual desires and observing their respective gender and familial roles. Min wishes to speak her thoughts, but her role as a wife prevents her from doing so. Min has other desires and yet after “Twenty-one years . . . I had never admitted my disappointment with him. I had not complained about a lack of money or time together. I had taken what he brought home and made it into our daily lives” (94). Min is very unhappy and though she yearns to express her disappointment and opinion, she can not because she has to maintain her role as dutiful wife. Tian decides to pursue his love for music but at the cost of abandoning his family and his responsibilities to them. According to Tian,

‘Everyone . . . has things they want to do in their lives. But sometimes there is only one thing—one thing that a person must do. More than what he is told to do, more than what he is trained to do. Even more than what his family wants him to do. It is what he hungers for’. (28)

Unlike some members of his family, Tian chooses his own personal longing over his obligation to his respective gender and familial role, claiming that it is something that he must do, as though he has no choice. Ruth challenges her prescribed role as a daughter so that she can live the life that she always wanted to, also at the cost of her family. She searches for freedom from her duties, saying, “ ‘I’m WRW - 49 Amy Truong quitting! I’m never going to pick up a violin again for as long as I live.’ And without a pause, he cried, ‘Then I don’t want you! You are not my daughter! You are nothing!’ ” (88). After this heated exchange, Ruth “walked to the door, opened it, and stepped outside” (90). Ruth and Tian have their differences, but they are very much alike. As stated earlier, they both leave their families to pursue their dreams, disregarding their responsibilities to their family. Anna wishes to forget all her memories by selling their home. Instead, she is true to her respected role and remains in that home even against her own wishes. For example, “One day she opened the door to a brisk young couple full of plans, the woman’s belly swollen with hope like freshly risen dough . . . They bid, and Anna refused to sell” (107). Anna has invested much money into fixing the house so that she can begin to forget the past it holds, but her obligation to stay in that house so that her family’s story can be saved keeps her from doing so. Like my brother, the characters of “Hunger” make sacrifices in order to fulfill their roles. Likewise, those who follow their desires make huge sacrifices as well. Their personal longings and respected gender and familial roles create internal conflicts that are a part of their everyday lives just as is so with members of today’s Asian American families. It has been 30 years since my parents first arrived in the United States. Most people would expect them to assimilate to the American culture by now but they are deep-rooted in their Asian traditions and way of thinking, just as Min and Tian from the novella “Hunger” are. They raised my brothers and me by attempting to pass on their way of thinking, hoping that we honor our roots. We are Vietnamese and were raised to understand and adhere to Vietnamese values, meaning that we are to accept our gender and familial roles as many of Chang’s characters do. What my parents fail to understand is that we are also American and have been greatly immersed in and influenced by the American culture as well. My siblings and I believe that gender roles are a thing of the past . . . a thing that belongs to the generation, time, and country in which my parents grew up.

WRW - 50 Gender Expectations and Familial Roles within Asian American Culture In essence, my siblings and I are Anna and Ruth in “Hunger” while my parents are Min and Tian. We are a great representation of an Asian American family torn apart by our prescribed gender and familial roles. Reminiscent of the family in “Hunger,” my family is one of many Asian American families conflicted with such issues. These issues tear apart the family in Chang’s story, but many Asian American families are learning to cope with these problems by finding a balance between familial responsibilities and personal desires instead of letting one or the other dictate their lives completely. For us, these issues have become an everyday part of our lives and our struggles seem to be far from over. There is much that my siblings and I need to understand about the immigrant generation and vice versa. Whether or not these conflicts will ever disappear is still a mystery and has yet to stand the test of time.

Works Cited

Chang, Lan Samantha. Hunger: A Novella and Stories. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.

WRW - 51 The Hamitic Hypothesis: A Pseudo- Historical Justification for White Superiority

Travis Sharp

Writer’s comment: European colonizers consolidated their power over Africa in the late 19th century by erasing the history of “Black Africa”—the Africa that flourished prior to European infiltration. Prominent Oxford historian Hugh Trevor-Roper expressed the typical European sentiment in 1958, writing that pre-colonial African history was merely “the unrewarding gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant corners of the globe.” The Hamitic Hypothesis was central to this attempt to deny black Africans any role in their own history by postulating that migratory white tribes, known as Hamites, were wholly responsible for spreading civilized practices throughout Africa. As we discovered in Professor Hoag’s course, however, this hypothesis was an overt manifestation of racist ideology, not a legitimate ethnological theory. My essay endeavors to trace the history of this hypothesis and explain how African historians repudiated it during the decolonization movement of the 1960’s. —Travis Sharp Instructor’s comments: In my Pre-Colonial Africa course, students learn about the political, economic, and social complexities and successes of African societies prior to the onset of European rule in the late 19th century. Students also write a historiographical essay in which they analyze the state of the historical literature on a given subject. Through a discussion of the Hamitic Hypothesis, Travis Sharp shows how our understanding of social and political development in Africa has changed. As African scholars took a prominent role in the writing of African history in the post-colonial period, the achievements of pre-colonial African societies were recognized. Sharp draws upon a wide range of sources—from the Bible to 19th century European intellectuals to modern African historians—to illustrate the ways in which racial and political beliefs have influenced the writing of Africa’s history. —Heather Hoag, Department of History WRW - 52 The Hamitic Hypothesis t the beginning of the 20th century, “civilized” nations saw it as their Christian duty to spread modernity to the A“uncivilized” regions of the world. Foremost among these uncivilized regions was Africa. As the “Scramble for Africa” unfolded and European powers struggled to assert their supremacy over the African continent, anthropologists, historians, and sociologists sought to explain the apparent backwardness of African societies. Drawing upon racist assumptions of inherent black inferiority, European scholars gradually came to accept the validity of the Hamitic hypothesis. The Hamitic hypothesis transformed hundreds of years of pseudo-historical research into the most widely accepted ethnological theory of its day. As colonies proliferated throughout the African continent, Europeans were shocked to find that many African societies already exuded vestiges of civilization. The discovery of advanced African architecture, art, and political organizations “contradicted the low rankings that the racial classification schemes of the time accorded dark-skinned people.”1 In order to rationalize such a clear demonstration of black intellectual ability, Europeans claimed that these achievements were the result of a cultural exchange between Africa’s indigenous black tribes and a superior white migrant tribe known as the Hamites. The white Hamite thus became directly responsible for everything black Africans had accomplished throughout their entire history. According to African historian Joseph C. Miller, proponents of the Hamitic hypothesis believed that “Only a ‘white’ residue in Africans’ cultures could explain so unanticipated a suggestion of competence among Negroes.”2 This essay will seek to trace the origins and development of the Hamitic hypothesis. Specifically, it will prove that the Hamitic hypothesis was a manifestation of racist ideology, not a legitimate ethnological theory. Finally, it will consider the role of African nationalism in the refutation and reformulation of the Hamitic hypothesis after 1960.

Origins of the Hamitic hypothesis The words of the Bible have been periodically misconstrued by Christians trying to legitimize their unjust actions. The Hamitic

WRW - 53 Travis Sharp hypothesis is a perfect example because its biblical origins ultimately led to the belief that black inferiority was divinely sanctioned by God. The term “Hamitic” comes from the biblical figure Ham. In the Book of Genesis, Noah exited the ark with three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. One day, Noah became drunk and fell asleep naked inside his tent. Ham mistakenly discovered his father’s nakedness, and then ran to tell his brothers about it. Shem and Japheth quickly ran inside the tent and covered their father but made sure not to look at his unclothed body. Upon awakening, Noah became furious at Ham, who was the father of Canaan, for gazing upon his nakedness. Noah swore:

Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem! Let Canaan be his slave. May God expand Japheth, so that he dwells among the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be his slave.3

This seemingly innocuous conflict effectively sentenced Ham’s descendants to perpetual servitude. Nowhere in Genesis, however, do we see evidence that Ham was black. In fact, race is mentioned in neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament. The traditional belief that Ham was a black man developed much later, not being explicitly formulated until the Babylonian Talmud of 500 C.E.4 Europeans readily accepted the curse on Canaan as a denunciation of the black race despite the absence of racial identification in the original biblical account. Part of this acquiescent approval was related to suggestions of inherent black inferiority elsewhere in Western literature, particularly in the works of classical Graeco-Roman writers. For example, when introducing a discussion of certain Ethiopian primitives, the Sicilian historian Diodorus wrote:

The majority of them…are black in colour and have flat noses and woolly hair. As for their spirit, they are entirely savage and display the nature of a wild beast…and are as far removed as possible from human kindness to one another;

WRW - 54 The Hamitic Hypothesis and speaking as they do with a shrill voice and cultivating none of the practices of civilized life as these are found among the rest of mankind, they present a striking contrast when considered in the light of our own customs.5

This account by Diodorus is markedly negative, portraying the Ethiopians as a sub-human species incapable of replicating civilized practices. Classical accounts, however, were not always so explicit in their degradation. Herodotus, the most noted of classical geographers, exhibits a more subtle ethnocentrism in his description of western Libya: “Huge serpents are found, and the lions…and the creatures without heads whom the Libyans declare to have their eyes in their breasts, and also the wild men, and the wild women.”6 Although Herodotus is not as pejorative as Diodorus, his comments still make Africa seem like a dangerous place where civilization cannot possibly flourish. The condescending attitudes of classical writers had a significant impact on later works by modern thinkers. As the Enlightenment revolutionized academia, white scholars struggled to explain the allegedly vast disparity in ability between themselves and black Africans. There were two primary theses: the black African was either condemned as incorrigibly inferior, or lauded as a victimized “noble savage.” Georg Friedrich Hegel’s The Philosophy of History (1832) perhaps most vividly illustrates the view that black Africa was hopelessly incapable of reformation. Hegel postulated that Africa was “the land of childhood…enveloped in the dark mantle of night” and had neither “political constitution” nor “moral sentiments.”7 He concluded that “the character of the Negroes…is capable of no development or culture.”8 Hegel is one of the giants of modern Western philosophy, but his outright denial of African efficacy forces us to acknowledge the fact that for many Europeans of the 19th century, Africa had become “the antithesis of Western civilization.”9 Contrasting with Hegel’s view was the idea that uncivilized natives were actually much better off than civilized peoples. This ideology extolled the virtues of the noble savage and became increasingly popular during the late 19th century. African historians Paul Bohannan and Philip Curtin explain the appeal of the noble savage in their classic Africa and Africans (1988): WRW - 55 Travis Sharp

As the Europeans struggled with the problems of a complex and increasingly technical society, it was useful to imagine other people who were free to practice the simple virtues born of innocence, closer to nature, and somehow free of the incessant struggle for power and domination that marked European class and international relations.10

The noble savage theory was clearly expressed in Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Emile (1762), the story of a peaceful “savage” who is uprooted from his family and ultimately corrupted by the trivialities of modern society. Another poignant example, particularly for Americans, is Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). The moral resiliency and Christian piety demonstrated by black slaves Tom and Eliza contrasts sharply with the unscrupulous greed of the white slave-trader Haley. Emile and Uncle Tom’s Cabin were both enormously popular in their day and serve as lasting testaments to the unspoiled virtuousness of the noble savage.

The Hamitic hypothesis rises to primacy Having addressed the intellectual origins of the Hamitic hypothesis, it is now time to discuss its ascension to primacy. As was already mentioned above, Europeans traditionally believed that Ham and Canaan were black. Thus, “The Negro was seen by Europeans as a descendant of Ham, bearing the stigma of Noah’s curse to be, forever, the white man’s drawer of water and hewer of wood.”11 This view conveniently justified slavery as a biblical mandate. One of the most astonishing things about the Hamitic hypothesis, however, was its adaptability. The Hamites, or descendants of Ham, were quite malleable, and could be cited to support any European assertion of inherent black inferiority. The Hamitic paradigm shifted drastically after Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in the early 19th century. French archaeologists uncovered the forgotten grandeur of an Egyptian civilization that had flourished more than a thousand years before Greece and Rome. After exhaustive research, Napoleon’s scientists concluded that the ancient Egyptians were indeed “Negroid.”12 This conclusion, however, was totally unacceptable to the European intellectual community. It not only meant that WRW - 56 The Hamitic Hypothesis Africans were capable of building advanced civilizations, but also implied that they had done so a thousand years before white Graeco-Romans. To combat this theory of black intellectual equality, European theologians and ethnographers reformulated the premises of the Hamitic hypothesis. They postulated that in the Bible, Noah had only explicitly cursed Canaan; thus, Ham and his other sons were technically not condemned to a life of servitude. Ham’s son Mizraim was subsequently identified as the patriarch of Egypt, leaving Canaan and his progeny alone to assume the malediction of perpetual slavery.13 Freed from the curse of Noah, it was agreed that Ham must have been white. E.R. Sanders, who published a pioneering critique of the Hamitic hypothesis in 1969, concludes that “The Egyptians emerged as Hamites, Caucasoid, uncursed and capable of high civilization.”14 Having secured the legacy of ancient Egypt as a white civilization, the Hamitic hypothesis became a salient feature in the rapidly developing ethnology of the late 19th century. At this time, two theories emerged regarding the origins of modern humans: evolution and diffusion. Evolution, also known as polygenism or the Candelabra hypothesis, maintained that human societies developed through similar, protracted stages of development.15 There was no single cradle of civilization from whence our earliest human ancestors emerged; instead, Homo sapiens sapiens evolved independently and in parallel (like the branches of a candelabra) throughout different parts of the world. Although this theory would appear to refute the Hamitic hypothesis, European scholars interpreted it to mean that in terms of development, “Western Europe represented one of the highest stages, black Africa one of the lowest.”16 It naturally followed that the only reason under- evolved black Africa exhibited semblances of civilization was because it had usurped them from white Hamitic northern tribes. Notice the Hamitic hypothesis’ ability to adapt to seemingly contradictory evidence. This malleability illustrates the pseudo- historical racial motivations perpetuating the Hamitic myth. The second theory proposed to explain human origins was diffusion. Also known as monogenism or the Noah’s Ark hypothesis, diffusion clearly corroborated the Hamitic hypothesis.17 Diffusion held that there was a unity to mankind, and

WRW - 57 Travis Sharp that all the races had originally emerged from a single parental stock.18 Although it has since been unequivocally refuted, ethnologists of the 19th century believed that humans first evolved in Mesopotamia, subsequently migrating away from there to colonize the rest of the globe.19 No one dared to suggest that these earliest Mesopotamians were anything but white. The diffusionist model was critical because it not only reinforced the Hamitic hypothesis, but also transformed the European approach to Africa, as historian Philip Zachernuk explains:

The diffusionist approach to early human history posited a single invention of most elements of civilization, rather than their repeated discovery by separate cultures. Primitive cultures advanced less by their own agency than by acquiring the tools or ideas for improvement from superior foreigners. […]Diffusion could explain exceptions to African stagnation as the traces of foreign invaders. Further, it set precedents for colonial occupation: just as Africa had once needed Hamites to be improved, so now it needed Britons.20

Instead of acknowledging Africa’s unique and independent history, the theories of evolution and diffusion corroborated the Hamitic hypothesis by whitewashing African development. The famous African historian W.E.B Du Bois observed that “All history, all science was changed to fit this new condition. Africa had no history. Wherever there was history in Africa or civilization, it was of white origin; and the fact that it was civilization proved that it was white.”21 Deprived of their history, Africans were seen as impotent pawns waiting to be manipulated by their European superiors. This negative stereotype resulted in the conception that African history was non-existent before European intervention. Hugh Trevor-Roper, Regius Professor of History at Oxford University, wrote in 1958:

Undergraduates, seduced as always, by the changing breath of journalistic fashion, demand that they should be taught the history of black Africa. Perhaps in the future there will be some African history to teach. But at the present there is none, or very little: there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness…Men existed even in dark countries and dark centuries, but to study their history would

WRW - 58 The Hamitic Hypothesis be to amuse ourselves with the unrewarding gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant corners of the globe.22

Though they sound abhorrent, Dr. Trevor-Roper’s words were not unusual in Eurpoean academia. The Hamitic hypothesis pillaged the history of Africa, subordinating it to small minded conceptions of European superiority. Along with evolution and diffusion, comparative anthropology was another development of the late 19th century that endeavored to scientifically substantiate the intrinsic inferiority of black people. Phrenology, the study of the shape and protuberances of the human skull, was especially important to proponents of the Hamitic hypothesis because it linked physical traits to mental ability.23 Phrenology divided the human race into four distinguishable sub-species: the Australoid, the Negro, the Caucasian or European, and the Mongolic or Asiamerican.24 The craniums of the four sub-species were then compared to see which were the largest. Not surprisingly, Caucasians were found to have the largest skulls, while Negroes exhibited the smallest skulls.25 Although most anthropologists thought that phrenology constituted cutting-edge science, hindsight demonstrates that their supposedly irrefutable “scientific” evidence reinforced many gross miscalculations about inherent racial abilities. The most influential racial anthropologist of the late 19th century was Sir Harry Johnston. Utilizing phrenology, Johnston asserted that “The Negro, more than any other human type, has been marked out by his mental and physical characteristics as the servant of other races.”26 The “White Man,” by contrast, is the prime cause of all “upward evolution.”27 Johnston’s pseudo- scientific racism became even more pronounced as his career progressed. For example, consider his thoughts on the physical appearance of the “Negro Sub-Species”:

Dark skin, squash nose, woolly hair, “blubber” lips, and “lark heel”—these are the principal taunts flung at the Negro. The dark skin affects not the sculptor’s eye, but the other four points are the Negro’s handicap in the competition for the Beauty Prize at some future Interracial Olympiad. Greater refinement of life will no doubt tend—is slowly tending—to WRW - 59 Travis Sharp modify or eliminate the elements of facial ugliness; but the most effective method of doing so is crossing with the Caucasian.28

Quite frankly, it is hard to imagine a more prejudiced perspective. Physical appearance, however, was not the only thing Johnston found lacking in Africans. With regards to their sexual practices, Johnston wrote:

The Negro has been so busy eating, drinking, marrying and begetting, that he has devoted little attention to the arts and industries […] The savage negro type is essentially unmoral. Men and women of this race are probably more inherently lustful, more eagerly addicted to sexual pleasures, than are the mass of Asiatics, Europeans, white Americans, and black Australians.29

Johnston clearly does not consider black Africans to be human beings. In highlighting their deficiencies, however, Johnston also highlights his own. Racial bigotry ultimately tarnished his anthropological legacy, exacting revenge on a man devoted to “scientifically” proving the inferiority of black Africans. Comparative anthropology would have a lasting effect on the Hamitic hypothesis. Until Johnston’s work, the inferiority of blacks had been assumed, but not substantiated. Phrenology provided the evidence scholars needed to present the Hamitic origin of African civilizations as an indubitable fact. Although it has been disproved by our relatively recently gained knowledge of human brain activity, phrenology enjoyed decades of success as the leading explanation of white superiority. Unfortunately, the popularity of phrenology “Left a residue of prejudice from which anthropology was long in freeing itself: the idea that head shape was meaningful did not disappear until well into the twentieth century.”30 Utilizing phrenology as concrete scientific proof, proponents of the Hamitic hypothesis sought to justify the European “Scramble for Africa” in the late 19th and early 20th century. Wyatt Macgaffey, who specializes in African racial history, points out that “From the European point of view, the classification of races and specifica-

WRW - 60 The Hamitic Hypothesis tion of their attributes served, directly or indirectly, to sanction the colonial enterprise.”31 During this period, European powers irrev- erently divided the African continent in order to establish profit- able colonial settlements. As they became more familiar with the accomplishments of indigenous African societies, the Hamitic hypothesis cogently reassured Europeans of their innate superior- ity. For example, Europeans were awestruck when they first encountered the Great Zimbabwe Ruins in southern Africa. The highly advanced architecture defied the popular expectation that “darkest Africa” would consist of nothing more than savage semi- nomadic tribes. European scholars, however, rapidly discredited anyone who dared to propose that black Africans were responsible for Zimbabwe’s magnificent ruins. Allister Macmillan, a compiler of various commercial guides to the British Empire, wrote in 1912:

There are unenlightened persons who assert complacently that these unexampled structures are of Bantu artistry. Pitiful their limitations and their childish theories. They can never see the forest for the multitude of trees. Bantu peoples are unchanging; they are as they used to be, farmers, herdsmen, elemental, of small brain capacity.32

Macmillan’s words clearly indicate the authoritative position the Hamitic hypothesis had assumed by the beginning of the 20th century. Even the daunting physical evidence provided by the Great Zimbabwe Ruins was not enough to convince European scholars that Africa was capable of civilization. The rehabilitation of the biblical Ham, the theories of evolution and diffusion, com- parative anthropology, and the “Scramble for Africa” combined to elevate the Hamitic hypothesis to primacy. Utilizing the theories of his predecessors, Charles G. Seligman would soon pilot the Hamitic hypothesis to its climatic zenith.

The Hamitic hypothesis reaches its apex The Hamitic hypothesis emerged from a long-standing tradition of European ethnocentrism, and developments of the 19th century further enhanced its reputation as a viable explanation for African backwardness and inferiority. Up to this point, however, there had not been a lucid scholarly work that explicitly formulated

WRW - 61 Travis Sharp all the important principles of the Hamitic hypothesis. That all changed in 1930 when C.G. Seligman published his famous Races of Africa. Seligman was a British ethnographer who had worked extensively in Africa. Affectionately known as “Sligs” to his contemporaries, Seligman attained “massive respect and prestige” among colonial-era British scholars and anthropologists.33 The contributors’ list to Seligman’s festschrift read like a “Who’s Who” of the European ivory tower, with every major figure in the field paying obeisance to his legacy: from Bronislaw Malinowski to Melville Herskovits, Louis Leakey to Marcel Mauss, Audrey Richards to George Pitt-Rivers.34 As Saul Dubow has remarked, Sligs was “a key intellectual broker in the world of inter-war British anthropology.”35 In Races of Africa, Seligman argues that Africa can be divided into two separate racial regions: the people of the northern division are essentially white or light-skinned Hamites of “European” type, while the southern division is populated by dark-skinned Negroes with “spiraled hair.”36 The Hamites, “who belong to the same great branch of mankind as the whites,” entered Africa from Mesopotamia and gradually intermixed with indigenous black Negroes.37 In so doing, the Hamites unknowingly spread their own advanced civilization to their less fortunate Negro counterparts:

The mechanism of the origin of the Negro-Hamitic peoples will be understood when it is realized that the incoming Hamites were pastoral ‘Europeans’—arriving wave after wave—better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark agricultural Negroes, for it must be remembered that there was no Bronze Age in Africa, and we may believe that the Negro, who is now an excellent iron-worker, learnt this art from the Hamite.38

Seligman goes on to assert that iron-working was not the only thing introduced to blacks by pastoral Hamites. He claims that drystone walling, rock-cut wells, irrigation systems, complex political organizations, and age-grade systems are all Hamitic in origin.39 To dispel any ambiguity, Seligman openly denies black Africans any role in the impressive developments on their continent: WRW - 62 The Hamitic Hypothesis Indeed it would not be very wide of the mark to say that the history of Africa south of the Sahara is no more than the story of the permeation through the ages, in different degrees and at various times, of the Negroes and the Bushmen by Hamitic blood and culture. The Hamites were, in fact, the great civilizing force behind black Africa.40

It is worth mentioning that Seligman did not even consider the Hamites to be completely competent members of the white race. In fact, the Hamites were originally forced to migrate out of Mesopotamia and into Africa because they were the dregs of white society. In light of this revelation, Seligman’s condemnation of black Africa becomes that much more disparaging. As Ole Bjorn Rekdal articulates, “Even the cursed among the Euro-Asians were able to completely outshine the original inhabitants of Africa.”41 Races of Africa was undoubtedly Seligman’s magnum opus and represented the final evolution of the Hamitic hypothesis. After its publication, E.R. Sanders writes that “In the eyes of the world the Negro stood stripped of any intellectual or artistic genius and of any ability at all which would allow him, now, in the past, or in the future, to be the master of his life and country.”42 Although it would be malicious to suggest that Seligman was responsible for the racial purification programs of Nazi Germany, his endorsement of inherent “scientific” white superiority did corroborate Hitler’s racial ideology. The truly amazing thing is that even after the atrocities of the Third Reich were revealed in the aftermath of World War II, nobody attempted to refute Seligman’s position. In fact, the Hamitic hypothesis assumed “the sanctity of established doctrine” immediately after World War II.43 Though originally published in 1930, Races of Africa went through four relatively unchanged editions, the most recent of which appeared in 1966. Remarkably, Seligman’s treatise was still regarded as authoritative up until the last edition. Several intellectual movements developed during the 1960’s, however, that would rapidly lead to the repudiation and reformulation of the Hamitic hypothesis.

The refutation of the Hamitic hypothesis During the 1960’s, a massive reconfiguration of the global political power structure compelled black Africans to reclaim their

WRW - 63 Travis Sharp prominent role in the historical development of pre-Colonial civilizations. As the strenuous demands of the Cold War prevented many European nations from maintaining strict control over their colonial settlements, the indigenous colonial inhabitants experienced a reawakening fueled by the ideologies of nationalism, socialism, and Marxism-Leninism. European preoccupation combined with indigenous dissatisfaction to overthrow the colonial world order that had flourished for centuries. The rise of the “Third World” was particularly significant in Africa because it not only terminated European political domination, but also redefined notions of inherent white superiority. As a central element in the ideology supporting colonialism, the Hamitic hypothesis fell into disrepute and was gradually expunged by black leaders eager to honor the accomplishments of their forebears. 44 The arduous reformulation of the Hamitic hypothesis was primarily undertaken by black African scholars who were “unencumbered by colonial ties”; although educated in European and American schools, they became eager to throw off the yoke of foreign domination and reassert Africa’s unique identity.45 In Nigeria, African scholars reexamined the civilizations of the Yoruba to see if the detested Hamitic influence could be eradicated. Philip Zachernuk summarizes their ambitious endeavor:

By the early 1970’s waves of invasion had been replaced by informed speculation that the roots of southern Nigerian cultures lie largely within the region, perhaps near the Niger- Benue confluence, and that their history needs to be understood in the context not of foreign inspiration, but rather as a slow process of African development and adaptation within the regional environment.46

The expulsion of the Hamite was certainly not peculiar to Nigeria. All over the continent, scholars began to realize that the Hamitic hypothesis was a “colonial cultural artifact, not suited to post- colonial times.”47 Seligman’s white Hamite became a symbol of European oppression as Africans moved to abolish any suggestions of pre-Colonial African savagery. History, however, does not operate in a vacuum. If the Hamitic hypothesis was going to be dethroned, something needed WRW - 64 The Hamitic Hypothesis to take its place. The rediscovery of pre-Colonial Africa’s remarkable achievements provided this coup de etat, toppling the intellectual sovereignty of the Hamitic hypothesis and clearing the way for a new black history of Africa. Scholars of the time “began to discover that Africa was not a tabula rasa, but that it had a past, a history which could be reconstructed; that it was a continent which knew empire builders at a time when large areas of Europe stagnated in the Dark Ages; that it knew art and commerce.”48 In order to catalyze African pride, historians used pre-Colonial African accomplishments to “build up new loyalties” and ultimately “break down the feelings of impotence, dependence and irresponsibility among Africans which it is in the nature of colonial rule to produce.”49 In classical times, Byron reminded the Greeks of Sappho and Marathon that “You cannot have a nation without ancestors.”50 European colonizers, however, had continually emphasized the Hobbesian nature of pre-Colonial Africa—solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.51 For example, Lord Milverton, a former Governor of Nigeria, denounced pre-Colonial Africans’ ability to sustain a civilized society in 1932:

The African has had self-government. Until about fifty years ago he had had it for countless centuries, and all it brought him was blood-stained chaos, a brief, insecure life, haunted by fear, in which evil tradition and custom held him enslaved to superstition, hunger, disease, squalor and ruthless cruelty, even to his family and friends. For countless centuries, while all the pageant of history swept by, the African remained unmoved—in primitive savagery.52

Lord Milverton’s words are a simplified, unrestrained, and completely unscholarly articulation of the Hamitic hypothesis. They do represent, however, the popular (i.e. European) conception of Africa prior to colonization. Nationalistic African historians clearly had a long way to go, but they quickly launched a counterattack against the myth of African inferiority. Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop led the assault. Diop is widely regarded as the father of modern Afrocentric thought; indeed, “One might say that every significant idea or claim put forward by Afrocentrists today was earlier expressed by him.”53 In WRW - 65 Travis Sharp his Nations negres et culture (1955), Diop presents the three themes which would become the foundations for his later work: the character of ancient Egypt as a black African civilization, the continuity of Egypt’s cultural influences across the continent, and the culturo-historical unity of Africa.54 As the first prominent nationalistic historian of the post-colonial period, Diop’s work was crucial because it encouraged pan-African unity. At a time when unstable revolutionary governments were struggling to break free from colonial oppression, Diop reminded Africans that there was an illustrious black history they all could be proud of. His Afrocentrism, though not always historically accurate, did encourage stability in a continent desperately seeking a new identity. Building on Diop’s groundbreaking scholarship, other African historians postulated that the undeniable grandeur of the medieval Sudanic kingdoms negated the viability of the Hamitic hypothesis. The vigorous commercial and intellectual life in pre-Colonial Sudan—Ghana, Mali, Gao, the Mossi kingdom, the Hausa states, Kanem, Wadai, the Fung kingdom—proved incredibly important to nationalistic historians, primarily because these societies were indubitably black.55 Widely respected African historical figures were also cited as concrete proof that blacks were intellectually equivalent to whites. Mansa Musa, the 14th century Emperor of Mali, and Ahmad Baba, the brilliant 16th century scholar who taught at the University of Sankore in Timbuktu, are perfect examples of Africans who contradicted European assumptions of black inferiority.56 An abundance of admirable qualities also began to be attributed to pre-Colonial African societies during this time, as historian Thomas Hodgkin recounts:

The plastic arts, work in gold and bronze and ivory, music and dancing, folk story and folk poetry; the complexity and depth of their religious beliefs and metaphysics; their conception of the community—as ‘consisting of the dead, the living and the unborn’; their rational attitude to sexual relations and to the place of women in society—their delight in children and reverence for the aged; their view of education, as a process continuing through life; their dislike of autocracy, and their delicate political mechanisms for

WRW - 66 The Hamitic Hypothesis securing the expression and adjustment of different interests and wills.57

Needless to say, nationalistic Africans transformed pre-Colonial Africa from a barbarous wasteland into a mythical utopia. As with all things, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. The efforts of African historians should be applauded, however, because they pulled the center of debate away from the pseudo- historical extremity occupied by the Hamitic hypothesis.

Concluding remarks The early Hebrew and Greek versions of the Song of Solomon had a passage that read “I am black and beautiful.”58 When Europeans translated the passage into Latin and English, it became “I am black but beautiful.”59 This subtle change had a profound impact on the meaning of the passage. Instead of being complementary adjectives, black and beautiful became contradictory opposites. There is a strong connection between this biblical alteration and European espousal of the Hamitic hypothesis. In both cases, facts were adjusted to accommodate a priori assumptions of black inferiority. The Hamitic hypothesis originally postulated that Noah cursed Ham and his black descendants to perpetual servitude. This theory conveniently justified the most profitable economic activity of the time—slavery. By the 19th century, however, slavery was no longer the bustling industry it had once been. Europeans needed a new way to subjugate blacks outside the framework of slavery. This was accomplished by altering the Hamitic hypothesis to suggest that only black Canaan was cursed, not Ham’s other white descendants. Black Africans became inferior not because they had been cursed to slavery, but because white Hamites were directly responsible for everything they had ever achieved. Africans lost their history and agency to the Hamite, reinforcing the Eurocentric view that blacks were nothing but primitive savages. This pseudo- historical reformulation of the Hamitic hypothesis paved the way for European powers to invade Africa and participate in the most profitable economic activity of the late 19th century—colonialism.

WRW - 67 Travis Sharp Legitimate historical theories should not unrestrainedly shift to suit political and economic developments. Although historians must always be ready to reevaluate their position based on the discovery of new empirical evidence, this rarely entails a complete reversal of previously held beliefs. European scholars mistakenly exploited the Hamitic hypothesis and utilized it to justify European subjugation of Africa. Allowing theories to determine facts is bad history, but perhaps Sherlock Holmes puts it best: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly, one begins to wish facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit fact.”60 Fortunately, the Hamitic hypothesis was unable to survive the rapid decolonization of the 1960’s. The contradictory evidence presented by nationalistic African historians decimated the tenability of consummate white superiority. The Hamite receded into the annals of history, leaving behind a legacy of racism that ethnological historians are still struggling to overcome.

Notes 1 Joseph C. Miller, “History and Africa/Africa and History,” The American Historical Review 104 (1999): 1-32, 4. 2 Ibid. 3 Genesis 9:25-27, The New American Bible (Wichita, Kans.: Fireside Bible Publishers, 1994-1995), 15-16. 4 Ole Bjorn Rekdal, “When hypothesis becomes myth: the Iraqi origin of the Iraqw,” Ethnology 37 (1998): 17-32, 19. 5 Quoted in Katherine George, “The Civilized West Looks at Primitive Africa: 1400-1800,” Isis 49 (1958): 62-72, 63. 6 Herodotus, The History, Translated and edited by George Rawlinson (London: Oxford University Press, 1910), volume I, 362. 7 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History (New York: Batoche Books, 2001), 91, 96. 8 Ibid., 98. 9 Rekdal, 19. 10 Paul Bohannan and Philip Curtin, Africa and Africans, 3rd ed. (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1988), 9. 11 Herbert J. Foster, “The Ethnicity of the Ancient Egyptians,” Journal of Black Studies 5 (1974): 175-191, 177. 12 Ibid. 13 Edith R. Sanders, “The Hamitic Hypothesis: Its Origin and Functions in Time Perspective,” Journal of African History 10 (1969): 521-532, 526. 14 Ibid., 527.

WRW - 68 The Hamitic Hypothesis 15 For a discussion of the Candelabra hypothesis, see Brian M. Fagan, The Journey From Eden (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1990), 15-22. 16 Philip S. Zachernuk, “Of origins and colonial order: Southern Nigerian historians and the ‘Hamitic Hypothesis’ c. 1870-1970,” Journal of African History 35 (1994): 427-442, 432. 17 For a discussion of the Noah’s Ark hypothesis, see Fagan, The Journey From Eden, 15-22. 18 Foster, 178. 19 For a summation of the mistaken Mesopotamian theory, see Glyn Daniel, The First Civilizations (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1968). 20 Zachernuk, 432. 21 Ibid. 22 Quoted in Foster, 175. 23 Bohannan and Curtin, 56. 24 Sir Harry H. Johnston, The Negro in the New World (New York: Johnston Reprint Corporation, 1969 [1910]), 1. 25 In actuality, the Australoids were thought to have the smallest skulls, but anthropologists postulated that they were more like ancestral humans than modern homo sapiens sapiens. Therefore, amongst the three “modern” sub- species, Negroes were thought to have the smallest skulls. 26 Quoted in Zachernuk, 432. 27 Ibid. 28 Johnston, 7. 29 Ibid., 22. 30 Bohannan and Curtin, 56. 31 Wyatt Macgaffey, “Concepts of Race in the Historiography of Northeast Africa,” Journal of African History 7 (1966): 1-17, 7. 32 Zachernuk, 432. 33 Stephen Howe, Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes (New York: Verso, 1998), 115-116. 34 Ibid. 35 Saul Dubow, Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa (London: Cambridge, 1995), 85-86. 36 Charles G. Seligman, Races of Africa, 4th ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 30-31. 37 Ibid., 61. 38 Ibid., 100-101. 39 Foster, 180. 40 Seligman, 8. 41 Rekdal, 20. 42 Sanders, 531. 43 Macgaffey, 13. 44 Rekdal, 25. 45 Sanders, 531. 46 Zachernuk, 438-439. 47 Ibid., 440. WRW - 69 Travis Sharp 48 Sanders, 531. 49 Thomas Hodgkin, Nationalism in Colonial Africa (New York: New York University Press, 1957), 169. 50 Ibid., 172. 51 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan 52 Quoted in Hodgkin, 173. 53 Howe, 163. 54 Ibid., 164-165. 55 Hodgkin, 173-174. 56 Ibid., 174. 57 Ibid. 58 Song of Songs 1:5, italics mine. 59 Rekdal, footnote 2, 28, italics mine. 60 Sherlock Holmes, from A Scandal in Bohemia, quoted in Fagan.

Bibliography Baker, John R. Race. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.

Barton, George Aaron. Semitic and Hamitic Origins. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1934.

Bernal, Martin. Black Athena Writes Back. Edited by David Chioni Moore. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001.

Bohannan, Paul and Philip Curtin. Africa and Africans. 3rd ed. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1988.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness: And the Congo Diary. New York: Modern Library, 2000.

Daniel, Glyn. The First Civilizations. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1968.

Diop, Cheikh Anta. Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology. New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991.

Dubow, Saul. Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa. London: Cambridge, 1995.

Fagan, Brian M. The Journey From Eden. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1990.

—. Men of the Earth. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1974.

Foster, Herbert J. “The Ethnicity of the Ancient Egyptians.” Journal of Black Studies 5 (1974): 175-191. WRW - 70 The Hamitic Hypothesis

George, Katherine. “The Civilized West Looks at Primitive Africa: 1400-1800.” Isis 49 (1958): 62-72.

Greenberg, Joseph H. The Languages of Africa. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1966. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Philosophy of History. New York: Batoche Books, 2001.

Herodotus. The History. Translated and edited by George Rawlinson. London: Oxford University Press, 1910.

Hodgkin, Thomas. Nationalism in Colonial Africa. New York: New York University Press, 1957.

Howe, Stephen. Afrocentrism: Mythical Pasts and Imagined Homes. New York: Verso, 1998.

Huntingford, G. W. B. The Northern Nilo-Hamites. London: International African Institute, 1968.

Johnston, Sir Harry H. Britain Across the Seas: Africa. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969 [1910].

—. The Negro in the New World. New York: Johnston Reprint Corporation, 1969 [1910].

Kipling, Rudyard. “The White Man’s Burden.” Rudyard Kipling’s Verse. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1954.

Kittles, Rick. “Nature, Origin, and Variation of Human Pigmentation.” Journal of Black Studies 26 (1995): 36-61.

Macgaffey, Wyatt. “Concepts of Race in the Historiography of Northeast Africa.” Journal of African History 7 (1966): 1-17.

Miller, Joseph C. “History and Africa/Africa and History.” The American Historical Review 104 (1999): 1-32.

Murdock, George Peter. Africa: Its Peoples and Their Culture History. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1959.

Rekdal, Ole Bjorn. “When hypothesis becomes myth: the Iraqi origin of the Iraqw.” Ethnology 37 (1998): 17-32.

WRW - 71 Travis Sharp Sanders, Edith R. “The Hamitic Hypothesis: Its Origin and Functions in Time Perspective.” Journal of African History 10 (1969): 521-532.

Seligman, Charles G. Races of Africa. 4th ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1966.

Zachernuk, Philip S. “Of origins and colonial order: Southern Nigerian historians and the ‘Hamitic Hypothesis’ c. 1870-1970.” Journal of African History 35 (1994): 427-442.

WRW - 72 Liberty: A Clarification of Definition

Kathryn Cantrell

Writer’s comment: In Professor Ronald Sundstrom’s Fall 2004 Social and Political Philosophy course, we addressed many topics discussed by western political theorists. For the final paper, we were asked to argumentatively address one of the topics, and I chose liberty as defined by Locke, Mill, and Marx, all pillars of classic political philosophy. This close analysis focuses on the contradictions and hypocrisies supported by these philosophers, most of which are generally overlooked by a less critical reading. Defining something so universally appreciated and demanded as liberty should surely not be brushed over lightly. I found that what is truly meant by liberty is either unavailable or repugnant to most people. —Kathryn Cantrell

Instructor’s comment: In my Social and Political Philosophy course, the students had to write a term paper exploring one of the major themes in the history of political philosophy that we explored during the semester. Kathryn selected to investigate the way that the idea of “liberty” was conceptualized by a number of key philosophical figures. Kathryn asks us to think hard about the meaning and contradictions around one of our most beloved and abused ideas. In our age, when the words “liberty” and “freedom” are thrown around lightly to justify actions that have nothing to do with liberty, and that are far less than liberalizing, works like Kathryn’s are valuable.

—Ronald Robles Sundstrom, Department of Philosophy

WRW - 73 Kathryn Cantrell t is probably safe to generalize that the concept liberty is discussed, or at least implied, in the works of every respected Ipolitical philosopher. Despite its seeming universality, it is questionable as to what exactly is meant when any given theorist uses the word liberty. It is a mistake to attribute a personal, felt meaning to liberty. For this reason a critical examination is necessary in each case. It would otherwise be deceptive to brush past the word in any context. John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx all discuss liberty in relation to their respective theories. At first glance, liberty appears to have a different meaning for each. However, upon interpretation Marx alone opposes Locke and Mill who maintain similar conceptions of liberty. Each of these three philosophers address liberty in terms of a tyranny, the meaning of tyranny held by each, defines the meaning of liberty held by each. In his Second Treatise of Government, Locke discusses the abolition of the tyranny of the minority in favor of a democratic government of the people. “When any number of men have, by the consent of every individual, made a community, they have thereby made that community one body, with a power to act as one body, which is only by the will and the determination of the majority” (Locke 52) Locke’s social contract must not be taken at face value. In order to critically understand what Locke means it is crucial to disregard most of what he says. Locke calls liberty a “natural right.” However, it is only guaranteed, and then only tenuously, in the State of Nature. But because the State of Nature causes natural liberty to be so insecure, people enter into government. Upon the commencement of a civil society, and the supposed protection of natural liberty, the protection of property also becomes of central importance. Locke says that liberty and property are natural rights. However, what he does not say is that the right to property is more important than the right to liberty, and that liberty is sacrificed for property. Locke asks, “Why will [an individual] part with his freedom?” (Locke 65). Locke thinks it is “obvious” that a person would discard his liberty in order to preserve his property (Locke 66). It is necessary to point out that Locke understands the minority, which he despises, to be a monarch or a small group of aristocrats.

WRW - 74 Liberty: A Clarification of Definition This is demonstrated in one of his initial definitions of what liberty is not, that is “not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man” (Locke 17). This appears very democratic at once. “Every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation, to everyone of that society, to submit to the determination of the majority” (Locke 52). However, he does not create a democracy for the majority, but for another minority, those who own property. “Whosoever therefore out of a state of nature unite into a community, must be understood to give up all the power, necessary to the ends for which they unite into society, to the majority, of the community” (Locke 53). Though we all transfer some of our autonomy, or power, to the majority, Locke does not mention that that “some” does not work equally for the individual benefit of everyone. Locke proclaims property to be a necessity for the vote. Because peasants and workers, a class without property, have reliably made up the majority throughout history, they are necessarily excluded from contributing to their own government, and rule by the minority has not been significantly altered. Locke’s theory opposes the tyranny of a minority, not the minority. In giving the control of government only to property owners, Locke implicitly allows the tyranny of a bourgeois minority, to be described later by Marx. Locke says he opposes the tyranny of the minority, but he means he opposes the tyranny of a particular minority. Locke’s own definition of tyranny, “The exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to,” seems to apply to his own theory, and leads us to contradictions (Locke 101). To reemphasize, Locke’s conception of liberty belongs only to the class of property owners. The contradictions that Locke’s ideas on liberty present certainly affect our concept of liberty as we continue defining it. Locke justifies his reverence for property as the most important purpose of society by calling its protection a benefit to the “common good.” “The power of the society, or legislative constituted by them, can never be supposed to extend farther, than the common good: but is obliged to secure every one’s property” (Locke 68). As mentioned before, Locke demands the

WRW - 75 Kathryn Cantrell equal submission of all to the authority that guarantees the protection of the “common good,” but Locke does not guarantee an equal right to the purpose of this submission. In response, we must ask whether property can really serve the common good, if it is not common to all? Is this a legitimate justification for the sacrifice of liberty? Central to On Liberty is Mill’s argument against the tyranny of the majority. For Mill, the tyranny of the majority is exercised in two ways, the first and most obvious is the tyranny exercised by the legislative majority, and the second is a majority of morality. “Protection… against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose…its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct upon those who dissent from them” (Mill 47). Mill condemns not only the vote of the majority, which not even Locke has guaranteed, but also the culture of a society based on majority rule. This culture, which Mill attacks, is referred to as the tyranny of custom, or public opinion. “Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion” (Mill 52). In a society made of people whose choices in life are dictated by culture, there is no freedom. “He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice” (Mill 104). This choice, therefore, is integral to Mill’s concept of liberty. It is clear that Mill despises anything that comes from groups, and culture is of particular note. “The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement, being in unceasing antagonism to that disposition to aim at something better than customary, which is called, according to circumstances, the spirit of liberty” (Mill 117). Custom and groups are directly opposed to Mill’s love of liberty. Mill’s concept of liberty is not based on a natural right, as with Locke, but on the interests to humanity, and it’s utility in promoting humans as progressive (Mill 53). Mill’s liberty is the liberty of the individual, the liberty to be an individual. “We have now recognized the necessity to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all their other well-being depends) of freedom of

WRW - 76 Liberty: A Clarification of Definition opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion” (Mill 97). A diversity of lifestyles in a society indicates, to Mill, the degree to which the society supports his definition of liberty (Mill 102). The diversity of lifestyles for which Mill calls is necessary to his conception of the “free market place of ideas.” This analogy of liberty to commerce is linked by his statement “Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom” (Mill 111). This genius is the same in creating an individual life, and in maintaining the free market place. Despite Mill’s defense of the liberty for all individuals, it is necessary to question to whom might this understanding of liberty be accessible? Who has the luxury of choice? In order for society to avoid the tyranny of the majority, Mill explains that there must be a diversity of lifestyles in society. But how reasonable is this? If the majority of people’s lifestyles are singularly focused on working to sustain themselves and those for whom they are responsible. The monotonousness of these lives prohibits any sort of diversity simply because these people cannot afford to experiment in their lifestyles. The majority of people are admitted to Mill’s free market place of ideas, but because they have to sweep the floors of the market place, they cannot afford the glamour of contributing ideas. In contrast with Locke’s supposed objection to the tyranny of the minority, and Mill’s questionable condemnation of the tyranny of the majority, Marx denounces the tyranny of the bourgeoisie, and the obstruction to liberty, which it represents. The bourgeoisie is that class of individuals who make up the minority that Locke favors, and who have the freedom in their life to attain Mill’s liberty by living diverse lifestyles. It is this class that is in opposition to Marx’s Proletariat, “a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work” (Marx 9). The bourgeoisie has set itself up in a position in which, “It has resolved all personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that special, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade” (Marx 5). Marx describes the free market, which Mill alludes to, as having destroyed all of culture, breaking down long-held ideologies (Marx 5). This is an interesting outgrowth from Mill’s

WRW - 77 Kathryn Cantrell condemnation of culture. Mill was right, Marx seems to say; the free market promotes the destruction of a hateful culture and body of customs. However, Mill must not have suspected that the destruction of culture would lead directly to the manipulation of one class by another, in fact, to the antithesis of liberty. “For exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, [the free market] has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation” (Marx 5). It is this terrible moment in which a human must “face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind;” when he realizes that what Mill wanted has not given him freedom but has lead to his own exploitation (Marx 6). The possibility of living in individual liberty, as Mill envisions, has been exchanged and all that is left is a life as a “commodity” for the majority of the population. In contrast to Locke and Mill, Marx’s movement of the Proletariat to revolution is a true action by a majority. “All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority” (Marx 14). Not only are the Proletariats the majority class, but their movement is one to abolish the idea of minority and majority, in favor of one class. The method by which this revolution will be achieved is by obliterating the ideals of both Locke and Mill: “Their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property” (Marx 14). My emphasis clearly indicates the philosophies of both Mill and Locke, respectively. Marx more clearly links the political philosophies of Mill and Locke, “property is alleged to be the ground work of all personal freedom, activity, and independence” (Marx 18). Without Locke’s property, one cannot attain Mill’s liberty, and is only left recourse in Marx’s revolution. Marx’s liberty is also not the liberty with which most would identify. In bourgeois society, the laborers are enslaved, but “Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself” (Marx 10). In the end, however, “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains, “ but the iron

WRW - 78 Liberty: A Clarification of Definition chains, which the proletariat throw off, are only replaced by equally weighty gold-plated chains. Marx claims that in the event of the revolution, “we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” (Marx 26). But he does not focus on the inevitability that development of one necessarily inhibits, in some way, that of others, and vice versa. If no one can freely develop unless everyone else does, how can anyone develop? Marx’s liberty is a freedom for all to be enslaved equally. Without critical examination of Locke and Mill, it would appear that they disagree. Upon the conclusion that Locke does, in fact, support the tyranny of a certain minority, there may arise an initial misunderstanding that Mill may actually support the individual liberty of all in contrast to Locke. In relation to Marx, however, the conceptions of liberty attributed to Mill and Locke do not appear so dissimilar. Mill’s call for experimentation in living is not even a possibility for the majority, which Marx describes. Marx’s proletariat, which grows every day, cannot concern itself with the individual self-expression necessary to the self- sovereignty Mill’s theory requires as the replacement for the tyranny of the majority. And yet even the liberty for which Marx presumably argues, is only an equality of the worth of individuals in terms of their market value. What kind of liberty is actually possible when these philosophers describe a liberty that is not attainable, and possibly not even wanted, by a few, let alone by all? It seems that even in clarification we are simply left with more questions. We might come to know what liberty is, but how is it possible?

Works Cited

Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. Ed. C.B. Macpherson. Hackett: Indianapolis, 1980.

Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Ed. David McLellan. Oxford UP: Oxford, 1998.

Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. Ed. Edward Alexander. Broadview: Ontario, 1999.

WRW - 79 A Nation Already United

Faye Por

Writer’s comment: Assumptions are a part of human nature. Whether right or wrong, assumptions help us to fill in the holes of our incomplete thoughts and arguments. In Professor Costarides’ Rhetoric and Composition 220 class, we were given the challenge of closely evaluating another piece of work. Such an assignment and freedom of topic selection enabled me to choose Pat Buchanan’s speech “To Reunite a Nation” as the focus of my paper. The emphasis of the following essay highlights and explores the hidden depths of false assumptions that permeate his whole speech. Through my essay’s further explanation and evaluation, I hope that readers realize the full power of words and the impact of assumptions in the world today. — Faye Por

Reader’s comment: In “A Nation Already Divided,” Faye Por delivers an in-depth analysis of the assumptions underlying Pat Buchanan’s speech, “To Reunite a Nation,” delivered on January 18, 2000 at the President Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California. In her essay, Faye brings to light the illogic of assuming, as Buchanan does, that America was ever anything other than a multiracial society. She also demonstrates the ways in which Buchanan relies on generalizations to appeal to his primary audience of Yorba Linda townspeople. Ultimately, Faye’s essay establishes how troubling and illogical it is for Buchanan to construct an argument based upon an “us” and “them” mentality, with “them” being falsely identified as immigrants who do not wish to be assimilated into mainstream American culture. —Devon Christina Holmes, Rhetoric and Composition

WRW - 80 A Nation Already United t first glance, Patrick Buchanan’s speech “To Reunite a Nation” provides compelling reasons to agree that an Aimmigration crisis exists. He appeals to authority figures like Al Gore and Theodore Roosevelt, presents conflicts caused by “hyphenated Americanism,” and argues that new immigrants are less skilled and educated. With his intended audience as the townspeople of rural Yorba Linda, California, Buchanan appeals to a shared traditional, conservative ideology; immigration is out of control and needs regulation, immigrants are not Americans, and the nation is not united. However, upon closer inspection, Buchanan’s arguments rely on faulty assumptions that are necessary to adopt the idea of an immigration problem in the United States. As indicated by the title of his speech, Buchanan starts off with the mistaken notion that the nation is not united because of mass immigration. Buchanan himself creates barriers between immigrants and Americans by referring to immigrants as “they” and to Americans as “us.” This indicates his belief that immigrants are the outsiders and thus are not part of the bigger group “Americans.” According to Buchanan, “the contributions that immigrants make in small businesses and hard work in tough jobs that don’t pay well merits our admiration and respect” (448). Although he refers to immigrants in glowing terms, an underlying separation between native-born Americans and immigrants is still present through the use of the word “our.” Yet this raises the question of Buchanan’s definition of what it means to be an American or an immigrant. For in the case of the word “immigrant,” it is unclear as to whether or not Buchanan believes that children of immigrants, who are born in the United States, are immigrants or native-born Americans. In either case, those children would still grow up in an American environment, make friends with other Americans, and be influenced by American values and media. These children would be just as “American” as those with an Anglo-ancestry whose parents immigrated to the U.S. a long time ago. Following this line of reasoning, it does not make sense to claim that the nation is divided due to the fact that all immigrants must forego a process of assimilation. Buchanan only

WRW - 81 Faye Por puts forth the idea of a divided nation by assuming that it is already true, an assumption which is apparent in his speech. Moreover, Buchanan further misleads his audience by assuming that there are “troubling signs of a national turning away from the idea that we are one people, and the emergence of a radically different idea, that we are separate ethnic nations within a nation” (448). With the words “troubling” and “turning away,” he places a negative emphasis on mass immigration, such that it is what he claims to be the source of the nation’s disunity, which is in his view characterized by multiple nations in one nation. However, there is no evidence to support this view nor does Buchanan address the idea that an individual can relate to his country of origin and also to the United States. One can identify with multiple nationalities or ethnicities without compromising the thought of being one people and one nation. Also, Buchanan mistakenly identifies the “separate ethnic nations within a nation” while the more appropriate notion is a mélange of cultural diversity within one nation. The use of “ethnic nations” signifies that multiple ethnicities are taking over the country so as to scare the audience into thinking that a distinct American identity will not be left over after the immigrants do their damage. Another assumption that Buchanan wrongly makes is the idea that “we are no longer a biracial society; we are now a multiracial society” (448). With this idea, Buchanan only acknowledges black and white Americans as if no other ethnic American existed before the “sudden surge in immigration” (448). To the contrary, Chinese- Americans helped to build the railroads in the West and Native Americans have a constant presence in U.S. history. The United States itself was built on the backs of a multiracial citizenry including the English, Irish, French, German, and a multitude of other races. It seems odd to claim that all of a sudden, America became multiracial when in fact it started with a multiracial population. In addition, Buchanan refers to preposterous examples in order to cast negativity on and construct unfair assumptions about “hyphenated Americanism.” Buchanan uses one incident of a Mexican-American throwing trash at the U.S. soccer team as proof that hyphenated Americanism is bad. He wants the audience to

WRW - 82 A Nation Already United connect the Mexican-Americans’ rowdiness with a lack of pride in America so that the audience concludes that hyphenated Americanism only indicates a name and that hyphenated Americans are not really American. However, one intense soccer game cannot be generalized so as to establish that all immigrants are disloyal to the U.S. Secondly, usually soccer game atmospheres are intense and fans become riled, angry, drunk, or crazy. Thus, it is unfair for Buchanan to pick a situation in which the emotional volatility of hyphenated Americans is high to begin with. The other example of the deviant small town El Cenizo fails to be representative of the problems with hyphenated Americanism. Because the town “adopted Spanish as its official language” (450) and refuses to cooperate with U.S. immigration authorities, Buchanan casts the Texas town as a rebel “de facto secession [. . .] to Mexico” (450). He compounds this idea of El Cenizo with a sort of dangerous and threatening aspect by stating that “Governor Bush is reluctant to speak out on” (450) the town’s supposed secession. Because Governor Bush is an authority figure, it appears to audiences that if the governor is worried about this “de facto secession,” then maybe they should be too. However, Buchanan erroneously links the adoption of the Spanish language and the town’s uncooperativeness with the town’s supposed secession to Mexico. First of all, just because the town may prefer a language other than English, this does not mean that they are any less American. These townspeople may have common ideals with the United States such as those stated in the Constitution: the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Would not preventing the official language from being Spanish obstruct the town’s right to pursue happiness? And if this prevention ever came to fruition, that act would be in violation of the first Amendment, which protects free speech. Under this light, it is clear that it is only deviant behavior from the expected norm of what it means to be an American, in this case speaking English, that Buchanan objects to and wrongfully equates with the town’s supposed “de facto secession.” No logical relationship exists between adopting Spanish and seceding from the United States. Buchanan succeeds in blowing the whole situation out of proportion because it is close-minded and prejudiced to reason that a Spanish speaking

WRW - 83 Faye Por town is automatically a town that does not want to be a part of the United States. Secondly, although El Cenizo does not wish to work with the U.S. immigration authorities, it still remains possible that the townspeople may not agree with the immigration policy and this is not the first time that citizens have felt this way towards the government. In this case, the town does not warrant the title of a “de facto secession”; rather, the town has a problem with the government that needs to be addressed without resorting to name calling to explain the town’s behavior. As if the aforementioned assumptions are not enough, Buchanan evidently assumes that the immigrant population does not want to be assimilated into American culture. He uses the example that “Hispanic voters opposed Proposition 187 to cut off welfare to illegal aliens, and they rallied against it under Mexican flags” (450) to illuminate a difference between the goals of immigrants and that of “real” Americans. Buchanan obviously does not agree that individuals can wave a different flag other than that of the United States and still be an American. Even though the immigrant voters wanted Proposition 187, it helps to look at the bigger picture. The so-called illegal aliens that need welfare would receive it with Prop 187 and this helps to increase their quality of life and possibly to pursue the elusive American dream at least to the point where they can start new lives in the United States. How is helping another human being wrong? In addition, Buchanan assumes that voting to keep bilingual education would impede the process of assimilation into the American mainstream. He acts as if the very idea that immigrants would push for such a program is unacceptable by authoritatively stating that the “immigrant group now appears to favor set-asides and separate language programs, rather than to be assimilated into the American mainstream” (451). The real issue is that Buchanan forces immigrants to choose between keeping alive some aspects of their ethnic culture and becoming fully American. This particular example is a poisoning- the-well logical fallacy. Buchanan, using assumptive language, attempts to stop any discussion of the fact that separate language programs may aid instead of impede assimilation. First, Buchanan never gives any evidence as to why bilingual education is un- American. Secondly, he is biased against the notion that an

WRW - 84 A Nation Already United immigrant can learn English with the help of their first language, say Spanish, that would make assimilation easier and more accessible. Rather than throwing a child into a pool and expecting him to learn how to swim, why not give him an inner tube to aid his progress? The inner tube and bilingual education still work to achieve the final goal. Never does Buchanan address this possibility; rather, he insinuates that speaking a language other than English falls under the category of not assimilating. Thirdly, Buchanan does not mention the children of immigrants, whether U.S. born or not, which does not make a great difference because usually children are able to adapt to new environments and tend to absorb U.S. culture and values, especially when considering that most children watch TV and are exposed to the American mainstream. In addition, it is easier for the children of immigrants to learn how to speak English because usually many of their peers in school speak English and the environment itself abounds with English speakers. Thus Buchanan incorrectly assumes that immigrants do not want to assimilate into American culture when there is so much evidence of young children adopting American customs and values. Not only does he construct false notions of immigrant assimilation, Buchanan also consistently assumes that many immigrants are Hispanic and unskilled. Buchanan claims that “almost entire villages from El Salvador have come in” (449), refers to the rowdy Mexican-American crowd at the soccer game and the town of El Cenizo, points to Hispanic voters, and repeatedly refers to California, a state that is becoming increasingly Hispanic. The imagery of “entire villages” entering the U.S. gives audiences pause and helps to foster the idea that Hispanics are everywhere and seem to be taking over the country. Buchanan exploits the audience’s fear that native-born white Americans will cease to be the majority in a nation that is becoming more and more Hispanic. The main idea that Buchanan fails to emphasize is that immigrants come from all over the world and from all different countries like the Philippines, Japan, China, Eastern and Western Europe, and Australia, not just Latin America. By repeatedly mentioning Hispanic immigrants and examples of unskilled immigrant labor, Buchanan also associates Hispanics

WRW - 85 Faye Por with those who are unskilled. This portrayal fosters unfair characterizations of an ethnic identity, particularly that of Hispanic-Americans, considering that not all Hispanic immigrants, or even immigrants in general, are unskilled. Along the same notion of labor, Buchanan falsely assumes that mass immigration explains why “Americans today who do poorly in high school are increasingly condemned to low-wage existence” (449). This idea does not have any supporting evidence to back such a bold statement other than to appeal to the fact that “Mr. Borjas estimates that one half of the relative fall in the wages of high school graduates since the 1980s can be traced directly to mass immigration” (449). Where are his statistics to justify his aforementioned accusation? And who is Mr. Borjas and what exactly are his credentials and evidence to make such a claim? More importantly, maybe the reason why Americans with low achievement in high school get low wage jobs is that the market for higher paying jobs requires more skilled personnel and individuals with a higher education who have a greater likelihood of succeeding in specialized jobs. The question is, why blame immigrants for the low wages of academically weak but “American” high school students? In this instance, the easiest way to fix the “problem” is to make sure that those American high school students do well in school so that they can continue their education in order to specialize in a skill that society is willing to pay higher wages for. Most importantly, the last major assumption in “To Reunite a Nation” is that America will “become a country with a dying culture and deepening divisions” (452) due to mass immigration. This idea strikes a logical reader as ridiculous when closely read. With an influx of so many different ethnicities, histories, and languages within one nation, it seems incredible for Buchanan to accuse the nation of having a “dying culture” when it is so obvious that the American culture that absorbs various cultures is abounding with life and vivaciousness. Moreover, America is not deeply divided, but it is our differences and the fact that we have so many differences that brings our nation together. Buchanan also claims that the United States is quickly becoming a nation without commonalities, making “social cohesion” (451) impossible.

WRW - 86 A Nation Already United However, human beings all have humanity in common with each other and through tolerance and open-mindedness, the possibility for “social cohesion” has a greater chance of working. Even U.S. history depicts a society founded and created by a mixed set of explorers and settlers. This ethnic mix eventually became American culture through the years just as the great diversity of the modern age will eventually be subsumed under the title of “American culture” if it is not already so today. Also, it is false to assume that “newcomers [need] to give up their hyphens” (452) in order to become American. Were not the original “Americans” immigrants in the first place, such as the people who emigrated from England? No logical explanation exists as to why immigrants would need to completely ignore their traditions and culture to be a “real” American. As Al Gore said, “‘Out of one, many’” (448), but at the same time the national slogan still holds true that “‘Out of many, one’” (448). It seems absurd for Buchanan to interpret Al Gore’s words as a negative statement when, in fact, they reflect the positive multiplicity of American cultures. Immigrants are not the enemy, as implied in Buchanan’s essay; rather, they add to an already mixed culture. The truth is that the beauty of America is in its diversity.

Work Cited

Buchanan, Patrick J. “To Reunite a Nation.” Good Reasons with Contemporary Arguments. 2nd ed. Eds. Lester Faigley and Jack Selzer. New York: Pearson Longman, 2004. 447-452.

WRW - 87 With the Clouds

Tran Nguyen

Writer’s comment: Initially, I saw this essay as just an assignment—to make a claim using personal experience in a RC 210 writing class. Through writing this essay, however, I not only captured memories and turned them into a paper, but I poured my heart out and discovered a newfound sense of confidence in the person who I am and a deep appreciation for why I am that person. At first, the paper and my ideas were very safe and restricted, but with Brian Komei Dempster’s unlimited encouragement to really “write with your heart and guts,” I was able to create a piece full of voice, emotion, and sincerity. I was able to write about my long-term inner conflict with myself and my religion, which was further complicated when I learned of my mother’s illness. From this experience, I learned more about myself and my mother than I ever had before and a lesson that I will never forget. —Tran Nguyen

Instructor’s comment: Using her family history and experiences with religion, Tran shows how life’s events are teachings and that the lessons we learn from them challenge our values and beliefs. Tran’s piece deftly moves through time and place to reveal her mother’s strength and to support her claim that, “Pain is a part of growing up” and “the best way to learn.” Driven by compassion and the search for insight, Tran weaves past and present events, poignant vignettes and spiritual reflection. From the horror of fleeing Vietnam to the cold reality of her mother’s cancer, Tran documents the relationship between her and her mother with tenderness and grace, underscoring the power of faith and loving bonds between family. —Brian Komei Dempster, Rhetoric and Composition

WRW - 88 With the Clouds

y eyes relax, and the softly lighted shapes dance on my eyelids. The building is humid and dimly lit. The air Mgradually travels as the petite elderly women attempt to cool themselves off with the weekly church bulletin flyer. I only hear the rustling and flip-flapping of the papers, nothing else. As I stare at the soft candles, my vision blurs, and my mind begins its normal wanderings. From a woman’s sneeze to allergy season to Tylenol medications, from money and medical careers to universities to English class, my mind takes a ten-mile run. As I sit, looking at the cross, I think back to one dark morning when my mother sat me up in bed, the same place where I fell asleep to her stories of pirates and huge sea turtles that she had encountered during her escape from Vietnam. Passing through the sea fog, her boat of seventeen people was abruptly stopped and invaded by pirates: “They were all filthy old men and they spoke Vietnamese. Many women were raped, and the men were beat.” My mother still has a scar from where they smashed her wrist against a hard wooden seat to remove her jade bracelet. The only remaining possession she had was her gold ring, which she had slid onto her toe, hiding in her poor plastic shoes, while the pirates were ravaging the others. This was one of countless great battles that she had survived; but this time, she told a different story, of a different battle and another stepping stone on her lifelong journey. With her hands bracing her chest and her blood-shot eyes filling with tears, she told me of her cancer. We spoke, or more she spoke, for a long time, but one part always stood out most. I remember distinctly how she explained, “My father named me Van,” meaning amongst the clouds in English. She told me, “I do not know when exactly, but I am going to be with the clouds soon.” I wasn’t able to respond. I couldn’t even look her in her eyes. I was too scared to show how I felt. Was I supposed to comfort her? Was I supposed to make her feel better? I wanted to be strong like my mother, through her many battles, but at the same time I wanted to curl up in her lap and let all of my insides flow out.

WRW - 89 Tran Nguyen As I struggled, my mother enclosed my hand gently. Her hands, rough and from endless hours of work, stung me. She was devoted to providing for, as a single parent, her two daughters. A piercing pain traveled from the outer skin of my hands into the depths of my heart. I remember that the holiday seasons were always the worst times for my sister and me. As my mother ran her tiny bakery downtown, twenty minutes from home, my sister and I would take turns telephoning her, impatient for her return. My mother spent an average of twelve hours a day, six days a week at her store, but on Sundays, she would open the store two hours later because of morning mass. Her arms and hands were rough and scarred due to her daily combat with cake pans. At 11:20 P.M. I would look at the clock as my sister, the dogs, and I sat at the window, waiting for her. We would jump with glee to see her pull onto the driveway. We smelled the “stench” of cake in her clothes as she walked into the house and straight to the kitchen to prepare us dinner. “Tran, set the table,” she always reminded me, even though I already had. My sister and I would pester her as she cooked. She never allowed for us to help her much, because she was worried about us getting hurt near the stove. Early that morning, she had woken up to marinate the chicken for dinner. Later, that evening, she pulled the bowl of marinated chicken out of the refrigerator, fried the chicken, cut the vegetables, boiled and cooked the soup, and steamed the rice. Within thirty minutes, my sister, the dogs, and I were at the dinner table and ready to eat. My mom served us, including our four dogs, our bowls, tending to us first, and then would head into the shower to regain some strength and energy to eat.

* * *

“Please Rise.” At Father Christopher’s gentle but echoing voice, my thoughts vanish, and we all rise and embrace hands to pray. I do all of this but still gaze at the candles. I can recite prayers for minutes straight, sit, kneel, then stand and sing church hymns without ever thinking about any of it. It comes effortlessly; it is second nature.

WRW - 90 With the Clouds Since I can remember, I have been a “devout Roman Catholic.” Growing up, I always asked myself: Besides being born into such a family, does it make sense to practice a religion daily yet not be able to feel spiritually connected to or understanding of it? “Wake up, Tran,” my mother would whisper during services. She always sat between my sister and me, making sure I was awake by tapping me with her rolled up church bulletin. I would awake from my daydreams and slowly resettle into them. It was all just routine to me. I never asked why. I did and was, yet nothing made sense inside of me. Practicing and reciting my religion daily, I felt it still barely had meaning to me. Sometimes I thought I felt “Catholic” and thought I felt that invisible faith, but then it so easily faded. My religious affinities came and went. Everything was so complicated and contradictory. From the Big Bang Theory or Adam and Eve to Heaven to Hell or decomposition, there were always things that didn’t fit. It wasn’t much use arguing though. There was Sunday school, holiday events and retreats where I always was expected to participate. I think it was less complicated to pretend and just blend in with what everyone else was doing. Sitting around a hot campfire and discussing beliefs and passages out of the Bible, I vaguely remember what was discussed at those annual Ephata or Kairos religious retreats, but I clearly remember the fear and uneasiness I always felt when it came my turn to express myself in words. I found ways to be skipped. I used a “bathroom call” or even hid behind a crowd of people; I never had much to say.

* * *

“I’m not scared of death. It is God’s will. I trust him.” A sudden rush of anger surged through me. Why would this happen to her? Especially a person like her. I had never met anyone more sincere and faithful. My mother worked so hard, endured so many hardships, and now she was dying. She had escaped from the dangerous life in Vietnam at a chaotic time and now worked over eighty hours a week. Why?

WRW - 91 Tran Nguyen Not only had she experienced the attack by the pirates, but prior to leaving Vietnam, she had experienced the loss of two family members. My mother and the housemaids had already packed and been shown where to meet with her other older sister, Yen. My grandparents had been planning this escape for years. My grandparents were to stay in Vietnam, but it was unsafe for their children: my mother, aunts and uncles. Her younger sister, Thuy, who was only six-years old at that time as my mother was eighteen, had been stuck behind. The maid, who was to take Thuy to the meeting place, rode through the streets on her motorcycle with Thuy clinging to her body, but it was too late. Bombings and explosions were going off everywhere from the city riots. Thuy never made it to the meeting place. My mother and Yen waited another day for their arrival, only to receive the news that their bodies were found. They were to continue with the escape plan as the boat would not wait anymore for people who had not yet arrived. I asked her, “Why would God do this? Why do you trust him? Why do you work so hard and suffer so much only to feel more pain and then die?” The Bible described God as all-powerful and as a compassionate figure, yet there was so much contradiction. My mother asked, “What contradiction?” “Pain,” I replied. “Why would he allow for pain, suffering, for the war in Iraq and cancer to exist? How can such a figure exist?” I told her, “I don’t believe in Him.” I was screaming in my head how much I hated Him. It was quiet for what seemed like a lifetime, but I think was actually ten minutes, which was still long. She then told me what came to be my favorite story, my first day biking without training wheels: “Tran, you were about seven years old and getting too big for your purple bike that came with those bright pink training wheels. Your dad had been wary of teaching you to ride a bike; he didn’t want to see you fall.” But I did fall. I sprained my right knee and had a bold blood stain all over my tiny jeans. A couple of weeks later after recovering, I woke up one morning and I remember walking into

WRW - 92 With the Clouds the living room to find a brand new purple bike without training wheels. My mom had secretly bought it for me. I barely recalled any of that. I never knew who bought me that bike, but I took it to the park that day, and I rode it back home. She asked me, “Why do you think I bought you that bike even after seeing you get hurt?” “I don’t know,” I replied. “You know that I love you with all my heart and would do anything in my power to prevent you from hurting.” “Of course,” I said. “But I still bought you that bike after I saw you bleed and cry for hours.” “Well you learn from falling down and getting hurt. I learned to ride the bike. It’s part of growing up,” I said, finishing her story.

My mom had control of letting me ride a bike and letting me get hurt, she had the power to stop me from becoming hurt, yet, still loving me, she chose to let me learn on my own. Although God has the power to intervene and prevent our pain, he allows for us to become hurt and to grow, so we can learn our own lessons. Pain is a part of growing up. It’s the best way to learn.

* * *

Now I am seated in church before mass begins, eyes gazed on the center display of the gleaming wooden cross. The building is cozy with the delicate hum of community praying. My mother is next to me, and I hear her soft relaxed breaths. We sit here today, together, strong, and optimistic. Whatever obstacles the future holds for us, I will continue to stand by my mom and support her as she continues her journey, our journey. The candles continue to burn and the clouds have not yet taken her; I feel confident that they never will.

WRW - 93 Argument Paper

Marisa Keller

Writer’s comment: For Written Communication 220, we were asked to write an argument paper in which we compared two essays and analyze the strategies they used to make their arguments. I chose to write about Amy Tan and James Baldwin because these essays resonated with me most strongly. This was a fun paper to write because over the course of reviewing the essays in order to formulate my own argument, my opinion of the two essays changed dramatically. I started out disliking Baldwin’s essay but as I analyzed it more closely, I came to appreciate the complexity of his paper. Through this analysis, I ended up with a better understanding of both essays and of my own beliefs. —Marisa Keller

Instructor’s comment: For the rhetorical analysis assignment in our Written Communication 220 course, Marisa chose to analyze two authors with very different styles. The contrasts she made are intriguing not only because she illustrated the variety of persuasive strategies a writer may use, but also because she recognized the constraints of Tan and Baldwin’s situations; the time in which they published, their social status, the history of their respective groups, their gender, their differing purposes, and the target audiences. Marisa’s argument is beautifully crafted, its architecture wonderful in its coherence. —Kim Huynh, Rhetoric and Composition

WRW - 94 Argument Paper oth James Baldwin’s “If Black Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” and Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” are Bemotional essays that discuss the role of language in shaping identity and fostering discrimination, but Baldwin and Tan use different strategies to persuade their readers to believe their claims. Baldwin uses a plethora of varied examples from around the world and comparison to illustrate his claim that black English is a legitimate language, while Tan uses mainly personal experience to establish herself as a credible authority on language and prove to her reader that language can divide people by forcing them into an identity that may or may not truly represent who they are. Both authors make emotional appeals to the audience, attempting to draw sympathy and compassion, but Baldwin writes his essay from the outside, using examples and evidence that reflect the general experience of black people in America while Tan draws mainly from her personal experiences as an Asian- American with immigrant parents. Even within the first sentences, Tan and Baldwin use different strategies to introduce themselves as credible authors. Tan begins by explaining her own limitations. “I am not a scholar of English or literature. I cannot give you much more than personal opinions on the English language and its variations in this country or others” (Tan, 1990, 1), Tan explains in the first paragraph, instantly creating a setting of honesty in which the reader trusts that Tan will only address issues within her realm of personal experiences. Baldwin, on the other hand, begins his essay with a convoluted sentence, establishing himself as an authoritative and educated person. He begins, “The argument concerning the use, or the status, or the reality, of black English is rooted in American history and has absolutely nothing to do with the question the argument supposes itself to be posing” (Baldwin, 1979, 1). As a beginning sentence, Baldwin’s opener only serves to confuse the reader because he has not defined “the question” of which he speaks, nor “the argument” he will be making or that is implied by “the question.” By doing so, Baldwin establishes himself instantly as an intellectual who can use complicated words and sentence structure that perhaps his audience cannot even understand. Both authors

WRW - 95 Marisa Keller begin by establishing their authority over the topic of language but Baldwin does so by intimidating the reader with his own mastery of English composition while Tan identifies her limitations as an authority and promises not to step outside of those bounds. Thus Baldwin, by becoming an authority figure, distances himself from the reader, while Tan creates a friendly relationship. Further distancing himself from the topic at hand, Baldwin proceeds to draw on examples that are not only not from his own life, but are about people from other countries. Baldwin’s first set of examples is from France and other French speaking countries. He explains that although a group of people may all speak French, they may not all be able to understand each other because they are from different places. Baldwin explains that “a Frenchman living in Paris speaks a subtly and crucially different language from that of the man living in Marseilles; neither sounds very much like a man living in Quebec; and they would all have great difficulty in apprehending what the man from Guadeloupe, or Martinique, is saying, to say nothing of the man from Senegal – although the ‘common’ language of all these areas is French” (Baldwin, 1979, 1). Similarly, Baldwin describes the influence of language on another situation in Europe by explaining that, “much of the tension in the Basque countries, and in Wales, is due to the Basque and Welsh determination not to allow their languages to be destroyed” (Baldwin, 1979, 2). Baldwin continues the European examples when he tells the reader that “the range (and reign) of accents on that damp little island make England coherent for the English and totally incomprehensible for everyone else. To open your mouth in England is (if I may use black English) to ‘put your business in the street’” (Baldwin, 1979, 2). Baldwin uses three examples not from his own life, but instead from European history. His choice of example serves two purposes: first, to distance himself from the reader by not using examples from his own life, and second, to further prove that he is a well educated man who knows his semi-obscure European history/geography. Tan, on the other hand, staying true to her promise of only having personal – not scholarly – experience with the subject, illustrates her point with narrations from her own life. Tan’s first example deals with a situation in which she was giving a formal

WRW - 96 Argument Paper speech about her book, The Joy Luck Club. Upon realizing that her mother is in the room, she becomes uncomfortable with the idea that her mother is listening to her use her profession English. Tan explains, “the talk was going along well enough, until I remembered one major difference that made the whole talk sound wrong. My mother was in the room. And it was perhaps the first time she had heard me give a length speech, using the kind of English I have never used with her” (Tan, 1990, 1). By describing this situation in which Tan realized for the first time that she uses two distinct types of English, Tan both introduces the idea of different forms of English and identifies further with the reader. Reading this article may be the first time her audience realizes that an English speaker may speak different “Englishes” and by sharing this story of her own realization of that same fact, Tan creates a stronger personal connection between her reader and herself. Baldwin and Tan also both use comparisons to illustrate their respective arguments and true to form, Baldwin uses a more academic comparison than Tan’s personal anecdotal comparison. Baldwin explores the different usages of the word “beat” in white and black English. Originating as a phrase – “beat to his socks” – that indicated “the black’s most total and despairing image of poverty” (Baldwin, 1979, 2), Baldwin explains that it metamorphosed into the popular white phenomenon known as the Beat Generation which “was, largely, composed of uptight, middleclass white people, imitating poverty” (Baldwin, 1979, 2). Baldwin’s comparison, in addition to a number of examples he provides in the same vein, is extremely effective in illustrating the fact that many popular phrases were adaptations of black colloquialisms. Tan’s comparison is also effective but again, is from an actual experience in her life. Tan explains that as a child, her mother often forced her to converse with people on the phone who would not respect her mother because of her “broken” English. In one situation, Tan speaks on the phone with a stockbroker while her mother whispers what to say in the background. Tan describes that, “my mother was standing in the back whispering loudly, ‘Why he don’t send me check, already two weeks late. So mad he lie to me, losing me money.’ And then I said in perfect English, ‘Yes, I’m getting rather concerned. You had

WRW - 97 Marisa Keller agreed to send the check two weeks ago, but it hasn’t arrived’” (Tan, 1990, 3). Tan goes on to describe several other comparisons of her mother’s instructions and the way she translated them on the phone. Both Baldwin and Tan’s comparisons are in depth and illustrative, but, as with their styles throughout, Baldwin and Tan’s choices are distinctly different. Baldwin’s comparison deals with the etymology of a word used in both black and white English while Tan’s comparison once again comes from a personal experience in her life. Although Baldwin and Tan have distinctly different styles in supporting their arguments, both rely on pathos to solidify their overall persuasiveness. In fact, both Baldwin and Tan use a narration of a sad story to gain the audience’s sympathy and compassion. Tan describes her mother’s experiences with hospital personnel involving a lost CAT scan by first explaining that the situation was “far less humorous” than any previous story she told her reader. Tan goes on to explain the reasons for her mother’s increased anxiety over the situation: “her husband and son had both died of brain tumors” (Tan, 1990, 3). Tan’s previous stories were lighthearted if not humorous in nature, but this anecdote differs from that tone by describing the frustrating story of discrimination that her mother faces as a speaker of “broken” English. This story is particularly jarring because it deals with an emotional situation of a woman facing the possibility of serious illness. Baldwin similarly describes the sobering reality for black children in the American education system. Baldwin asserts, “the brutal truth is that the bulk of the white people in America never had any interest in educating black people, except as this could serve white purposes” (Baldwin, 1979, 3). He continues by explaining that “a child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him . . . Black people have lost too many black children that way” (Baldwin, 1979, 3). By describing the sad circumstances of black children and the discrimination they face, Baldwin, like Tan, appeals to the audience’s compassion and sympathy. Although the styles employed by Baldwin and Tan throughout are dramatically different, they both use the tactic of appealing to their audience’s emotions with a story that engenders compassion.

WRW - 98 Argument Paper A final difference between Tan and Baldwin’s approaches to supporting their arguments is their effort to address opposing views. Baldwin does not attempt to address opposing views whatsoever while Tan several times admits that she herself believed them at one time. Tan discusses how, as a child, she was ashamed of her mother’s English, as she believed it reflected the quality of her mind. “When I was growing up, my mother’s ‘limited’ English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say” (Tan, 1990, 3). She goes on to admit that many other people shared that view as well: “people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her” (Tan, 1990, 3). Tan’s experience as a child was that other adults did not respect her mother as a result of her speech and therefore Tan believed that there was merit to their judgment. However, Tan effectively disproves that belief by giving the example of her mother’s ability to comprehend things that Tan herself, as a perfect English speaker, cannot understand. “She reads the Forbes report, listens to Wall Street Week, converses daily with her stockbroker, reads all of Shirley MacLaine’s books with ease – all kinds of things I can’t begin to understand” (Tan, 1990, 2). Tan’s mother’s ability to understand English is not compromised by her inability to express herself to others. Therefore, the assumption that her English speaking skills reflect her level of comprehension of English is unfair. Likewise, Tan admits that authorities might not agree with her opinion that her mother’s “broken” English greatly affected her language skills. She admits that “sociologists and linguists probably will tell you that a person’s developing language skills are more influenced by peers” (Tan, 1990, 4), but she goes on to explore in depth the reasons why she had more difficulty with English than math as a result of the type of English her mother spoke. She describes the rigidity of fill- in-the-blank and analogy questions on standardized tests that she simply could not appreciate because of her mother’s understanding of English. To her, there were many options to complete the question but according to the test-makers there was only one. Thus,

WRW - 99 Marisa Keller Tan addresses the opposing view – that peer’s are a greater influence on a child’s developing language than parents – and explains why she herself had the opposite experience. While Baldwin does not find it necessary to establish and argue against the opposing side, Tan goes to great lengths to break down the misconceptions she knows are prevalent. The topic of Baldwin and Tan’s essays is language, and their goals are rather similar. They both want to decrease the amount of discrimination and false-identities created by language and break down the barriers created by considering different varieties of English to be inferior. Likewise, they both establish themselves early on as authorities their readers should trust and support their claims with many concrete examples while also appealing to the audience’s most basic human emotions – sadness, sympathy and compassion, especially for children. However, the overall feel of the two equally powerful essays is dramatically different. Tan’s essay is filled with personal narrative, allowing the reader to feel close to Tan herself. Baldwin on the other hand, maintains his distance, focusing on examples both from America and other parts of the world that do not directly involve him. Baldwin’s complex sentences and advanced diction establish him as not only a well education person, but also an intellectual on a level above the average reader. He chooses to take on the role of an authoritative figure that the reader should look up to, much like a child listens to a teacher. Tan’s essay, on the other hand, has a feel more like a conversation between equals or friends. While both essays are immensely powerful, they are designed to convince a different type of audience or at least appeal to that audience through a different set of values. Baldwin encourages the reader to trust his authority and believe what he says based on his incredible knowledge and education while Tan persuades her reader by her candidness and willingness to share personal anecdotes. In the end, these two methods are likely more and less effective based on the audience reading the essays. Each essay will be more persuasive when presented to an audience that is prepared to accept the essay in the form it is written.

WRW - 100 Argument Paper Works Cited

Baldwin, James. "If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is." The New York Times 29 July 1979: Op-Ed.

Tan, Amy. "Mother Tongue." Originally published as "Under Western Eyes." The Threepenny Review 1990.

WRW - 101 A Quenched Thirst, A Clear Conscience— The Best Part of Waking Up: the United States and the Global Coffee Crisis

Katy Kreitler

Writer’s comment: I have been in school a long time and have written my share of research papers. As soon as I receive a grade, each is thrown into a stack on my desk and is quickly forgotten. I did not want this paper to be just another in a pile of future garbage. I wanted to write about something that mattered, something that affects real lives in the real world, something that changes the way we think about the world. Most importantly, I wanted to write about something that people would want to read. In dealing with the coffee trade, I explored an industry that causes incredible social injustice worldwide, but also one that is present in our daily lives here in the states. I was able not only to use the writing skills that I learned here at USF, but also to practice writing in the way that Professor Schramm had intended: in a manner that exceeds the classroom environment, and has tangible implications for our society. —Katy Kreitler

Instructor’s comment: Katy’s writing is meticulous. Until the middle of the semester, however, it was only careful writing, safe writing, not passionate writing. But one day in class she expressed her dismay that, until then, she had been uninformed about the greater world. So when I assigned a paper that was to investigate social problems that went beyond yet included the United States, a paper that was also to propose a detailed solution and to follow up that paper with a letter of concern to a person in a decision-making capacity, Katy took to the task with relish. The result was this outstanding and, yes, passionate essay, publishable—I am convinced—in some of our best magazines today. — Darrell g.h. Schramm, Rhetoric and Composition

WRW - 102 A Quenched Thirst, A Clear Conscience INTRODUCTION

American traders…had no concern for what was happening to the landscape of [coffee] supplying countries. American consumers knew virtually nothing of the ecological or social circumstances that supported their daily rituals: a first morning cup at home, a mid-morning coffee break at the work place, and then a final cup with dessert in the evening. -Richard P. Tucker, Insatiable Appetite: The United States and the Ecological Degradation of the Tropical World (qtd. in Brown 248).

offee is one of the most profitable commodities in the modern world, second only to oil, and no country Cconsumes more of it than the United States (Brown 249). We Americans drink coffee daily to help us wake, to warm our bodies, to feed our cravings for caffeine. Coffee, our nation’s third largest import, is consumed so frequently by U.S. citizens that the quantity purchased by American coffee roasters in one year averages somewhere from 18-19 million bags (253). Yet while companies like Starbucks pull in about $3.60 per pound for their quality roasts (252), coffee-farming families throughout Latin America, Africa, and Asia, are paid next to nothing for their labor. In fact, coffee bean prices are currently so low that farmers are often paid less for their crop than it costs them to produce it, forcing them to work in constant debt (“Fair Trade Coffee” par.1). While these farmers labor intensively over their fields, they do not have the means to feed and clothe their families, and poverty and malnutrition are rampant in the developing countries whose economies rely on coffee exportation. The low wages for coffee growers around the world are the result of a global coffee crisis caused by the collapse of the U.S. International Coffee Agreement, a global oversupply of the coffee crop, a sharp decline in coffee prices, poor bean quality, and an indirect trade system, some of which can be linked to the United States’ preference for free trade over fair trade. The coffee that we consume so readily in our country is purchased in an unregulated, busy market characterized by the exploitation of farmers, their families, and an environment that struggles to support our capitalist demands. If we wish to reform the coffee market so that every

WRW - 103 Katy Kreitler person involved, from producer to consumer, gets a fair deal, we must adopt a trade system that is fair and direct. The solution to the global coffee crisis must include participation and cooperation on all levels: U.S. citizens must make purchases that coincide with humanitarian values, fair trade organizations must join together and give media attention to their cause, the United States government must return to its commitment to human rights and rejoin the International Coffee Organization, and coffee producers across the globe must join together in farming cooperatives and diversify their crops to ensure economic stability. Only then can world coffee trade suit the needs of all people working within it.

ORIGINS OF THE PROBLEM

For capital, the whole world, nature and humanity alike, lies before it as a field of exploitation. -Joel Kovel “The Struggle for Use Value: Thoughts about the Transition.” (qtd. in Gareau 96).

Joaquín Elías Valencia Franco has worked as a coffee farmer in his native country of Colombia for thirty-five years with his five sons and wife of twenty-five years. Now Franco is having his farm repossessed and sold because he cannot sell his beans for a price high enough to pay off his enormous debts to the bank. Franco, unfortunately, is one of 12,000 Colombians facing this situation. Because of the rapid drop of coffee prices, this man, many of his fellow countrymen, and coffee farmers around the world are left in debt, without the ability to work it off. Franco laments, “We don’t have even the minimum resources for food, schooling and health” (“Going Bust” par.1-6). According to J.D. candidate Grace H. Brown in the Georgetown International Environmental Law Review, the situation that farmers find themselves in today reflects a number of problems in the recent history of the coffee industry, problems that have allowed the industry to become the way it is today: unjust and unsustainable. It cannot be said that the United States alone is responsible for these problems, yet because of the massive size of the American coffee industry, our country’s actions played a vital part in its break down. By backing down from an International

WRW - 104 A Quenched Thirst, A Clear Conscience Coffee Agreement (ICA), the U.S. would prove its importance in global coffee trade. Each of these agreements, overseen by the International Coffee Organization and signed by a coffee-consuming country, set export quotas for coffee producing countries in an attempt to stabilize the market. President Kennedy signed an ICA in 1962, and the United States was part of the global fight to keep trade fair. However, as the demand for coffee rose in the United States, it was clear that under the regulations of the ICA the new consumer coffee demands of the nation could not be met. The National Coffee Organization (a group that represents the larger coffee companies in the U.S.) declared that “the interests of the U.S. coffee industry are best accommodated by free and unrestricted trade of coffee,” and the United States took its name off the ICA. Though the government argued that this move best reflected the beliefs of our nation, and a commitment to the free market, it clearly had other direct motivations. The U.S. was putting the interests of its own economy and its own demanding consumers above those of the meager wage-earning coffee farmers, and it set this example for other nations (Brown 251). The selfish attitude of the U.S. is common among major coffee corporations, and would come to represent the entire industry. But selfishness has consequences. Soon after the United States, the world’s largest coffee consuming country, reneged on its commitment to the International Coffee Organization, all pacts fell out of existence. By 1989, the last ICA was no more. This would have catastrophic effects for the coffee industry. Brown writes that while quotas forced farmers to sell only certain amounts, most were producing more than they could sell; with the ICA regulations gone, these extra bags of lower quality beans were put on the market. This would mark the beginning of the current global oversupply of coffee, but it would not be the only factor (251-252). In addition to the collapse of the ICA, which prompted the immediate sale of old bags of coffee beans, two things happened that would increase the rates of coffee production, adding to the oversupply. First, Brazilian coffee producers rejoined the market. Brazil had suffered frosts following the ICA’s 1989 breakdown, and the country downsized its production immensely; however, in

WRW - 105 Katy Kreitler the late 1990s, the weather had cleared, and regular production resumed. Second, Vietnam entered the market. This would be huge, as Vietnamese coffee production was soon the second highest of any country in the world. Adding Brazilian and Vietnamese coffees to an already heavily supplied international market created the global oversupply that now exists in the industry (252-254). An oversupply of a commodity like coffee has distinct consequences. Like any product, an increase in supply causes prices to drop; however, because this particular product is inelastic, that is to say, its supply does not greatly affect its demand, these low prices do not necessarily lead to a greater rate of purchase. In other words, supply increases at a faster rate than demand. This is devastating to farmers, who must sell their crop cheaper in order to compete with others in the market, yet whose rates of sale remain the same. Profits decrease drastically. This is where the path of the coffee industry has left farmers like Joaquín Franco, slaving over crops that will not profit enough to meet even the most basic of needs. Yet, while we can pinpoint these specific events in history as causes of economic distress, we cannot look at them as solely responsible for the current coffee crisis. There are many other contributing factors to this crisis that are active today, in the management of the market, in the systems of trade, and in the methods used in the growth, transportation, and sale of coffee. All of these factors together create a problem that goes beyond coffee beans. In this market of excessive gross production there are detrimental consequences for growing third- world economies, fragile ecosystems, hungry farmers, and even money-hungry American consumers. The game that we are playing with Mother Nature and coffee suppliers across the world is a risky one. Without reform, we shall all lose.

GRAVE SITUATION, GRAVE CONSEQUENCES

I really don’t care at all about coffee. I care about people. In Guatemala, I see their poverty, their suffering, their lack of future. - Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini Imeri, Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of San Marcos, Guatemala and

WRW - 106 A Quenched Thirst, A Clear Conscience winner of the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award on fair trade (qtd. in Morrow 28).

Every so often, I get a craving for a delicious, freshly blended coffee drink. Whether prompted by an uncontrollable sweet tooth or the sight of a tempting advertisement, the idea will not leave my mind until I am in a brightly colored armchair at Starbucks, smelling the comforting aroma of roasting beans and sipping something warm and sumptuous, preferably with chocolate. Four dollars never tasted so good. As I am writing this paper, I continue these sparse visits, but they come at a cost. As I watch my coffee purchases slowly drain my wallet, I am frustrated that as I shell out four dollars for a drink made with about a half cup of coffee, the producers of this crop will see virtually nothing of my money. My few dollars will combine with the money spent by my fellow coffee lovers to become gas money for the Starbucks employees, a down payment on the company head’s new yacht, and start-up money for the next two thousand Starbucks cafés. No matter how much more coffee the American public consumes, no matter how high prices at coffee places become, the farmer will never see the difference. Instead, the extra cash is pocketed by corporation leaders. They are, after all, working within a capitalist system; they benefit from cheating others. A farmer in Honduras or Guatemala who harvests his own coffee for exportation has no way of knowing what I pay for my Grande Caramel Macchiato here in the states; facts like these are conveniently kept from third-world producers. The isolation that these coffee growers face is due to a multi- leveled trade system that severs their connections with the U.S. companies that roast and sell their beans. In this system, independent farmers usually must sell not directly to American companies, but to “exploitative middlemen” commonly referred to as coyotes (James 221). According to Grace Brown, coyotes have access to market information about which most local farmers are clueless, giving the former the ability to demand any price they wish, and naturally to profit immensely (Brown 254). True to the nature of unfair business, these people “generally pay [farmers] less than half of the export price” (James 221). This unnecessary

WRW - 107 Katy Kreitler step both lowers the profits of coffee farmers and increases the costs of the final product for coffee drinkers. In the end, “the amount accruing to the farmer from the retail sales price of a cup of coffee in a coffee shop is probably less than two percent,” says the ICO (“Coffee Crisis” par.11). This gap in profits between a family farmer and a company like Starbucks is detrimental for both producer and consumer. In truth, the only ones receiving tangible benefits from this exchange are those in the middle: the coyotes and the major coffee- selling corporations. A link between the two reveals much about the type of business that this market encourages, and it is a link that Starbucks would not like you to make. And most of their customers will probably not. Brown writes, “The price of coffee becomes so inflated by each party along the way that consumers ultimately pay the same price…” (254). In other words, whether middlemen are fair or not, my drink still costs me the same amount. Price increases are completely up to the companies, and have no reflection on the cost of the coffee beans. American coffee drinkers are kept ignorant of the origins of their morning coffee, and therefore are freed from any responsibility to make a humane purchase. It would be unfair to place all the blame on corporations, however. A number of coffee exporting countries, as well as individual farmers, plant and harvest only coffee beans. Relying on one crop to sustain a nation’s economy is extremely risky, especially with coffee. The coffee bean is a cash crop; it cannot be eaten or made into clothing. If farmers cannot sell any beans, they are left with nothing; if a country full of farmers cannot sell any beans, an entire nation is left with nothing. This makes it a practical business decision for farmers to switch to more efficient methods of production. Unfortunately, these switches are often damaging to the environment as well as local wildlife. One such conversion has been the move from shade-grown coffee to sun-grown coffee. The idea of growing coffee in the sun began as a means of protecting the leaves of coffee plants from rusting, but though “fears of such problems never materialized,” farmers continue to use this industrial growing method on their land . While the trees used for shade-grown coffee provide natural

WRW - 108 A Quenched Thirst, A Clear Conscience mulch (Brown 256), and a habitat for migratory birds, insects, and other animals (“Environmental Benefits” par.1), sun-grown coffee promotes soil degradation and water pollution (Brown 256). In addition, maintaining sun-grown crops require chemical fertilizers and pesticides that are detrimental to the health of indigenous animals and even to the farmers. Still, “Forty percent of the coffee bean plants planted in the past fifteen years have been converted to sun-grown coffee” (256). This trend is a threat to the natural environment of the coffee exporting countries and could have dire consequences for the future of the trade. This is merely one negative aspect of an unregulated market. There are, in fact, a great deal more. But perhaps we should now focus on the possible future effects of this business, if the market is not altered. One is poor bean quality. In a desperate attempt to make some sort of profit, farmers often sell whatever beans they can, regardless of their condition. The USDA currently has no criteria for the purity or pesticide application of imported coffee (256-257), so farmers have no reason to hold back any beans. Also, of the two types of coffee beans, arabica and robusta, arabica, the kind that is the most profitable for farmers and is generally the highest in quality, is becoming increasingly uncommon. Coffee sellers are purchasing a majority of robusta beans, because they are cheaper, and can easily be used as “filler” in premium roasts (Scholer 37). So, while bean quality decreases, so does bean varity. Another consequence occurs, yet again, to the farmers. When a field full of coffee crops fails to yield sufficient profits, a farmer must employ desperate measures. In order to keep the crops alive, farmers all-too-commonly put their children to work in the fields. If this is unsuccessful, the only remaining options are to switch to elicit crops, such as coca and opium poppy, or to abandon the fields entirely (Brown 255). In the words of the International Coffee Organization, “[This] situation stimulates emigration to cities and to industrialized countries” such as the United States (“Coffee Crisis” par.4). People who were once helping our economy, if so exploited, could soon become a strain on it. It is these realizations that make my trips to Starbucks less and less enjoyable. More importantly, they make me frustrated. I

WRW - 109 Katy Kreitler should not have to feel guilty after drinking a cup of coffee, I should not have to be worried that the majority of my drink is made with low-quality beans that were grown with pesticides and other chemicals, or that farmers are starving even though they sell their crops easily. In a nation that stresses human rights and equality, businesses should be compelled to give every person a fair share. I should be able to assume that the four dollars I pay for my coffee goes to all the right people. Unfortunately, right is not always American.

TRADING FAIR

It’s trying to open other markets…It’s defending the worker’s rights…It[’s] a commitment that is very broad and extensive. -Bishop Ramazzini (qtd. in Morrow 31)

President Bush tells us, “America will be prosperous if we embrace free trade. I want to end tariffs and break down barriers everywhere, entirely, so the whole world trades in freedom” (“President…” par.6). As idealistic as his words may sound, this exact ideology is what causes problems in the coffee trade. Starbucks and Folgers are free to charge any price for their coffee that the American people will pay. Farmers are free to use any harmful pesticides and chemical agents in the growth of their beans. We are free to purchase a packaged item that was produced in inhumane conditions. The free trade system that we glorify in America is not as positive as our president would like us to believe, especially when it comes to coffee. With this commodity, a free market system is unhealthy for the environment, the consumer, and the producer alike. It leaves countless farmers without jobs and without hope. And while it may be a symbol of our commitment to free market capitalism, it is a violation of our commitment to basic human rights. It cannot continue. Fortunately, there is an alternative to free trade: fair trade. This system is intended to prevent overproduction and poverty as a result of unregulated trade, serving as an alternative to today’s risky, mainstream means of exchange. The fair trade system creates relationships between importing and exporting countries so that both producer and consumer get a fair deal. These coffee WRW - 110 A Quenched Thirst, A Clear Conscience beans are purchased from farmers at consistent, fair prices: $1.26 for conventional beans, $1.41 for organic (MacQuarrie par.5). Fair trade companies ensure that their products are high quality and environmentally safe, and each one strives for “democratic organization, education, community development, and sustainable agriculture” (Gareau 108). In order to establish some sort of unification, a group of fair trade organizations from the United States and nineteen other countries around the world called Fairtrade Labeling Organizations International (FLO) (“What is…” par.1) has set five criteria for this type of coffee production:

1) a guaranteed fair price for all coffees, higher for organic; 2) democratic cooperatives of small farmers; 3) direct, long-term, stable trade between producers and importers, eliminating “coyotes” or multiple intermediate brokers; 4) a line of pre-harvest credit from importers, and 5) environmental protection (Morrow 29).

These requirements lay out the mission of the fair trade movement, and set basic guidelines for organizations wishing to promote the sale of fair trade coffee. Fair trade coffee beans, which, according to the International Trade Forum, make up only “about .3% of world production,” (Scholer 26) are distinguished from other coffee beans by a fair trade label. High quality guaranteed. Unfortunately, so are the prices. Fair trade beans average only six cents a cup (Morrow 29), yet the difference in price between mass-produced coffee beans and these slightly pricier fair trade beans is enough to scare off the penny-pinching American consumer. Frugal shoppers throughout the U.S. fail to recognize the importance of this small label, if they notice it at all. Regardless of a lack of supporters for a somewhat unknown cause, fair trade organizations in the U.S., such as Transfair USA and Global Exchange are actively working to increase the production and sale of fair trade products, and struggling to convert Americans to socially conscious buyers. Oxfam is currently working with Starbucks, Proctor and Gamble, Kraft, and Sara Lee in an attempt to persuade these influential companies to sell fair trade coffee. So far, Oxfam’s Coffee Rescue Plan has been

WRW - 111 Katy Kreitler relatively successful. Both Starbucks and Proctor and Gamble now offer fair trade varieties of their coffees (“Coffee Scorecards” par.1). As a result of pressure from organizations like Oxfam, Starbucks now sells 1% of its beans at fair trade prices (MacQuarrie par.12). Oxfam considers this a success, as even a small percentage of Starbuck’s enormous yearly revenue is still a large amount; yet any critic can see that supporting fair trade by converting a single percent of a company’s products can hardly be considered a commitment to the cause. The movement has a long way to go. On the whole, the production of fair trade coffee beans has increased (Transfair certified two million pounds of fair trade coffee in 1999 and ten million pounds in 2002) (MacQuarrie par.9). Unfortunately, no significant, large-scale changes will be made until major coffee corporations, American consumers, and the United States as a whole make a commitment to ensuring that every coffee bean imported, roasted and consumed is a result of fair, humane trade.

A PRACTICAL SOLUTION

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity… -From Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Fixing a large-scale problem like the global coffee crisis will not be easy or simple. Fortunately, there are some easy, simple things that can be done to make a difference that should stimulate necessary global changes in the coffee market. Many solutions have been proposed in the past that have been less than successful. Today, still more are proposed. Donald N. Schoenholt, specialties editor of the Tea and Coffee Trade Journal, roaster of sustainable coffee and CEO of Gillies Coffee Company in Brooklyn, says that the answer lies in the purchasing power of the people. Internet auctions and a proper certification system can ensure the farmers a

WRW - 112 A Quenched Thirst, A Clear Conscience fair deal (12-14). Morten Scholer, Senior Market Development Advisor for the International Trade Centre, has a similar idea. Like Schoenholt, Scholer proposes that coffee organizations promote consumption, and also that farmers diversify production ( par.19- 28). Realistically, a feasible, effective solution requires the participation of all people involved in the coffee market. I propose the following: First, all pertinent Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) must join together to create a unified fair trade campaign. Currently, a number of fair trade organizations are in connection with each other, yet work on separate funding, and have separate advertisements, etc. If these groups were to band together, money could be used more effectively, and a single successful advertising campaign could be created. Second, media attention must be given to the issue. People must be made aware of the benefits of fair trade coffees before they will consider purchasing them. Whether in the mainstream media or the alternative press, advertising should be the primary goal of all NGOs working to reform the coffee industry. With any luck, the proper campaigns will create more demand for fair trade coffees and other fair trade products as well. Third, once fair trade is a mainstream issue, or when the demand for fair trade rises, NGO campaigns can reach out to the major coffee-selling corporations. Starbucks, for example, could be pressured into converting its coffees to fair trade with the proper consumer demand. A switch to more fair trade coffee could be appealing to Starbucks if it could elevate its image in the public eye as a socially conscious company. NGOs should base their campaigns on this idea: that a caring corporation is more appealing to the common citizen. Next, and most importantly, the U.S. government must make a strong, final commitment to human rights and sustainability in the coffee trade. This should be done in two ways. First, the U.S. must sign a new International Coffee Agreement, and pledge its commitment to the International Coffee Organization. Secondly, the USDA should create a national quality standard for imported coffee beans. This slows the production and trade of our coffee, and ensures quality, fair priced beans. What stands in the way of

WRW - 113 Katy Kreitler these governmental moves is our nation’s commitment to free trade. However, with enough awareness of the inhumane working conditions of today’s struggling farmers, it is doubtful that much resistance will take place. Ensuring dignity and fair wages to our producers overseas is in no way a threat to free enterprise. On the contrary, it is our national duty. In addition, farmers must cooperate with the United States to rid the world of this crisis. Farmers can do this by joining fair trade cooperatives with other farmers, so that all of their crops will be guaranteed a fair price, and a fair trade organization can oversee their production. Also, farmers must work to diversify their products. This will make it possible for them to have an alternate source of income in case they are ever in need of one. Verena Stolcke, author and editor of the journal Anthropological Theory, says that the symbiosis of coffee with food crops even has the additional advantages of reduced labor costs and cost flexibility (80). On the down side, crop diversification can be problematic, because other crops, like fruits, often make much lower profits than coffee, and cannot be easily grown on the same terrain as coffee beans (Scholer par.28). However, in a cooperative, a coffee farmer could join with a fruit harvester in a mutually beneficial relationship, eliminating this problem altogether. Lastly, the American people as a whole must take a stand on the issue by being socially conscious buyers. This means paying the few extra cents for fair trade products. This also means being a voice for coffee farmers by urging Starbucks, Folgers, and the like to purchase their coffee at fair prices. Consumers have the ultimate leverage, after all: purchasing power. Each person involved in the coffee trade, from farmer to roaster to seller to consumer, plays a part in the injustice that faces farmers across the globe. Therefore, it is up to each of us to reverse this injustice. Fortunately, it can be done. If NGOs can organize and give media attention to coffee trade issues, if consumers can be persuaded to buy some fair trade products, if coffee corporations in the U.S. can sell even a little more coffee at fair trade prices, if the U.S. government can support the battle, and if coffee farmers are willing to cooperate with us, many of the problems could be solved. In the near future, perhaps big-name coffee companies will

WRW - 114 A Quenched Thirst, A Clear Conscience have a slight change of heart, perhaps Joaquín Franco will send his children to school, perhaps consumers like me will be able to sip their coffee with ease. Perhaps one day the “best part of waking up” will be even better than we had imagined. We just have to take a step in the right direction.

Works Cited

Brown, George H. “Making Coffee Good to the Last Drop: Laying the Foundation for Sustainability in the International Coffee Trade.” Georgetown International Environmental Law Review. 16.2 (Winter 2004): 247-280.

“Coffee Crisis.” International Coffee Organization. September 2004. 26 October 2004. 17 par. .

“Coffee Scorecards.” Make Trade Fair. 20 October 2004. Oxfam. 26 October 2004. 1 par. Path: The Issues; Coffee.

“Environmental Benefits.” Fair Trade Certified. 2004. Transfair USA. 28 November 2004. 1 par. .

“Fair Trade Coffee.” Global Exchange: Building People-to-People Ties. 26 Oct. 2004. Global Exchange. 26 Oct. 2004. 5 par. .

Gareau, Brian J. “Use and Exchange Value in Development Projects in Southern Honduras.” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. 15.3 (Sep. 2004): 95-110.

“Going Bust.” Make Trade Fair. 22 November 2004. Oxfam. 29 November 2004. 7 par. Path: The Issues; Coffee; Going Bust.

James, Deborah. “Fair Trade Not Free Trade.” The Global Activist’s Manual: Local Ways to Change the World. Ed. Mike Prokosch and Laura Raymond. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2000. Pages 221-226.

MacQuarrie, Bryan. “Bitter Feelings Over Coffee Bean Prices.” Boston Globe. Boston, Mass.: 18 Nov 2003: B1.

Morrow, Carol Ann. “The Coffee/Conscience Connection.” St. Anthony Messenger. February 2004: 28-33.

WRW - 115 Katy Kreitler

“President George W. Bush: President Bush on Foreign Affairs.” US Department of State: International Education Programs. 21 November 2004. 21 November 2004. 16 par. .

Schoenholt, Donald N. “The Economy of Coffee: Supply Glut, Crashing Prices, Desperate Farmers: What’s the Solution?” Whole Earth. Summer 2002:12-14.

Scholer, Morten. “Bitter or Better Future for Coffee Producers?” International Trade Forum. October 2004. International Trade Center. 26 October 2004. 52 par. .

Stolcke, Verena. “The Labors of Coffee in Latin America: The Hidden Charm of Family Labor and Self-Provisioning.” Coffee, Society, and Power in Latin America. Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic History and Culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995. Pages 65-93.

“What is Fair Trade Certification?” Fair Trade Certified. 2004. Transfair USA. 22 November 2004. 11 par. .

WRW - 116 Sex-Pissed Punks

Miles Braten

Writer’s comment: Writing has always scared me, even when I am allowed to write about a subject that interests me. Upon Professor Goss presenting the second assignment for her Rhetoric and Composition 220 class, I knew that I would be writing about punk music. Ideas for primary and secondary sources began circulating in my mind even before the assignment had been completely defined. Punk rock created a great topic to discuss sexuality in the media, as the genre of music has brought sex and gender issues to the forefront of its identity and struggles. During the weeks before the rough draft was due, I collected excerpts from my favorite albums and intelligent discussions about sex in punk music. The weekend before the rough draft was due, I struggled to pump out a coherent essay. When drafts were returned, I was greatly relieved to discover that Professor Goss suggested that I enter this essay to Writing for a Real World. —Miles Braten

Instructor’s comment: In the second assignment, I asked students to write a position argument responding to the broad question of how popular culture helps shape our perceptions of gender and sexuality. To focus their arguments and support their claims, students drew upon a range of cultural texts of their choosing, from magazine ads to soap operas to music—in Miles’s case, punk rock. His essay steers a path between two overly simple claims—either that punk culture has overcome gender stereotypes or that it fails to do so—by making the more subtle argument that the punk community, while striving for equality of gender and sexual orientation, often falls prey to the same prejudices as the mainstream society from which it struggles to differentiate. This essay, impressive for its clarity, maturity, and precision, challenges stereotypes of academic discourse by demonstrating that it is possible to perform an insightful, sophisticated critical reading of a subject not always thought worthy of scholarly scrutiny. — Sarah Goss, Rhetoric and Composition WRW - 117 Miles Braten unk rock was founded in a counter culture of revolution, autonomy, free thinking, and rejection of the status quo. The Plyrics, style, mentality, politics, and sexuality of the punk scene have always questioned traditionally accepted thoughts and institutions. It has been an unwritten law of the punk world that sexual equality for all genders and orientations is an inalienable right, which is reflected in dress, behavior, and music. The band Leftöver Crack summed up this rule quite well on the jacket of their Mediocre Generica album: “This record is dedicated to all of the true anti-racist, anti-sexist & especially all of the anti- homophobic motherfuckers in the world that aren’t afraid to speak up when no one else will and fight for basic human & civil rights whenever they can.” While the punk culture has created the requirement for sexual equality, many punks have discovered how difficult stereotypes are to destroy in their own counter culture. The threats of traditional (and new) gender roles, homophobia, and rape continue to challenge the fight for freedom from sexual borders. The struggle for sexual equality has been an issue in lyrics that many punk artists have addressed. The song “Big Man, Big M.A.N.” by Crass, from the 1979 Stations of the Crass album, is a witty, satirical social commentary on domestic violence, rape, and the societal expectations put on young boys to be violent, strong, and stoical. Crass recorded other work that dealt with sexuality: their 1981 album was titled Penis Envy. Crass stressed that boys should be allowed to be gentle and women should not be suppressed housewives. In 1988, the group Fugazi, headed by Ian MacKaye, released “Suggestion” on their album 13 Songs, which called upon men to stop generally harassing women and allotted some blame for sexual abuse to observers who do not stop or confront it. Bikini Kill, of the Riot Grrrl (Girl) movement from the early 1990s, wrote music that focused on feminism, lesbianism, rape, and the reclamation of sexual pleasure. Bikini Kill demanded girls to be as tough as boys, enjoy sex, demand equality, and retain positive feminine qualities. The list of punk bands that have instigated sexual revolution could continue for many pages; the point is that punk music has tried to create a culture that is free of

WRW - 118 Sex-Pissed Punks sexual bias. However, a culture entirely liberated from sexism and abuse does not exist anywhere. The punk culture tends to focus on the negative aspect of all things with a nihilistic acceptance. Even though punk has done so much to destroy sexual conformities, members of the punk community continue to scrutinize its shortcomings. This can be seen in the discourse that takes place in punk media. The band Aus Rotten was interviewed in the 38th issue of Profane Existence from July 2000; the topic of sexuality arose when the interviewer asked what a new member of the band, Adrienne (the only girl), would bring to the group. Adrienne said that she and the rest of the band wanted to incorporate discourse on sexism and gender issues into the lyrical content of the music. She said that sexism affected everyone, so both sexes should be involved in discussion about it. Eric, the guitarist and one of the vocalists, pointed out that many men see sexism as a women’s issue that they cannot touch. Matt, the drummer for the band, then interjected, saying, “I think it very much is a men’s issue, not really a women’s issue, because they’re the ones (men) who are creating the problem.” Adrienne then pointed out that the band Fugazi had written a song about rape and general sexual harassment and had consequently been attacked by women for writing about a women’s issue. Eric acknowledged the comment from Adrienne and pointed out that “most men would rather listen to other men than women,” even in the punk culture. Members of the punk community care about sexuality and gender rights, but they recognize that it is not so easy to create equality, or even to talk about sex issues. Eric pointed out that many male punks take an apathetic stance on sexual issues, labeling them as only applicable to women and gays. Carmen Vazquez, a gay rights activist who wrote an article on gender issues entitled “Appearances,” might say that the members of Aus Rotten were dealing with “the straitjacket of gender roles” that has been created within the punk community (429). The straitjacket is being administered by both men and women. As Eric had stated, many punk men will not truly listen to what a woman says about sexism; it is a women’s issue, not a battle for men, so why should they even bother? And like Adrienne asserted, some punk women claim ownership of sexism and rape, even

WRW - 119 Miles Braten though it affects both sexes. Segregating issues that punks can care or preach about based on gender is sexist. The women who attacked Fugazi for writing about rape might have thought the group knew nothing about the subject, but it is illogical that women attacked men who were speaking out against sexual violence. This contradiction shows that the punk culture has tried to remove the traditional straitjacket of gender roles, yet many factions of the movement are trying to replace it with a new and fashionable restraint that is just as harmful. Sexism in the punk scene is not just confined to feminist issues; homosexuals have sought refuge in the subculture of punk since its inception. The name of the genre, punk, is the title given to a young male prostitute who caters to older men. The song “Gay Rude-Boys Unite,” off of Leftöver Crack’s Mediocre Generica album, observes the problems of homophobia within the punk scene:

Unity? Ha! yer such a Saint Today you may be anti racist but then you’re anti gay you may be ignorant from a lack of education but if it’s sympathy you seek you better turn to another station Intolerant society rears it’s [sic] ugly face you’re turning your native music into a homophobic disgrace the gay ones, the straight ones, the white tan yellow and black gay rude boys and girls (yeah-yeah), we’re gonna take that dancehall back we’ll take it back! because without respect there’s gonna be nothing left.

Punk rock is often associated with Jamaican Ska music, which is syncopated dance-style jazz. A Rude-Boy or Girl is simply a fan of Ska. This song points out a problem in the punk/ska scene; being anti-racist is a requirement, but being homophobic is acceptable. Leftöver Crack refutes this idea and calls on the “gay rude boys and girls” to take action for equal space on the dance floor. Notice that both sexes are treated equally by Leftöver Crack, referring both to gay men and lesbians with the “rude” modifier. The punk/ska scene has taken many steps to stop racism and create equality in heterosexual relationships, but gays and lesbians are

WRW - 120 Sex-Pissed Punks still discriminated against, whether it is a shove on the dance floor or ridiculing with the words “dyke” and “faggot.” Carmen Vazquez would probably say that “Gay Rude-Boys Unite” is a prime example of the recognition of “enforced heterosexism” within the punk/ska community (431). Leftöver Crack has acknowledged that the punk/ska scene is hypocritically creating a heterosexist institution while calling for racial unity. Leftöver Crack is quite vocal about how angry the discrimination makes them: “So come on leave the closet/ on your way out grab a bat.” The music does not really condone violence but portrays the amount of frustration sexism causes the punks who really care about this problem. Violence and harassment, especially sexual, are problems that afflict the punk sub-culture as well as mainstream society. As mentioned before, Fugazi spoke out against rape and harassment in their song “Suggestion.” Aus Rotten wrote a dialogical song with commentary, “The Second Rape,” that pointed out how the court system alienates rape victims and does little to hold rapists responsible. These songs about rape and sexual abuse were aimed at a general analysis of society and the U.S. legal system. The Swedish band Demon System 13 (or D.S.-13) wrote a song entitled “Don’t talk sexism with me punk bastard” about rape and abuse in their scene in Umeå. The lyrics are straight to the point and show disappointment in the punk rock community:

Shit happened again/Can’t believe it/another friend violated and raped/ Claim to be different/In this fake little world/But shit is pretty fukked up right here/Nothing’s changed/Nothing’s new/Women in the scene/ Abused by the few/Circle you’re [sic] A’s/ Wave your flags/Doesn’t mean shit/You’re still scum/In our wonderful scene she’s a prey/Crust and Marx doesn’t make it ok/ Our problem- we must/Your problem – deal with it/He’s a man –we must/I’m a man –deal with it

The lyricist of D.S.-13 is very upset about the rape of a woman in the Umeå scene by a man who is also a member of the scene. At this point he becomes nihilistic, referring to the punk community as a “fake little world” and pointing out that all the preaching and social and political theorizing are not worth anything when the women who are part of the movement are treated like meat, just as

WRW - 121 Miles Braten they may be in the mainstream culture. At the end of the song the lyricist makes an attempt to point out that rape is a problem for women that is caused by men and that men are responsible to stop the problem from occurring. As men in punk have strived to rid themselves of sexism, women in punk have tried to reclaim their roles in the punk community. Bikini Kill confronted punk feminism head-on with songs like “Double Dare Ya,” which called on girls to be assertive, do what they want, and remember they have rights. The band also confronted the politics of relationships in the punk scene with tunes like “Anti-Pleasure Dissertation,” which describes a relationship in which a boy bragged to his friends about having sex with a girl. Kathleen Hanna, the lead singer of the group, wrote songs about boys in the punk scene taking on traditional gender roles and expecting girls to follow suit, exactly the opposite of the aim her band was promoting. In “Duality and Redefinition: Young Feminism and the Alternative Music Community,” a chapter from Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism, Melissa Klein makes an interesting statement:

I see punk, like the antiwar and civil rights movements before it, as a place where young women learned or solidified radical means of analyzing the world and then applied these powers of analysis to their own lives, only to realize that, as girls, they felt disenfranchised within their own supposedly “alternative” community. (211)

Not only does that quote sum up the problems that feminists have faced in punk rock, but anyone fighting sexism, enforced heterosexism, and the straitjacket of gender roles. The knowledge gained through involvement in an alternative community leads to a realization that the community still has flaws with sources in the traditional society as well as new problems specific to the scene. A letter by 138, the bass player of D.S.-13, to a zine, HeartattaCk, that was printed on the inside jacket of the No one will thank you when you are dead… compilation had a few comments that most people who have spent time in the punk scene dealing with sex issues would agree with. Looking back on his experience, 138 wrote, “I was stupid enough to believe in unity and the goodness of punk kids…. In the punk scene, most people

WRW - 122 Sex-Pissed Punks pretend to be something they are not, and the politics rarely go beyond the surface.” Those few lines seem to sum up what many veterans of punk rock feel. The ideas of feminism, sexual equality, and the elimination of abuse are often just that: ideas. The punk rock scene lacks solidarity when it comes to gender issues. As D.S.-13 pointed out, the acts of sexual discrimination and violence are carried out by the “few,” but these “few” ruin the whole the community by forcing people to be conscious that other punks are not true to the cause. The punk community has definite flaws when it comes to the destruction of discrimination and violence based on gender and sexual orientation, but the punk scene does take these issues head- on. Bands and members of the punk community are not afraid to slap their own clique in the face, demanding change with a self- regulating authority. The punk community understands that the battle for freedom from sexual discrimination will be infinite in length, but punk scenes will continue to audaciously fight for their ideals. Even though many of the sexual problems in mainstream culture still exist in the punk scene, members can confidently take a stance: “At least I am fuckin’ trying/ What the fuck have you done?” (Minor Threat).

Works Cited

“Aus Rotten Interview.” Profane Existence #38 July 2000. 4 Mar. 2005 .

D.S.-13. “Don’t talk sexism with me punk bastard.” and “Dear HeartattaCk…” No one will thank you when you are dead. Deranged Youth, 2002.

Klein, Melissa. “Duality and Redefinition: Young Feminism and the Alternative Music Community” Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism. Ed. Leslie Heywood, Jennifer Brake. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

Leftöver Crack. “Gay Rude-Boys Unite.” Mediocre Generica. Hellcat Records, 2001.

Minor Threat. “In My Eyes.” Complete Discography. Dischord, 1989.

WRW - 123 Miles Braten Vazquez, Carmen “Appearances.” Good Reasons with Contemporary Arguments. Ed. Lester Faigley and Jack Selzer. Pearson Education, 2004. from Homophobia: How We All Pay the Price. Ed. Warren J. Blumenfeld. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992.

WRW - 124 Forever Hungry

John Dea

Writer’s comment: In several of the readings from Brian Komei Dempster’s Asian American Literature Survey English 211 class, the theme of “hunger” represents a craving for the fulfillment of individual desires. “Hunger” surges through the plots of each story like a vicious ailment, eroding familial cohesion and escalating to emotional starvation. I equate “hunger” to a disease, one that is untreatable due to various conflicts which prevent the characters from satisfying their desires. The construction of this essay in- volved the analysis of “hunger” in three literary works, a challenge that I embraced with the motivational backing of Professor Dempster. His “hunger” for Asian American literature and identity was infectious, allowing me to fully appreciate each respective story and inspiring me to write with structured conviction. —John Dea

Instructor’s comment: John’s essay centers on a significant theme and metaphor: hunger. His skillful use of sections shows how this concept is distinct yet overlapping and displays his impressive ability to integrate multiple texts into a coherent and sophisticated analysis. By using this strategy, John is able to explore how “opposing individual desires” and difficult historical circumstances lead to conflict within families, psychological trauma, and unful- filled dreams. With elegance of language and assuredness of tone, John’s piece demonstrates how hunger is both physical and spiri- tual, individual and familial, particular and universal, giving voice to the complex nature of the Asian American experience. —Brian Komei Dempster, Rhetoric and Composition

WRW - 125 John Dea I. The Theme of “Hunger” in Asian American Literature A craving for satisfaction exists within each of us. Whether quenching our appetites or accomplishing our academic goals, our cravings may be fulfilled through our commitment of reasonable time and effort. Yet, sometimes, a craving is not so simple. It exists as a more complex and psychological desire—a desire that engulfs every facet of our lives. Through thoughts, actions, and words, this mutated craving permeates the lifeblood of its host and influences those who come within contact of it. The prognosis for conquering this altered desire is grim, for this yearning is far beyond our voluntary control and destined to be ungratified due to the conflicts created by our other desires. This fervent craving is “hunger.” “Hunger” reveals itself as a deadly barrier to attaining satisfaction in “Who’s Irish?” by Gish Jen, “Hunger: A Novella” by Lan Samantha Chang, and the anthology From Our Side of the Fence. The management of personal desires is approached with the mentality of self-treatment: each character longs to fulfill his or her respective emotional cravings. Familial interactions, however, create an imminent collision of individual goals. Such vendettas incite drastic affairs, resulting in the displacement of a culturally- determined grandmother in “Who’s Irish?” and the dramatic exit of an overstressed, autonomous daughter in “Hunger.” Other emotional discord stems from involuntary and intangible forces. The Japanese American concentration camps function as a smothering cloak of unfamiliarity and injustice, existing as the instigator of desires for Japanese Americans and as the malignant force which obstructs these cravings. In all aspects, the family structures of each story suffer considerable damage from internal conflicts; the opposing hungers start the hourglass for inescapable erosion of blood ties and unity. The thematic trend of “hunger” manifests itself through the various stories as conflicting individual longings, which inevitably attribute to the downfall of familial frameworks and the obstruction of emotional fulfillment.

II. Hunger: My Way or the Highway In Gish Jen’s “Who’s Irish?” “hunger” represents the narrator’s desire for personal stability and self-fulfillment so she can be part of a cohesive multiracial Chinese-Italian American family. She

WRW - 126 Forever Hungry hungers to be an accepted member of her interracial family as well as successfully assimilate into the American culture. As an elderly Chinese grandmother, the narrator desires her interracial granddaughter, Sophie, to behave according to how a normal Chinese girl should. She says, “All my Chinese friends had babies, I never saw one of them act wild like that” (181). The narrator attempts to assimilate into American society while her daughter’s family rejects tradition in place of orthodox beliefs. The narrator wishes for her daughter, Natalie, and Natalie’s Irish husband, John, to better discipline Sophie and in the process use her culturally inspired parenting style. The force of these clashing desires gradually and inevitably tears away the narrator from her immediate family while simultaneously transplanting her into a new one. Acting in opposition to the narrator, Natalie hungers for her mother to conform to more American methods of child-raising, such as refraining from spanking. She advises the narrator, “It gives them low self-esteem . . . that leads to problems later, as I happen to know” (181). Natalie, as the vice-president of a bank, wishes to conduct her life as both a businesswoman and as a mother and wife. Natalie also desires for her husband, John, to hold a stable career as the father, thereby supplementing her hunger for a secure family. The narrator is an independent, emotionally fierce Chinese American. Her commitment to her native culture embodies itself through her interactions with her multiracial family. From arguing with Natalie about the correct way to parent a child to eventually spanking Sophie upon acts of misbehavior, the narrator strives to fulfill her own desire of raising Sophie according to Chinese culture and tradition. Natalie and John both desire to fulfill professional goals, which attribute to their more lax methods of discipline and subsequent bad behavior from Sophie. The parents’ inclination towards teaching obedience evolves into coddling as their fulfillment of career objectives takes precedence over their management of Sophie’s behavior. As the narrator remains steadfast in her desire for cultural authenticity, her hunger intensifies while the desires of Natalie and John begin to change.

WRW - 127 John Dea The narrator underscores the story of how her fierce character and personality creates an intimidating presence, relating how her persona evoked trepidation from gangsters back in China. With her new family in America, this persona remains unchanged, and her public interaction with Sophie demonstrates this. For instance, when Sophie kicks a mother in the playground one day, and the parent reassures her that no harm is done, Sophie’s behavior is further promoted through the American preference of less stringent behavioral reprimands. When the narrator disciplines Sophie through spanking, her intimidation is created through Chinese guidance. She states how “some [mothers] will say, Stop, but others will say, Oh, she didn’t mean it, especially if they realize Sophie will be punished” (183). The playground mothers are now like the gangsters of China, cautious and afraid of the narrator’s capabilities with regard to her disciplinary prowess over Sophie. The narrator’s discipline of Sophie conflicts with Natalie and John’s inclination to spoil their child. Natalie’s hungers are bolstered by John’s desires and cultural background. The narrator’s Chinese-style discipline destroys her credibility as a guardian in the eyes of Sophie and John. When the narrator pokes Sophie with a stick in an attempt to lure her out of a foxhole, Natalie and John scold the narrator as if she were the misbehaving child: “Will you look at her? he yell then. What the hell happened? . . . You are crazy! say my daughter. Look at what you did! You are crazy! . . . Your family, say John. Believe me, say my daughter” (185). The narrator remains stubborn in her belief that stricter discipline is best for Sophie, creating a clash between their values and hers. Opposing hungers lead to deterioration of the family. Fear of divorce eventually forces Natalie to evict the narrator, further widening the gap between mother and daughter. John soon loses his recently acquired job and reverts back to his former depressed emotional state. Natalie describes her family after the narrator’s departure: “I have a young daughter and a depressed husband and no one to turn to” (186). The narrator now lives with John’s mother, Bess. Paternal instincts and babysitting aside, the narrator is finally able to contentedly coexist in a Chinese-Italian American setting with Bess—yet we are reminded of how this harmonious

WRW - 128 Forever Hungry cultural assimilation will never amount to reality amidst the various incompatible desires of Natalie’s family.

III. The Perilous Melting Pot of Desires In Chang’s “Hunger,” “hunger” represents a longing for satisfaction and happiness, both within each individual character and collectively as a Chinese American family. This hunger is fueled by past memories and culture, personal ambitions and desires, and the current ordeals of attempting to assimilate into a new, American environment. Ultimately, each character’s distinct hunger causes unavoidable conflict between family members, creating an emotional disease that weakens personal bonds with no hopes of recovery. Min hungers for an authentic, fulfilling relationship with her husband, Tian, and an overall cohesive, loving family; these aspirations would never have become reality back in China. Min leaves for America in search of a more opportunistic future and to escape the hardships of the war and her father’s death. She desires a happier, more fortunate life in America while bearing in mind her past cultural history and her personal and spiritual connection with her mother, who claimed that Min married Tian according to a concept called “yuanfen,” meaning “ ‘that apportionment of love which is destined for you in this world’ ” (17). As a parent, Min wants her daughters, Anna and Ruth, to mature as content Chinese Americans and wishes Tian to reciprocate such emotion through loving and fair parenting. Tian hungers for fulfillment of his personal goals: to become successful in America through his skills as a violinist and to pass on his passion and success for the instrument down to his daughters. Like Min, Tian desires a better life in America, and his professional aspirations provide a fervent groundwork. His craving for professional success is emphasized when Tian says, “ ‘But sometimes there is only one thing—one thing that a person must do . . . It is what he hungers for’ ” (28). Violin constitutes the core of Tian’s character, acting not only as a source of early employment but also as an instrument to fulfill his dreams of success. Anna hungers for a united family, similar to her mother, and ultimately wants to achieve happiness and satisfaction while

WRW - 129 John Dea avoiding familial conflicts. Well-behaved and similar to her mother in both her genetic features and rather passive demeanor, Anna desires a wholesome relationship with both her parents, but especially with Tian, who treats her primarily in an emotionally detached manner. Even as a young child, Anna lacks the compassion from Tian that her sister, Ruth, later receives. When Min tells Tian that Anna has taken her first step, he responds apathetically, “ ‘That’s fine’ ” (33). As an adult, Anna eventually transforms her past desires and familial hardships into a craving to start anew; the past conflicts and trouble in her life serve as kindling for a new beginning. Ruth hungers for self-expression and freedom as a Chinese American. Loved by both her parents, but perhaps in an unfortunately selfish manner by Tian, Ruth stands out as the more vocal and passionate child. Her capacity as a violinist is great, thanks to her father, but her desire to continue as a musician is not, also due to Tian. The influence of Ruth’s friends from school clashes with her father’s stringent behavioral and lifestyle demands—a struggle that is destined to escalate between equally stubborn father and daughter. With each individual character’s hunger influencing each other, conflict among the family is constant and painful. Min is the heart of the family, both a loving wife to Tian and affectionate mother to Anna and Ruth. Min wants more than anything to be a part of a calm, non-quarreling unit. She longs for the loving personal connections and happiness that only a family can provide, a longing that was unachievable in her past life in China. Min’s desire to cultivate such emotion conflicts with the desires of each family member. She acts nearly silent when issues concerning the violin arise: “Tian shouted, pounding his fist on the piano, thudding his feet against the floor, writhing in his chair as if he were chained in it. I watched, my vision blurring as if my eyes were being damaged from looking at the sun” (87). Tian’s fanatic obsession with the instrument, combined with his overbearing instruction, horrifies Min into hushed fear and pain. Tian’s obsession with the violin creates the groundwork for the majority of conflicts within the family. Anna is exempt from continuing lessons after she is not able to recognize higher pitches,

WRW - 130 Forever Hungry yet the overbearing intensity and pressure to succeed from Tian’s past lessons creates a further rift between her and her father. As a young child, Anna desires to become closer to her father and wishes for a more proportionate share of affection from him. However, Tian’s immediate personal connection and preference of Ruth creates a void that will never be filled. Ruth is spurred into violin through her father’s relentless control, yet her reluctant playing is directly related to fear and pressure created by Tian. Min feels torn as she watches tension escalate between Tian and Ruth: “ ‘You will stay in this house and practice!’ . . . ‘I hate you, I hate you!’ ‘You’re going to kill me! You’ll make me die!’ ” (88). Eventually, Ruth’s increased individualism during her young adult years results in her leaving the family, an action made to protest Tian’s unyielding stubbornness and allowed by Min’s inability to control such action. Min loves both her daughters dearly, but Tian’s intractable character disallows her a fair say in parenting. In one instance, when Tian decides to sleep outside Ruth’s bedroom to prevent her from sneaking out at night, Min proclaims to him that he is being unreasonable. Tian responds, “ ‘You keep out of this . . . This has nothing to do with you’ ” (78). During arguments within the household, Tian’s ardent vision of how his children should behave and live life casts Min into a spectator role rather than a co- regulator of the quarrels. Through all the disagreements, Min still desires stability and contentment for her family. Her motherly, less smothering style of parenting accounts for why the family stays together for as long as they do. After Ruth’s departure, Tian’s death, and Anna’s maturity into a professional woman, Min strongly desires to maintain what is left of her disconnected family. She wishes for her daughters to reunite again and to create loving, reciprocal relationships tied together by sisterhood. The history of Tian, however, remains as a cold barrier. Tian’s presence is summarized by Min after his passing: “I did not know when I put Tian’s hat in his hands that I would spend my life with a man that I could never make happy. If I had known what I know now, would I have gone ahead and married him?” (112). Such contemplation by Min about Tian relates directly to the tying force that originally brought them together: yuanfen. Min, Tian,

WRW - 131 John Dea Anna, and Ruth each hold passionate desires, and the interactions of these characters ultimately are not harmonious. Fate, albeit an unfortunate one, fashions each member’s opposing hungers into the fragmented lives of a discontent family.

IV. Creator and Executioner of Hopes In From Our Side of the Fence, “hunger” is influenced by the personal experiences of the Japanese American authors who were imprisoned in concentration camps during World War II. These desires are urgent and strong, spurred by the unjust detainment of Japanese American families and their emotional responses to their new environments. The Japanese American internment process not only prompts such hungers, but prevents these desires from being fulfilled. As a Nisei, the first generation of Japanese Americans born in America, Florence Dobashi has her rights as a citizen essentially stripped away when her family receives the order to be detained in the concentration camps. Towards the end of her camp sentence, Dobashi is asked to answer The Loyalty Oath, containing the infamous Question 27, which asks the internee if he or she will serve in the armed forces, and Question 28, which asks if he or she will foreswear allegiance to the Emperor of Japan. The sliver of remaining citizenship dangles like a strip of meat in front of a starving and abused dog. Dobashi hungers to be authentic in her response. She strongly desires to convey her true sentiments regarding her internment ordeal and the audacity of the questions: “ ‘What nerve they have to ask us such a question after putting us into camps just because we look Japanese!’ ” (6). Question 27 enrages Dobashi as she fails to see any logic in asking a 16-year-old girl to join the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. Question 28 adds fuel to the fire as Dobashi is unable to fathom forswearing allegiance to the Emperor of Japan if she had never done so in the first place. Yet, in order to be released from camp, she needs to prove her loyalty to the United States of America, or in essence lie in the response. Dobashi answers “Yes-Yes” to both questions, fueled by the fear of being forced to stay in the camps and jeopardizing her future education. “It was the only way out,” (7) Dobashi says. The

WRW - 132 Forever Hungry saying, “Don’t let the door hit you on your way out,” is an understatement when related to the internees who answer “Yes- Yes.” Emotionally weathered from the detainment experience, Dobashi is given a chance to exit the nightmare of the camps. The two questions put in front her are not fair or relevant given the context of the internment process itself. She hungers more than ever to be authentic in her response, with “No-No” acting as conduits to do so. The instinct for survival, however, transcends the idealistic chance for activism and justifies the practical reasoning behind lying in her response. The Japanese American internment experience involves both the relocation of living locations and familial continuity. The inconvenience of cramped rooms and widely shared resources pales in comparison to the psychological constraints of substandard education and, most importantly, the incapacity to live life as a true family. The hungers for familial privacy, intimacy, and enjoyment grow stronger with each passing day at the camps. Florence Nakamura recounts her family’s meager living arrangement in the Topaz concentration camp in Utah: “We shared a communal latrine, shower, and laundry with over one hundred other inmates. We had no living room where we were able to talk, study, and enjoy ourselves. What a horrible place to be. A prison for families” (40). The environmental surroundings confine not only the internee but also the desperate urge for normal family interactions and relationships. Deficient physical environments immediately supplement the emotional adjustment Nakamura’s family endures. She remembers a story of how her father, an admittedly poor carpenter, built shelves to hold the family’s dishes, when “one night the shelves that he constructed fell down, along with our dishes, making a loud crash which could be heard throughout the barrack” (42). The resounding crash signifies the beginning of the collapse of the family structure. Sato Hashizume narrates her family’s changed seating arrangement for dinner in the following example:

My brothers, George and Tom, joined their teenage buddies in the far corner of the room where I lost track of them . . . I was left at a table with

WRW - 133 John Dea Papa. This seating arrangement became permanent for the duration of our detention center stay. We never ate together as a family again. (22)

Social relations between young internees at the camps contribute directly to the disconnected family arrangements during dinner and beyond. Accordingly, parental control and influence weaken due to the polarizing nature of camp operations. The concentration camps affect both the physical and internal family structures. At the long- awaited end of the detainment, the physical unit survives while the core of the family—its values and traditions, its defined roles, and its overall continuity—perishes at the hands of an ill-conceived and unjust governmental action.

V. Not Even Close The theme of “hunger” manifests itself through each of the characters as distinct and, ultimately, unfulfilled emotional desires. Several parallels may be drawn between the stories and their characters, showing how opposing individual desires influence familial discord. The narrator from “Who’s Irish?” and Ruth from “Hunger” both are individualistic beings who enact their desires through extreme defiance. The narrator’s application of unsparing discipline results in her forced dismissal from the family, while Ruth’s fervid rejection of the violin and Tian’s laws of conduct compel her to leave the family in search of independence. Natalie and Min are analogous in their inability to maintain a complete family unit. Natalie’s spoiling of Sophie and fear of divorce, ironically, separates the narrator from the family, and Min’s passive approach toward her daughters and Tian allow unresolved conflict to occur. Lastly, Tian’s overbearing presence is akin to the Japanese internment process—both ignite and destroy the desires of the individuals they influence. Achievement of personal satisfaction is far from within reach for these characters—their hungers stand as death sentences: emotional solace cannot be attained.

Works Cited

Chang, Lan Samantha. Hunger: A Novella and Other Stories. New York: Penguin Books, 1998. 11-114. WRW - 134 Forever Hungry

Dobashi, Florence Ohmura. “The Loyalty Questionnaire.” From Our Side of the Fence. Ed. Brian Komei Dempster. San Francisco: Kearny Street Workshop, 2001. 6-7.

Hashizume, Sato. “The Food.” From Our Side of the Fence. Ed. Brian Komei Dempster. San Francisco: Kearny Street Workshop, 2001. 22- 24.

Jen, Gish. “Who’s Irish?” Charlie Chan is Dead 2, Ed. Jessica Hagedorn. New York: Penguin Group, 2004. 176-186.

Nakamura, Florence Miho. “The Living Room.” “Barrack in Tanforan.” From Our Side of the Fence. Ed. Brian Komei Dempster. San Francisco: Kearny Street Workshop, 2001. 39-40, 42.

WRW - 135 Science, Technical and Business Writing

WRW - 136 Making Waves: Finding Keys to Success in the Failures of the Fish Industry Andrew Skogrand

Writer’s comment: Everyone wants to put in his or her two cents about the hot button issues. We all have views on Social Security, U.S. energy policy and the war in Iraq. Glamorous problems get all the attention—but what about the less flashy topics? When initially asked to investigate a problem in need of a solution, I don’t believe the plight of overfishing had an amazing appeal for me. After all…it’s just fish. Yet, as I began to realize the failing state of marine health, I found it was more than a worthy topic. Overfishing is a problem with hundreds of solutions, all offered by various interests. I felt compelled to sift through the solutions, filter out the destructive ideas and allow an articulated solution to flow forth. I didn’t add to the bottleneck by adding my personal ideas; I simply became a critic and aggregate for the solutions that were already out there. —Andrew Skogrand

Instructor’s comment: From the first day of class, it was clear to me that Andy was an original. Not only is he a fine student to begin with but he continued throughout the semester to fine-tune that fineness, often consulting my editorship in my office on his already well-written drafts. He was interested in style, diction, precision. And he spoke as eloquently as he wrote. In his investigation of an international issue, the fish industry, he turns a phrase with ingenuity and spark: “In both the heavy reports filed by scientists and the light catches brought in by fishermen, the truth has surfaced” and “Homer was right—too many kings do ruin an army.” Andy is never dull. This paper is evidence of that. I suspect he could write a treatise on refrigerators and make the paper hum. — Darrell g.h. Schramm, Rhetoric and Composition

WRW - 137 Andrew Skogrand e are the proficient, bargain-bound consumers of America. Our wages are well earned, and our money W well spent. After a hard day’s work we can retire to the warm atmosphere of Red Lobster and settle down to the appetizing “Crown of Shrimp” entrée. In keeping with the American way, this meal—fit for a king—comes at the low price of $7.99 (now through January 30th). We receive a dozen delectable bamboo- skewered shrimp, and we deserve it. But the deal doesn’t end at the dozen shrimp; no, we are thriftier than we thought! We pay not only for the twelve tantalizing shrimp we are served, but for every pound of shrimp we purchase, we also purchase ten pounds of assorted fish (McGinn 22). Although this fish is thrown back into the ocean, never actually making it to market because it’s dead when caught alongside our now tempura-battered shellfish, we maximized our return ten-fold! Our money funds the paving of the ocean floor, turning the painfully complex ecosystem of the marine depths into a convenient underwater “parking lot” (20). And yet, remarkably, the dollar goes even further. Our kingly cuisine pays for blockades in Gulf ports and waterways by shrimp boats, for fierce conflict between fishermen and Coast Guard personnel (Margavio and Forsyth 33). All this for fewer than ten dollars! Yes, America is amazing, and the dollar can do so much, much more than we knew—it’s practically a steal. Behind this innocuous act of purchasing seafood, there lurk countless consequences that remain unknown to and hidden from the average consumer. Most of the world still operates under the mindset of the 19th century professor William Carmichael M’Intosh, who stated that the “fauna of the open sea…[is] independent of man’s influence” (Marx ix). People look to the overwhelmingly large oceans and deduce that the marine resources that they contain must be equally vast and impressive. We eat tuna with much concern for the safety of dolphins, but we hardly think twice about the tuna. In other words, we view the dolphin as a rare and endangered animal, but tuna is seen as an infinite, inexhaustible resource. Despite popular opinion, seafood staples such as salmon and tuna are in precarious positions themselves. Currently, “11 of the world’s 15 most important fishing areas and 60 percent of the

WRW - 138 Making Waves: Finding Keys to Success in the Failures of the Fish Industry major fish species are in decline, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization” (McGinn 11). Similarly, the Pew Oceans Commission, a bipartisan group composed of politicians, scientists and activists, traveled the country during 2000 and found populations of “New England cod, haddock, and yellowtail flounder [have] reached historic lows. In U.S. waters, Atlantic halibut are commercially extinct—becoming too rare to justify…commercial fishing” (5). In a letter to the President, Retired Navy Admiral James D. Watkins, chairman to the government’s personal U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, warns America’s leader that “unsustainable exploitation of too many of our fishery resources” has put “our oceans and marine resources in serious trouble” (United States 5). In both the heavy reports filed by scientists, and the light catches brought in by fishermen, the truth has surfaced; America’s fisheries, along with global fisheries, face an eminent collapse.

Historic Pillaging Recent history provides the key to a better understanding of modern fishing practices and outlooks, as well as the current crisis. Marine researcher Peter Weber reports that during this century alone “marine catch rose more than 25-fold” (11). This substantial rise can be attributed to a great increase during the 1950s and ‘60s in fishing activities that was so large the trends of augmented catches exceeded world population growth. This is a crucial time period; from this experience an “entire generation of managers and politicians was led to believe that launching more boats would automatically lead to higher catches” (Pauly 10). These glory days were soon to expire. The effects of the enlarged fishing fleet began to manifest and by “the 1960s, the yields from major marine fisheries…were topping out and beginning to shrink” (Weber 11). The plight of the Peruvian anchovy, a species constituting one fifth of the world’s catch in 1970, quickly came to epitomize unstable fisheries when the annual catch fell from thirteen million tons to two million tons between 1970 and 1974 (McGinn 13). This bottoming out of a fishery sent shockwaves through the commercial fishing world and the need for change became clear. Sadly, the Peruvian harbinger resulted in no change in fishing

WRW - 139 Andrew Skogrand policies, but rather a change in fishing practices. The crisis only spurred the industry to consolidate and modernize its fleets, thus using technological advances to make up for losses in overexploited and diminishing fish stocks. Apparently, the historic catches of the Fifties and Sixties may have died out; however, the misinformed mid-century mindset that accompanied it had not. Nonetheless, fishing industries contended that these new tools would be coupled with “models of single-species fish populations…[that provided a] ‘maximum sustainable yield’” (Pauly 9). The supposed strategy was to use technology to bring in the most fish possible and—with the aid of these models—still leave enough fish for the stocks to rebound. Daniel Pauly, director of the Canadian Fisheries Centre, laments that these models were followed “only in theory” and that, even today, “fishing technologies… fail to account for ecosystem processes” (10-11). In short, to cope with increasing demand, fish equipment simply ate up everything in sight. Even today, fishermen keep what they want and casually discard the rest; unwanted fish and wildlife, or “bycatch,” are sent back into the ocean dead or dying. The equipment may be proficient at catching; however, it is far from efficient in catching its target. Although this may be a small difference in adjectives, the effect is enormous. Fishing equipment not only destroyed fish populations, but it began ravage the environment in which they lived. How proficient was fishing equipment? Researcher Anne Platt McGinn with the non-profit Worldwatch Institute, reports that when the orange roughy fish was “pitted against modern vessels, high-tech gear, and seemingly unlimited capital” the “catches of this species plummeted by 70 percent in just six years.” Similarly, the 1960 introduction of commercial trawlers in the Gulf of Thailand led to an 80 percent decrease in daily catches within two decades (14). The fewer fish there are in the ocean, the more adept the fishermen became at hunting down the remaining stocks, all for the sake of keeping their nets full. This futile effort is characteristic of fishermen during the past four decades. The fishing industry’s response to smaller catches has not been to allow populations to replenish, but rather to tighten its grip on fisheries by increasing productivity and further threatening the species.

WRW - 140 Making Waves: Finding Keys to Success in the Failures of the Fish Industry Modern Plundering The idea that “more boats equal more fish” proved disastrously untrue for the industry, but with an ocean full of trawlers, fishermen have to keep working and meeting quotas. Fishermen now utilize the ominous technique of descending the food chain in order to maintain their catches. The idea behind this practice, which the industry believes to be “good and unavoidable,” stems from a side-effect caused by severely limited populations of large fish, such as tuna or mackerel (10). The various fishes these predators used to eat are in greater abundance; the prey now assumes the predators’ position at the top of the food chain. Fishermen do not see this abundance as a cautionary indictor that the ecosystem’s scales have been dangerously tipped, but rather they view it as the next natural step in fishing. In short, the moment “top predators are fished out, we turn to their prey, for example shrimp in place of cod.” Unsurprisingly, this “good” technique has led to the “unavoidable” and gradual eradication of “large, long-lived fishes from the ecosystems of the world oceans” (10). We fished for the big fish, until they were too few. Then we began to fish for the smaller fish, whose fate will be no different. When their numbers dwindle, it stands to reason that we will descend again. We will descend the food chain to catch smaller fish just as we will descend the ladder of environmental ethics to fill our appetites. We will descend. After overfishing such species as tuna and mackerel, crippling their native populations, it hardly seems prudent to then exploit their source of food, once again hindering their chances of survival. Imagine the absurdity if hunters believed they could help endangered lions by turning their crosshairs toward shrinking populations of zebra. While the industry may feel it can relieve pressures on some species by moving down the food chain, temporarily shifting its focus to other smaller fish, realistically, we can only descend the food chain so far. Humanity’s tinkering with the marine ecosystem does not stop at the subverting of the food chain—an evolutionary and integral ocean process. Currently, in order to obtain the remaining commercially viable species, the industry utilizes “fish[ing] gear that drags along or digs into the seafloor, destroy[ing] habitat

WRW - 141 Andrew Skogrand needed by marine wildlife” (Pew 8). Researcher Paul K. Dayton of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography reports that due to trawling “thousands of square kilometers of benthic habitat and invertebrate species have been obliterated…massively [altering] many coastal marine communities” (821). Once again, these communities are offered little chance to rehabilitate. Most areas of the ocean are trawled, at the least, once a year—despite the fact that most of these systems need a minimum of five years to recover (Pew 8). In order to meet demand, fishermen have not only endangered certain species, but they have begun to threaten marine biodiversity and ecosystems, that, unlike fish, don’t “bounce back.” These are foreign, fragile systems that science knows little about, and while reconstructing the systems remains out of the question, other possible solutions to the crisis still exist.

Future Protections The first and most critical step in restoring our oceans lies in restoring the Federal programs that protect them; without a functioning agency, any policy changes made hereafter would fail to be enforced. Today’s system is plagued by an overabundance of laws and agencies that have little way of interacting. Currently there are 140 federal laws that concern the ocean and its coastlines. In turn, these laws are under the supervision of six departments in the federal government, and more than a dozen federal agencies (Pew 14). The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy reported the same bottleneck when noting “eleven of fifteen cabinet-level departments…play important roles in the development of ocean and coastal policy” (United States XXXVI). There is no central entity in charge of creating ocean policies, enforcing ocean policies or, most importantly, studying the effects of ocean policies. Homer was right—too many kings do ruin an army. The system is buckling under the force of its own weight. Policies in the past for fishermen and coastal industries have simply been indefinite and problematic. One fisherman noted his feelings towards the current ocean administrations when complaining, “The fishermen are going fucking crazy with all the rules and regulations. Could you tell me if it is okay to use fishtraps on tilefish right now or not? How are these guys supposed

WRW - 142 Making Waves: Finding Keys to Success in the Failures of the Fish Industry to know all that crap” (Helvarg 168). Without a clear mandate, fishermen will not respond. There remains a desperate need for a single and definitive authority in the fight for ocean health and fishing sustainability, and that authority needs to be NOAA. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, could merge with other appropriate ocean agencies to remove federal clutter. Consolidating the various agencies would ensure “improved communication and coordination [that] would greatly enhance the effectiveness of the nations ocean policy” (United States XXXVI). NOAA would become an agency that consults “the scientists and resource users who know the fish stocks and appreciate the…[ocean’s] complex ecosystem” (McGinn 69). It would operate as a natural resource program that would show concern for the economy in light of the environment. It then falls on the shoulders of Congress to assign NOAA the great tasks it is to undertake and enforce. Congress would pass a new ocean policy act that would lay down clear and concise rules on how fisheries must be managed. Although this new policy would entail hundreds of regulations—as any act of Congress does—a select few would act as keystones. These vanguard policies include regulation of fishing gear, ecosystem based planning, individual transferable quotas, and bycatch reduction and monitoring. The regulation of fishing gear will help severely damaged areas, prohibiting the practice of trawling by indiscriminate equipment. In order to protect marine ecosystems, NOAA would allow only approved fishing gear to be used in various zones. Currently, fishermen “are not required to prove that their actions cause [any] damage” and it is up to society “to prove actual or serious impact” has occurred (Dayton 822). Under new administration, the burden of proof will be reversed, and it will be the task of the fishermen, not the society, to prove with “scientific information…[that] these activities can be conducted without altering or destroying a significant amount of habitat” (Pew 24). Once this has been accomplished, fishermen would be free to trawl. The time has come to take precautionary measures when dealing with fish stocks; practices are to be considered harmful until proven safe.

WRW - 143 Andrew Skogrand Just as gear restrictions would ensure the protection of marine habitats, ecosystem-based planning would keep marine reserves viable. Ecosystem planning would change the way fish stocks are assessed, and thus, how many fish can be caught. Fish industries would begin to take into account the many, many factors that determine fish population, such as “age at capture, the availability of nursery or spawning areas, and the availability of critical habitat on migration routes” (Alden 27). Due to the interrelated nature of marine habitats, the industry must look at the health of the entire ecosystem, not simply the populations of targeted fish. Ecosystem planning may result in small losses for fishermen initially, but due to science’s extensive scope, the health of fisheries and fishermen will be protected in the long run. Once fishing limits are calculated environmentally, fishermen will be given individual transferable quotas, or ITQs. Weber describes an ITQ system that would give each boat owner “a share in the annual catch, and quota holders could buy, sell, or lease them like property” (35). The effect would be two-fold; first, fishing would become a closed system. Closing the market relieves pressure on fisheries and competing fishermen by limiting the entry of new boats. Second, ITQs would act as an immediate response system. The system would give fishermen a stake in the fisheries and encourage them to “go to greater lengths to protect the total stock, and thereby enjoy greater individual returns” (McGinn 63). In other words, the quota for each fisherman is based on total fish populations; more fish in the fishery means more fish for each fisherman. Phenomenal. Financially, it becomes advantageous for the fishermen to fish responsibly. In the past, fishermen rarely considered the long-term effects of overfishing. The ITQ system, however, would provide fishermen with immediate feedback through quota fluctuations. Many skeptics of the ITQ system complain that quotas encourage fishermen to discard inexpensive fish, filling their boats only with high-priced species to maximize profits. The now dead and unwanted fish is wastefully thrown back into the ocean. Bycatch reduction and monitoring would be a countermeasure against such unhealthy practices. Under the new system, it would be illegal to “discard and waste one species because [fishermen]

WRW - 144 Making Waves: Finding Keys to Success in the Failures of the Fish Industry are in a target fishery for another” (Pew 25). If the true cost remains the lives of millions of fish, then all caught fish must be brought in. If a fisherman catches it, it’s part of his quota. Bycatch measures also must be taken in the case where the caught item isn’t marketable, for instance sea turtles. NOAA would create mandatory program for the use of TEDs, or turtle exclusion devices. These devices allow turtles and other unwanted organisms to escape nets via a release device. Not only do TEDs “exclude 97 percent of the turtles,” but also they save on “fuel costs through drag reduction—the less bycatch, the less drag” (Margavio and Forsyth 5-6). Adoption in the past of such a program has been slow, but NOAA would provide training and technical assistance to fishermen when needed. The program would emerge gradually. The program’s first year would be optional and fishermen who volunteer to participate during this time would receive the TED device at no charge. Especially in matters of equipment, fishermen must feel that they are actively participating in the ocean’s rehabili- tation and not unwillingly contributing to their own destruction. NOAA would not only change the way that fish managers think, but it would also change the mindset of the public. A con- sumer campaign composed of “publishing cards, lists and bro- chures on what seafood to eat and what to avoid” (Sklandany and Vandergeest 24) would inform consumers as to what fish should be purchased. Moreover, NOAA would implement a certification system to mark which fish have come from responsibly managed fisheries, so consumers can easily identify environmentally sound choices. History has shown that a better-informed consumer will purchase the responsible product, as noted in similar successful campaigns such as “sustainable timber, dolphin-friendly tuna, organic food and fair-trade coffee” (24). The sad truth remains that until consumer demand fades, cooks like Michelle from New York will continue to purchase endangered fish as long as people want it. In her words, “Until we can’t get it… I will continue to buy it” (“Still Serving” par.8). If demand is undercut for forbidden fish, however, the industry will have little reason to evade NOAA regulations. For a solution to become effective, we must not only look at how fishermen exploit natural resources, but also why they do. The fish industry is simply folding under consumer pressure,

WRW - 145 Andrew Skogrand and the system can reach equilibrium only by educating the public on what the right choices are.

Paying for Progress While certainly not expensive endeavors, the large reorganiza- tion of NOAA and the creation of many new ocean initiatives will not be free of cost. Two sources of income would provide ample resources for the new ocean policies and, notably, neither source would cause increased tax pressure on the public. The U.S. Com- mission on Ocean Policy readily identifies the first fiscal source as the “outer Continental Shelf oil and gas revenues that are not already committed to” other various marine initiatives. This trans- lates into approximately four billion dollars in unclaimed revenues annually (United States LIV). Each year, this sum would be wisely placed in an ocean trust fund. The second source of money would, again, be a redirection of already existing assets. The United States takes part in a global trend of paying out large subsidies to the fishing industry. Interna- tionally, these figures were estimated to be $14 to $20 billion dollars in 1995. Currently, these funds encourage fishermen to continually operate at a loss and “[participate] in the downfall of their own industry” (McGinn 32). Why continue to pay for fisher- men to operate unsuccessfully if there remains little hope of such subsidies reinvigorating the moribund industry? New subsidies will come under the control of NOAA; they will not encourage unsuccessful fishermen to stay in the business, but, rather, they will pay for education and training for fishermen to find new jobs in other, more open markets. Subsidies, as they were intended to do, will pay for brighter futures.

The Power of Possibility The time has come to face realities. The fate of the fishermen and the health of the ocean are inextricably linked. Eventually overexploited fish stocks will bottom out and, ironically, it will be the fishermen headed for certain extinction. The plight of overfishing does not simply concern marine health, but the health of the fishermen and the health of the economy. Therefore, the

WRW - 146 Making Waves: Finding Keys to Success in the Failures of the Fish Industry ocean must be treated as an investment—one that must be allowed to mature wisely; it is not a bottomless honey pot in which we can endlessly dip our hands. Although current trends are bleak, the future remains full of possibility; restructuring the system may initially upset the fishing industry, yet “300,00 related fishing jobs could be gained from better management and protection of fish stocks” (McGinn 33). Fishermen of the near future stand to increase their catch by twenty-five percent—or twenty million tons—if they simply allowed fisheries to rebuild (Weber 8). The scientists, the economists, and even the politicians have unanimously sounded a clarion call for reformation. Let us not wait until the time has passed to respond. If we fail to heed the warning, if we are slow to act, then our pockets may be full and our stomachs may be satisfied, but our oceans, our hopes and even our futures, will be empty.

Works Cited

Alden, Robin. “A Troubled Transition for Fisheries.” Environment 41 (May. 1999): 25-8.

Dayton, Paul K. “Reversal of the Burden of Proof in Fisheries Management.” Science 279 (Feb 1998): 821-2.

Helvarg, David. Blue Frontier: Saving America’s Living Seas. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 2001.

Margavio, Anthony V. and Craig J. Forsyth. Caught in the Net. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1996.

Marx, Wesly. The Oceans: Our Last Resource. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1981.

McGinn, Anne Platt. Rocking the Boat: Conserving Fisheries and Protecting Jobs. Worldwatch Institute. Paper 142. Washington D.C.: Worldwatch Institute, 1998.

Pauly, Daniel. “Empty Nets.” Alternatives Journal 30 (Spring 2004): 8-13.

WRW - 147 Andrew Skogrand

Pew Oceans Commission. 2003. America’s Living Oceans: Charting a Course for Sea Change. Summary Report. May 2003. Pew Oceans Commission, Arlington, Virginia.

Skladany, Mike and Peter Vandergeest. “Catch of the Day.” Alternatives Journal 30 (Spring 2004): 24-26.

“Still Serving Chilean Sea Bass.” Day to Day. National Public Radio. 29 Aug 2003. 17 Nov 2004 < http://www.npr.org/templates/story/ story.php?storyId=1415475 >.

United States. U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy. An Ocean Policy for the 21st Century. Sept. 2004. 14 Nov 2004. < http://www.oceancommission.gov/ documents/prepub_report/pre_pub_fin_report.pdf>.

Weber, Peter. Net Loss: Fish, Jobs, and the Marine Environment. Worldwatch Institute. Paper 120. Washington D.C.: Worldwatch Institute, 1994.

WRW - 148 Evaluation Memo

Karin Conrad

Writer’s comment: When Professor Squitieri first assigned the evaluation memo, he recommended that we choose a topic that is interesting and meaningful. I racked my brain for days trying to figure out the perfect topic, rejecting one idea after the other. While volunteering at St. Mary’s Hospital, I was discussing the project with a nurse, and she gave me the idea of researching accidental needle injuries. As a nursing student and daughter of a nurse, I couldn’t have imagined a topic more relevant to my life. After researching needle injuries and different safety devices, I was shocked to discover that hospitals have had access to retractable needles for more than a decade (these would essentially prevent accidental needlesticks) and most are simply unwilling to spend the extra cents to pay for them. My disappointment and concern are reflected in my recommendation, and I’m pleased to raise awareness about the substandard safety requirements in hospitals. —Karin Conrad Instructor’s comment: Karin wrote her evaluation memo for a special topics section of Written Communication 220 that challenges students to craft real-world, pre-professional documents rather than write the conventional school essay. A glance at Karin’s thoughtfully designed organizational chart and audience analysis (included here as appendices to her memo) reveals that she has transcended the prevalent “student-writing-for-teacher-for- a-grade” mindset and succeeded in designing a document that targets the carefully differentiated needs of a complex multiple audience consisting of executives, experts, technicians and lay readers. Karin’s accomplishment is all the more impressive when one realizes that she designed this document in the context of a university writing program that stresses academic writing and rhetoric rather than emphasizing business, technical or pre- professional writing. —Victor Squitieri, Rhetoric and Composition WRW - 149 Karin Conrad † St. Mary’s Medical Center Memorandum

TO: Anthony J. Soprano, Director of Infection Control and Employee Health

FROM: Karin Conrad, Supervisor of Infection Control

DATE: 30 November 2004

SUBJECT: Recommendation to Implement Use of the VanishPoint® Retractable Needle in the Operating Room and Emergency Room to Prevent Accidental Needle Injuries

DISTRIBUTION: Ken Steele, Hospital President Michelle Angeles, Head of Surgery Dana Sue Nelson, Head of Emergency Room/Cast Room Suzanne Naito, Director of Hospitalist Program Tae Abate, Director of Finance

In response to your memo of 02 November 2004, I have carefully evaluated two different syringes based on their safety devices and recommend that we implement the VanishPoint® Retractable Syringe in the Emergency Room (ER) and Operating Room (OR). This memo covers the dangers and prevention of accidental needle injuries, evaluates the recommended syringe in relation to the BD SafetyGlide™ Hypodermic Needle and includes a cost analysis of implementing my recommendation.

WRW - 150 Evaluation Memo Consequences and Prevention of Accidental Needle Injuries in Hospitals Accidental needle injuries (ANIs) negatively affect the staff and the hospital.

Occurrence and Repercussions of Accidental Needle Injuries on Hospital Staff This year alone workers in our hospital sustained twenty-one reported needle injuries. Nurses suffered the most ANIs, then doctors, and finally environmental services technicians (non-users of needles). Most of these injuries occurred in the ER and OR [1]. Such accidents pose a serious threat of transmitting blood-borne pathogens like hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV to the victim. In fact, an estimated one thousand healthcare workers contract serious infections annually [2]. Even if a needlestick victim does not contract a disease, needlesticks cost time (extensive testing must be done) and emotional anguish (results can take months to get back).

Repercussions of Accidental Needle Injuries on the Hospital Hospitals suffer many losses when an ANI occurs. Extensive testing for diseases must be done for both the victim of the needlestick and the patient who used the needle first. This testing reportedly costs between $2,200 and $3,800 per accident [3]. Worse still, if the victim does catch a disease, the hospital must cover the cost of treatment. Hepatitis C costs about $1,700 per month to treat, a possible liver transplant costs $500,000, and HIV treatments cost up to $6,000 per month [2]. Diseases spread by ANIs cost the hospital not only money but also manpower. Nurses sustain the most ANIs, but there is a huge nursing shortage. Losing nurses to needlestick injuries makes the hospital understaffed, drags down the quality of care, and creates an even higher demand for nurses and more competitive wages; all of these factors help inflate the hospital’s operating expenses.

Prevention of Accidental Needle Injuries in the Hospital Accidental needlesticks and the costs they incur are preventable. Safety syringes such as the VanishPoint® retractable syringe and the BD SafetyGlide™ hypodermic needle are available. These

WRW - 151 Karin Conrad devices work to protect nurses and other staff from accidental needle injuries and infectious disease.

Evaluation of VanishPoint® and SafetyGlide™ Syringes The evaluation includes the criteria used to judge the safety devices and the actual comparison of the two.

Criteria Used to Evaluate the Safety Syringes I used six criteria in comparing the two safety needle options to determine which best suits the needs of St. Mary’s Medical Center. 1. Active vs. Passive 4. Training Requirement

2. Protection Against ANI 5. Time to Activate

3. Ease of Use/One-handed 6. Cost

Comparison of SafetyGlide™ Hypodermic Needle and VanishPoint® Retractable Needle 1. These syringes represent two different types of safety devices: active and passive [4]. The SafetyGlide™ hypodermic needle is active because it requires the healthcare worker to activate a safety device once the needle has been used. During use, the VanishPoint® retractable syringe triggers the safety device automatically, classifying it as passive. Figures 1.a and 1.b show how the safety mechanisms are deployed.

WRW - 152 Evaluation Memo

Figure 1.a [5] Figure 1.b [6] SafetyGlide™ Hypodermic Needle VanishPoint® Retractable Needle

2. The VanishPoint® syringe is 100% effective at protecting workers from accidental needle injuries [5]. ANIs most typically occur when the user does not trigger the safety mechanism and/or tries to recap the needle [1]. The VanishPoint® prevents both of these incidents from happening since the needle is retracted while still inside the patient.

3. The SafetyGlide™ syringe is 90% more effective at preventing ANIs than the syringe currently in use because the SafetyGlide’s safety device is easier to use. However, there is still the risk of an ANI because the user must remember to activate the mechanism. Failure to activate the safety mechanism is one of the leading causes of ANIs.

4. Both syringes require only one hand to use, and there is virtually little change in technique from the old syringes to the new [5; 6]. One-handed use is important because the user should always keep both hands behind the needle to prevent an ANI. It is also vital that the technique for using the syringe remains approximately the same because learning a new technique takes away a nurse’s or doctor’s valuable time.

5. Since the techniques for use remain about the same, there is little training requirement for either syringe. This factor saves the hospital money and time.

WRW - 153 Karin Conrad 6. Sliding the sheath over the needle instead of just keeping the finger on the plunger (this action retracts the needle) is more involved. Thus, the SafetyGlide™ syringe requires a few more seconds to activate than the VanishPoint® retractable needle.

7. A 3cc VanishPoint® retractable needle costs $0.50 [7]. A 3cc SafetyGlide™ hypodermic needle costs $0.35. The initial expenditures for safer syringes will be higher than current spending. However, over time costs will become lower than current costs as the expenses caused by accidental needle injuries diminish. Tables 1.a and 1.b illustrate comparative syringe costs with and without ANIs.

Table 1.a Table 1.b

Cost of Syringes Real Costs of Syringes and (In dollars) ANIs (In dollars)

Current 14000 Cos ts of 10000 12000 Syringes an d 8000 10000 ANIs (appr ox. Curre nt 6000 8000 5/Qtr) Syringe Cos ts SafetyGlide 6000 SafetyGlide 4000 Cos ts 4000 co sts of 2000 2000 Syringes an d VanishPoint ANIs (appr ox. 0 co sts 0 1s t 2nd 3rd 4th .5/Qtr) 1st 2nd 3rd 4th Qt r Qt r Qt r Qt r Qtr Qtr Qt r Qt r VanishPoint of Syringes

As you can see in the tables, once the ANIs are calculated safer syringes are the best option, and there is only a minor difference in cost between the SafetyGlide™ syringe and VanishPoint® syringe.

Recommendation to Implement VanishPoint® Retractable Needles in OR and ER After carefully considering the strengths and weaknesses of these two devices, I strongly recommend the VanishPoint® retractable

WRW - 154 Evaluation Memo needle to be used in the Emergency Room and Operating Room. The VanishPoint® retractable needle will initially cost more than the SafetyGlide™ needle, but what makes the VanishPoint® syringe far superior to the SafetyGlide™ is an impressive array of compensatory factors. First, time is extremely valuable in the hospital and the extra seconds that the SafetyGlide™ sheath takes to deploy add up quickly throughout the day; thus, the VanishPoint® will save time. Moreover, the VanishPoint® safety mechanism is passive and 100% effective, meaning that our hospital staff will no longer be subject to ANIs due to human error or carelessness. Nurses, doctors, and environmental staff will be able to work better and more effectively because they won’t be afraid of being accidentally stuck. They won’t have to go through months of turmoil waiting for potentially devastating test results. The VanishPoint® syringe costs $0.15 more than its competitor, but it guarantees saved lives; no one in these departments will be at risk for contracting HIV or Hepatitis C. The extra monetary costs truly do not outweigh the costs paid by victims of ANIs, so we should do our best to protect our priceless employees by using the VanishPoint® retractable needle.

I would like to address any questions you may have and further discuss this recommendation with you within the next few days.

KEC/rwa

WRW - 155 Karin Conrad REFERENCES

[1] J. Dimech, “Bloodborne pathogens baseline profile of sharps injuries,” San Francisco, CA, St. Mary’s Medical Center, 2004.

[2] American Nurses Association. (1999). Nursing Facts. Retrieved November 11, 2004, from .

[3] Safe Needles are money in the bank. (1999, May). Nursing Manage- ment, 30, 12. Retrieved from Proquest database.

[4] K. Rosenthal and P. Shelton, “Sharp’s injury prevention: select a safer needle,” Nursing Management, vol. 30, pp. 28-29, June 2004.

[5] Syringe use and application. (2004). Retrieved November 12, 2004, from .

[6] Step-by-step safety. (2004). Retrieved November 29, 2004, from .

[7] Cost analysis. (2004). Retrieved November 12, 2004, from .

WRW - 156 Evaluation Memo

Appendix A

Surgery

Michelle Angeles

Debbie Gee, RN

Control

VP Surgical Services Surgical VP

Karin Conrad

Supervisor Infection

Infection Control

Anthony J. Soprano

Cheryl Bowers

VP Nursing/Patient Care

Dana Nelson

ER/Cast Room

†

Hospital

Ken Steel

December 2004

Organizational Chart Organizational

e Abate

St. Mary’s Medical Center St. Mary’s

Finance

Ta

Dennis Morris

Chief Financial Officer

Accounting

Shirley Locke

Education

Mark Sockell

Program

Director Medical

Hospitalist

Susan Naito

WRW - 157 Karin Conrad Appendix B Audience Analysis Primary Audience HOSPITAL PRESIDENT - KEN STEELE

Use of Report:To accept or deny my recommendation for the departments involved by weighing the costs.

Information Needed: 1.How will my recommendation benefit the foundation and safety of workers?

2. How much will implementing my recom mendation cost overall?

3. Will my recommendation really solve the problem?

4. Is the problem vital enough to require a change?

Secondary Audience MICHELLE ANGELES - SURGERY

Use of Report:To decide if my recommendation will be appropriate for this ward and assess how the change would affect the staff.

Information Needed: 1. What am I evaluating and why is this necessary?

2. How will the new devices benefit this department and help solve the problem?

3. Will the new devices affect the efficiency and performance of the staff?

WRW - 158 Evaluation Memo DANA NELSON - ER/CAST ROOM Use of Report:To decide if my recommendation will be appropriate and assess how the change would affect the staff.

Information Needed: 1. What am I evaluating and why is this necessary?

2. How will the new devices benefit this department and help solve the problem?

3. Will the new devices affect the efficiency and performance of the staff?

SUSAN NAITO - HOSPITALIST PROGRAM Use of Report:To decide if training is necessary with the imple mentation of the new device and if so, design a training program.

Information Needed: 1. What device am I recommending and for which departments?

2. Does the device require a different technique for use than the old device?

3. Is disposal of the device different?

TAE ABATE - FINANCE Use of Report: To decide if the extra cost of the device is affordable and necessary.

Information Needed: 1. How much more does the device cost than the old devices?

2. What extra costs might be involved i.e. training?

WRW - 159 Karin Conrad 3. Could the change of devices actually save money?

Immediate Audience ANTHONY J. SOPRANO - DIRECTOR OF INFECTION CONTROL

Use of Report:To decide if my recommendation is acceptable and worth passing on.

Information Needed: 1. Is my evaluation comprehensive showing the pros and cons of both devices?

2. Will the implementation of the new devices be possible and effective?

WRW - 160 Single Mothers in Malaysia: The Interlocking Systems of Domination

Puspa Melati Wan

Writer’s comment: For my Race, Class, and Gender course, I was asked to write an open topic research paper and to discuss the topic using the sociological framework designed by Patricia Hill Collins in “The Matrix of Domination.” Since I have observed single mothers support group sessions in Malaysia and hope to work with them in the near future, I found it useful to start analyzing this issue through a sociological lens, as well as to relate theory to personal experiences. In addition, I was determined to write about the Malaysian population when I realized that research on developing countries is minimal. Hence, I chose to write about Muslim single mothers in Malaysia to provide a different view on problems they face and to remind readers that culture is an important factor that should be included in any given analysis. — Puspa Melati Wan

Instructor’s comment: In this upper-division sociology class, the students write a research paper on a topic of their own choosing related to race, class, gender, and/or sexuality. As part of the requirements, students develop a research question related to one or more of those systems of inequality, conduct secondary research by reviewing what other scholars have found, and provide a sociological analysis by applying what Black feminist scholars have called intersectional theory. This theory attempts to understand how people’s lives are shaped by systems of inequality based on race, class, and gender. Melati provides an outstanding critical analysis of the various forms of oppression faced by these women. She advances previous scholarship by arguing that religion should also be taken into account when examining how systems of oppression operate. Melati concludes by offering insightful strategies of resistance, or ways to challenge inequality and advance the cause of social justice. — Nikki Raeburn, Department of Sociology

WRW - 161 Puspa Melati Wan

Introduction

ingle mothers in Malaysia, as in other societies, are divided into those whose spouses have deceased and those who are Sdivorced. Unmarried mothers are a relatively rare occurrence because of the strong social taboo against it. I will focus on the predicament of the mothers who are divorced, in particular the Muslim women, because of the special characteristics of the Islamic legal system to which they are subjected. Having some personal experiences participating in and observing support groups for single mothers in Malaysia, I would like to relate a particular sociological theory or perspective expounded by Patricia Hill Collins (2000) on the “matrix of domination” to help understand the phenomenon of social oppression faced by many single mothers in society. As a component of a larger Black feminist framework, this intersectional theory suggests that there are various axes of oppression, such as race, class, gender, and sexuality, which constitute interlocking systems of oppression, and the matrix of domination refers to how these intersecting oppressions are organized and maintained. Based on this theory, I will analyze how Muslim single mothers’ oppression is being systematically organized to support the patriarchal system in Malaysia. This understanding is important since the matrix of domination affects not only the single mothers but also their children’s development. The fact that single mothers form an economically disadvantaged social category is widely recognized due to the lower earning power of women generally in society. Their predicament is somewhat worsened when certain religious values, attitudes and practices are used by some to deny them their rights to social justice. Religion can be used or abused as an additional axis of social oppression in addition to the existing interlocking system of oppression based on the social criteria of race, class, and gender. Since there are limited academic and scholarly works on the phenomenon of single mothers in Malaysia, as well as in most of the other Muslim countries, this paper will try to present some preliminary impressions on the topic based on some first hand experiences as well as some secondary sources.

WRW - 162 Single Mothers in Malaysia Literature Review, Relation to Assigned Readings and Class Discussion, and Intersectional Analysis of the Domain of Power

Based on some previous studies, the common problems usually highlighted by scholars on the topic of single mothers in the United States are the impact of being a single parent on one’s psychological state, employment status, and income level; the role of the social welfare system in helping mothers to cope; and the impact of single-parenting on child development. For instance, Aurora P. Jackson (2003) conducted a study to see the relationship between African-American single mothers’ family resources, depressive symptoms, and neighborhood environments, and their impact on the development the children involved in these families. This study reveals that the problems faced by the children, such as their behavior problems, their broad reading, and mathematical skills are positively correlated with their mothers’ depressive symptoms and socio-economic status as all as other related factors. Another study by Simons, Beaman, Conger, Rand, and Chao (1993) also shows that single mothers are more likely than married women to experience psychological problems resulting in ineffectual parenting practices. Studies that focus on single mothers and welfare systems show that women who are welfare recipients (especially short-term recipients) face depression and hopelessness (Petterson & Friel, 2001). Another study documents the change of single mothers’ method of parenting as they shift from welfare dependency to combining welfare and work. This study carried out by Duniforn, Kalil, and Danziger (2003) concludes that this shift relates to a more positive method of parenting and less harsh punishment by mothers, which reduces children’s behavioral problems. Albelda and Tilly (1996), in another study, also discuss the issue of the welfare of single mothers. After examining the role of the financial support provided by the State welfare system which is supposed to help the single mothers, they come to the conclusion that the welfare system actually imposes certain difficulties on the lives of many of the single mothers. Generally, these studies tends to fail to discuss the interplay between the different “axes of oppression” faced by single mothers, failing to include and take

WRW - 163 Puspa Melati Wan into account the cultural and religious variables in their studies. Since Muslim single mothers’ problems in Muslim countries extend beyond all these issues, intersectional analysis of the matrix of domination is indeed essential. As indicated above, there are no scholarly studies in journals specifically on problems faced by single mothers in Malaysia. However, the facts presented in official Malaysian government bulletins, the proceedings of a conference of experts on the Syariah Court or Islamic Court, together with some training modules written by sociologists and legal experts in Malaysia tends to show the underlying, often implicit and unintentional interlocking systems of social oppression. Based on a Black feminist theory or perspective, this paper will discuss the predicament faced by many single mothers in Malaysia and will analyze how a form of social oppression is maintained within the four domains of power, namely that of the structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal (Collins, 2000).

Structural Domain of Power The structural domain of power, according to Collins (2000), refers to “how social institutions are organized to reproduce…subordination overtime” (p. 277). This macro-level perspective includes how the schools, families, media, state, courts, and so forth are designed and organized to maintain inequality. The population of Malaysia can be generally placed into Muslim and non-Muslim categories regarding legal matters. The Muslims are also ethnically Malay, considered as the “sons of the soil” or the original inhabitants of the land, with their own culture and language. The non-Muslims are predominantly locally born Chinese and Indians, descendents of the immigrants from China and India several generations ago. In the case of Malaysia, a dualistic legal system or structure exists, where the Muslims, when it comes to family and some other civil and criminal matters, are placed under a Syariah court system while non-Muslims are judged under a western-based civil court system. This means that Malaysian Muslim men and women have to go negotiate through an Islamic court when dealing with divorces while those of the other religions and races in Malaysia are judged under a different

WRW - 164 Single Mothers in Malaysia civil court system. As noted in an article by Hanifah (2002), a legally trained social activist, Muslim women need to go through a lengthy and often baffling legal hassle in order to apply for divorce, gain custody over their children, and claim their spousal and child support from the Syariah court. In contrast, the process that Muslim men need to undergo in order to obtain divorce is far simpler and quicker. This is because, according to Islam, men have the power to divorce their wives without the need to present their cases in court, although in Malaysia they will pay a small fine if they do so without the presence of a court official as a witness. The reason for this gender difference, as rationalized by some, is that women are believed to be more emotional and impulsive, prone to let emotions overrule their decisions, and for that reason should not be given the power to divorce their husbands with the same ease as their men. Clearly in this case, not only is the law differently structured and applied according to one’s racial and religious category, but it is also differently structured for men and women based on this hegemonic ideology. Islam provides Muslim women the rights to apply for divorce through an intermediary, which in the present-day society, is in the form of the Syariah court system. The Prophet Mohammad generally was sympathetic to suffering women who sought divorce. Based on the practices of the Prophet, Muslim women are given the right to ask for divorce either by paying the spouse a reasonable fine (khuluk) or by producing evidence to prove that the marriage is no longer tenable (fasakh). In Malaysia, an additional means for Muslim women to gain divorce, in fact perhaps the most important, is by proving that the spouse has contravened the terms of their written marriage contract ( taklik ) , a practice that is not even acknowledged in many Muslim countries. This means that in theory the legal system or structure based on Islamic principles does not deny Muslim women their rights to escape from a bad marriage. However, in practice, inherent gender biases within the society result in the inability for many women to claim and gain access to their rights, which are guaranteed by their religion. There are many obstacles which can be seen as contributing to the social oppression of many Muslim women in Malaysia. To

WRW - 165 Puspa Melati Wan begin with, there is no intergrated Syariah legal system in the country. The fourteen states in Malaysia have instituted their own Syariah legal system with their own separate and often different enactments to guide the decisions of the courts (Hanifah, 2002). This means that when one crosses a state boundary, which is an easy thing to do in a relatively small country like Malaysia, one enters a different area of legal jurisdiction. For instance, a single mother who obtains a court decision, such as for child support to be deducted from the father’s monthly pay, in one state is unable to have it enforced should the spouse change his address or workplace to a neighboring state. No action can be taken against the employer or the ex-husband for non-payment because of the different areas of jurisdiction (Hanifah, 2002). As an example, after the Syariah court in one state decided that a single mother would get the custody of her child, her ex-husband could take the child to a neighboring state and make a fresh application for his child’s custody in that state (Hanifah, 2000). Therefore, the different court systems and laws produce different forms of oppression for Muslim women. Another important weakness of the system is that the Syariah system does not have a clear link with the police as an enforcement tool for the court. This means that, unlike the civil court system, the decisions of the Syariah court system are not always enforced or enforceable by the police. Malaysia, like the United States, is a federation by constitution. Since the police force is instituted under the Federal government and is not directly responsible to the Syariah courts which are created by the State governments, police officers are not responsible for implementing the Syariah court rulings as they are required to be vis-à-vis the civil courts. Moreover, the police tend to see family matters, such as family squabbles and “divorces,” as trivial matter when compared to other more serious “real crime” (Hanifah, 2000). As expected, a common problem faced by single mothers is the problem of financial support. In terms of the ideas outlined by Randy Albelda and Chris Tilly (1996) single mothers in Malaysia face a “triple whammy” (p. 369). This “triple whammy” refers to the low-paid jobs that single mothers have to bear, the double-shift

WRW - 166 Single Mothers in Malaysia work they have to do both in the private (unpaid) and public spheres, and management of all these alone without help from another adult. In addition, according to Wan Halim (1990), a clinical sociologist in Malaysia, this financial problem is even more severe for single mothers who were unemployed prior to being divorced. The idea that a good Muslim mother and wife stays at home and serves her husband and children by doing domestic work, rather than leaving her home to earn an income, means that divorce for those who adhere to this social and religious norm is financial disaster. The situation is even worse for those with low educational achievement, who upon divorce find themselves unemployed or working in low-paying jobs. They have to struggle in order to re-enter public life and try to be economically self-sufficient and independent women. Those who possess some basic cooking or sewing skills and who earned some income while being confined at home during their marriage may at least know how to earn an income. However, this small income is usually insufficient to support an entire family after divorce. Muslim women are expected to place their trusts in their husbands since a wife who obeys her husband is supposedly assured of a special place in heaven in the hereafter. There are also cases where a single mother had made the serious mistake of placing all her property in her ex-spouse’s name in the name of “trust” only to face difficulties in trying to regain it through the Syariah court system upon divorce (Wan, 1991).

Disciplinary Domain of Power

Besides looking at the structures or institutions that organize oppression, Collins (2000) argues that it is also important to analyze how specific bureaucratic organizations oppress people by the way the latter are treated and placed under surveillance. Collins terms this the disciplinary domain of power. In the case of single mothers in Malaysia, the way the Syariah court generally treats women can be considered as maintaining male privilege while neglecting or “oppressing” the rights of Muslim women. Women are made to feel that they are not as important as men in the court by the way they are treated. Among the frequent complaints by the

WRW - 167 Puspa Melati Wan single mothers is that the long court process, which can take up to more than ten years in many cases, is a form of social injustice for them. This is because the need to formally obtain a divorce, custody of their children, and obtain child support, if delayed, is a serious form of “oppression” (Hanifah, 2002). Delaying tactics committed by the male spouses, such as by non-attendance in court for a hearing, are very rarely punished by the court. Similarly, husbands who do not turn up for the counseling sessions (there are three mandatory counseling sessions for the couple before filing for divorce) go unreprimanded. Postponement of court hearings because of the failure of husbands to appear in court is a common occurrence. Any delay is a source of financial loss and psychological anguish for the women who expect justice from the court. These single mothers will take off from work in order to appear in court. They also have to bear transportation costs (especially if they live in a rural area with poor transportation services), having to find someone to look after their children, only to have their cases postponed simply because their spouses or ex- spouses decide to delay the process by not appearing in court (Wan, 1990). Even the counseling sessions by the Syariah courts are considered as oppressive by many women because of the tendency for the so-called counselors to advise women to return to their husbands, forgive them, and basically endure the misery in this life in return for a rewarding life in the afterworld. They are also not informed of the options that they can take against their husbands for non-attendance in the counseling and court hearing sessions (Maznah, 1999). The single mothers have three options in terms of the representation of their cases in court. They can present their own cases in court in order to avoid expensive legal fees. Although single mothers have the right to present their own cases in court, the judge often insists that they engage a lawyer. The single mothers are not encouraged to represent themselves because some judges assume that these women are not familiar with the court terms and procedures. In extreme cases, the judges even shouted at the single mothers who did not have lawyers because the judges believed this would prolong and slow the hearing process (Hanifah, 2000). In a culture where women are discouraged from

WRW - 168 Single Mothers in Malaysia being outspoken and assertive, many single mothers would rather rely on lawyers. Alternatively, the single mothers can engage the services of a private lawyer. However, being financially weak, it is unlikely that they can get good legal advice and advocacy equal to those of their spouses who are more likely to be financially better off. Even if they can afford to do so, they often find themselves at the mercy of the less scrupulous Syariah lawyers. This is because these lawyers, unlike those in the civil court system, are free to set their own fees. For instance, one single mother had to pay up to RM100, 000 (about US$26,316.00) for a single case. So that leaves these women to turn to the cheaper lawyer services provided by the government’s Legal Aid Bureau. As one would expect, many of these lawyers are not motivated to take these cases seriously and with a sense of urgency. Since they are functioning in a religious court, they tend to consider divorce as a “sin,” although this “sin” tends to apply to women who seek divorce and not the men who easily and irresponsibly divorce their wives and abandon their children. Moreover, because the lawyers earn a fixed salary, they are not particularly motivated to undertake or expediate the case (Wan, 1990). There were also cases where lawyers decided not to turn up for court sessions, did not represent the cases accurately, and even advised that these single mothers to return to their husbands (Maznah, 1999). In a particular case, a single mother reported that her lawyer was actually fast asleep and snoring while her case was being heard (Hanifah, 2000). Clearly to many of the single mothers seeking social justice, the inefficiently run Syariah court system in many states constitutes a form of “oppression” in the form of the disciplinary domain of power, as described by Collins (2000) Some experts try to offer excuses as to why the Syariah court system is not functioning as well as it should. The civil court system is said to be more established because of its long history beginning in the period of the British colonization of the then British Malaya. The experts claimed that the Syariah court’s establishment was neglected during the colonial period, thus accounting for its present imperfect functioning (Maznah, 1999). However, the main issue is not so much why the court system does

WRW - 169 Puspa Melati Wan not function well. The main question is why is it particularly oppressive towards the women while the men seem to be able to get away with serious disregard for the authority of the court?

Hegemonic Domain of Power

The larger Malay society plays a role in the hegemonic domain of power. The Malay society, as in most other simpler and non-industrialized societies, often harbors prejudice against single mothers, especially if they are young and attractive (Wan, 1990). This negative stereotype is held not only by male members, but also by other females who do not seem to empathize with their plight. Unlike the stereotype of single mothers in the U.S. in terms of welfare-dependency, laziness, fertility, and their unwed status (Albelda & Tilly, 1996), single mother status in Malaysia has a different stigma attached to it. Malaysian Muslim single mothers are often blamed as being the cause for the trouble in their marriage. Single mothers are often seen as those who fail to perform adequately their roles as wives, mothers, daughters-in-law, and lovers who can maintain their husbands’ fidelity. Some religious persons may even see divorce as a form of God’s punishment for past sins committed by the women; this argument is seldom used for the men involved in divorce. The status as a divorcee is also often an embarrassment to the family, as well as a bad example to the rest of one’s race and religion (Wan, 1990). Besides the ideologies mentioned above, there are other negative assumptions regarding single mothers’ households, which reflect the hegemonic domain of power. This domain is very powerful in shaping the individual’s mind via “manipulation of ideas, images, [and] symbols” (Collins, 2000, p. 285) by people in power. Among the stereotypes held by Malaysian society, as outlined by Wan Halim (1990), is that single mothers’ households are incomplete and unmanageable, although the reality often proves otherwise. At times, female-headed households can be even better managed than some double-parent homes for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons is that a single parent can present a single-mindedness which provides a clearer direction than a

WRW - 170 Single Mothers in Malaysia situation where parents disagree about many family issues, creating confusion in the minds of their children. Parental conflict, needless to say, is non-existent in a single- parent family! The second myth is that the children of single mothers are out of control because there is no father figure in the home. This statement is again not necessarily true since the presence of fathers does not guarantee that the children are better controlled. Looking through the statistics of juvenile delinquency will clearly indicate that delinquents are also produced in double-parent families. The belief that women should endure bad marriages for the sake of children is another form of denying the right of woman to seek freedom from continuous and unbearable suffering. Children of broken marriages can in fact be more responsible especially if they feel sympathy or empathy for their single parents. These children may appreciate their mothers more when they see the hardship that they faced as single-mothers, something that children of double- parent families may take for granted. The third hegemonic ideology is the idea that re-marriage is necessarily the best solution for single mothers. This form of societal pressure is common among Muslims because marriage is often believed to be a guarantee against all sorts of social problems, while divorce is seen as their ultimate cause. Upon re- marriage, the new spouse is assumed to be able to play the role of an effective father to this step-children. In reality, this is not always the case. Many new spouses in Malaysian society either do not feel fully responsible towards their step-children (especially if their natural fathers are still alive) or naturally tend to exercise favoritism toward their own children vis-à-vis their step-children. Again, this idea would actually reproduce the single mothers’ oppression because women are held responsible for both the children and their husbands’ welfare; hence, this rush to remarry would just make things complicated and increase women’s burdens (Wan, 1990). This belief does not take into consideration the reality that bad marriages are often the cause of more problems than good divorces.

WRW - 171 Puspa Melati Wan Interpersonal Domain of Power

Through daily interaction with others, either through small group or one-on-one interaction, single mothers once again face oppression and negative treatment. Collins (2000) refers to this domain as the interpersonal domain of power. Interpersonal relationships often change drastically after divorce. Young divorcees are often seen as a threat to the other married couples in the neighborhood. In Muslim societies where polygamy is allowed, young and attractive divorcees are seen as potential “second wives” by married men as and as potential “husband-stealers” by married women. To illustrate the difficulties in which this places women, there was a case where an unemployed single mother who had seven children and lived in a police quarters (because the ex- husband was an police officer) was being humiliated openly and isolated by other wives in the quarters who probably felt threatened by her presence. Single mothers often turn to their immediate family members or extended family members for shelter and support (Wan, 1990). However, this support is not always available. Some parents are ashamed when their daughters are divorced, for it is supposed to tarnish the family’s reputation. There would be a pressure to ask the family member to re-consider divorce or to immediately consider re-marriage, regardless of the suitability of the new spouse. The single mother can also be seen as a potential financial burden on the family of origin and therefore is not welcomed by some of the family members, sometimes even by the parents. Married adult children are supposed to support their aging parents. The financially weak single parent fails to fulfill this expectation that their parents and family members have of them. Some parents would rather see their adult children suffer in the hands of their husbands than to have their grown daughters “cling” onto them for support. Even if single mothers decided to remain divorced and keep living with their parents, some reported that they were treated like slaves and continuously verbally abused (Wan, 1990). Wan Halim (1991) states that there were cases where friends started to avoid these single mothers, especially young single

WRW - 172 Single Mothers in Malaysia mothers. This is because they were afraid that these single mothers would seduce and steal their husbands. There were also cases where single mothers themselves decided to change the pattern of interpersonal relations with significant others because of their low self-esteem and the embarrassment of their status. Many keep their divorce a secret and tell lies concerning the absence of their husband in order to avoid the status of a “divorcee.” The term “janda” meaning “divorcee” is considered by some as a word that is so horrible as to make them break down in tears when they are called by that name. In one case, the single mother found herself crying uncontrollably when hearing the word in the lyrics of a song over the radio. Many single mothers prefer to meet and mix only with other single mothers who can empathize with their situation and problems. All these problems in the interpersonal domain would definitely affect the single mother’s psychological state. A study conducted in the United States suggests that, in contrast to married women, single mothers are more likely to experience psychological problems (Simons, Beaman, Conger, Rand, & Chao, 1993). As outlined by Wan Halim (1990), there are five psychological impacts that are commonly experienced by these single mothers in Malaysia. The first is a sense of guilt should they internalize the victim- blaming ideology propagated by their community. Widowed single mothers may blame themselves for their husband’s illness and eventual death. Divorcees may truly believe that they were responsible for the breakdown of their marriage. They may also feel guilty about putting their children through divorce and for “denying their children of their fathers,” even if it is the father that abandons her and the children for no apparent reason and despite all her efforts to save the marriage. The second problem is anger. These women experience intense anger when they feel that they were cheated, oppressed and humiliated (Wan, 1990). The anger may be directed towards any party that is seen as a contributor to the breakdown of the marriage, such as the in-laws, their own family members, their friends, the court officials, and so on. Unfortunately, some of the anger may be directed at their children, especially those who are close to the spouse or look like or remind them of their spouse.

WRW - 173 Puspa Melati Wan Support group meetings allow single mothers to express their anger in a relatively safe and supportive environment. The third problem is depression, where single mothers feel that “their life is no longer meaningful” (Wan, 1990, p. 5). They also feel hopeless and helpless, and may not want to do anything. This would not only affect their health (i.e. lack of nutrition and deprived sleep), but some may even contemplate suicide as a means of solving their problems and as a way of gaining attention from others. A few even consider killing themselves and their children as a way of making their spouse suffer especially in a particularly bad child custody fight. Studies of the single mothers in the United States also indicate that single mothers on welfare are more likely to report facing depression and hopelessness (Petterson & Friel, 2001). The fourth psychological problem that is common among single mothers in Malaysia is loneliness (Wan, 1990, p. 5). This is even more intense for women who lose their loving spouses in a sudden incident, such as a car crash, stroke, or murder. The feeling of loneliness is often felt despite the existence of their children or friends. Even though these single mothers can occupy themselves with activities, such as taking care of children and working a job, loneliness would still haunt them once they have time for themselves. The fifth cluster of problems that single mothers have to deal with is identity crisis, low self-esteem, and low self-confidence (Wan, 1990, p. 5). These feelings and conflicts are common, especially when the women internalize the negative views and comments that are directed toward them by families, friends, authorities, and society as a whole. This is even more severe in single mothers who had always been very dependent on others such as parents and husbands. Being accustomed to being in a subordinate position, they do not have the opportunity, or the need, to develop a high level of self-esteem and self-initiative. With low self-esteem and low self-confidence, the single mother may choose to blame herself rather than to blame and rebel against the wider patriarchal system in which she exists. These single mothers who do not develop a critical consciousness about these issues will tend to socialize their children to do the same, perpetuating the same

WRW - 174 Single Mothers in Malaysia world-view and social attitudes for generations to come. Thus, oppression that is organized in the structural domain, maintained in the disciplinary domain, justified in the hegemonic domain, and practiced in the interpersonal domain is not only detrimental to single mothers’ health, but can also affect their children’s well- being.

Conclusion and Possibilities for Change Through these readings and discussions, there is no doubt that the current scholarly literature does provide important insights and useful studies on single mothers in the U.S. in relation to welfare assistance, psychological problems, and parenting effectiveness. However, this research fails to look at the complexity of the single mother issue, namely the interlocking systems of oppression that are played out within the structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal domains of power. Cultural factors are important variables that should be taken into account in studies and discussions. This is vital in order to avoid the tendency to “homogenize” the issues faced by single mothers and to facilitate transnational coalitions that are sensitive towards all women’s problems. Based on the impressions and cases presented in this paper, it is clear that many Muslim single mothers in the Malaysian society are trapped within the matrix of domination, with an additional axis of oppression, namely religion, which complicates their lives even further. For the Muslim women, the axes of oppression such as religion, gender, race, and class are intimately interlock, and the problems that they face can only be fully understood by taking a holistic approach to this issue. Through this lens, changes are indeed possible, although they would be gradual and evolutionary rather than revolutionary in nature. At the structural level, changes can be made through the standardization of Islamic laws and the integration of the administration of Syariah court systems throughout the country. This could be done by placing the Syariah courts under the Federal government of Malaysia (Hanifah, 2002) although this will require a major change to the country’s constitution. Such a change would place the police force under the responsibility and direction of the courts, ensuring that court’s decisions are promptly and effectively

WRW - 175 Puspa Melati Wan implemented. There are several forces in the society working towards these changes, such as the organization of single mothers in associations and pressure groups, as well as the expose of single mothers’ cases through the mass media. Wan Halim (1990) suggests that the Syariah courts should provide mediation services where couples can obtain their divorces more amicably rather than through the lengthy, expensive public fights in the courts. At the disciplinary level, nongovernmental organizations could help the single mothers to learn of their rights and the ways of getting them within the Syariah court system. There have been an increasing number of support groups created throughout Malaysia, such as those organized by Women’s Aid Organization (WAO) and Sisters in Islam (SIS) to help women. There have been non-violent and quiet protests by these single mothers with their banners stating “We have the right to defend ourselves,” “Treat me like a human,” “Where are women’s rights in the court?” and so forth. Popular magazines and television and radio programs are playing their role to highlight the plights of the single mothers (Zunairah, 2001, p. 184). Within the interpersonal domain, some single mothers feel empowered enough to protest against the court’s judgments, which they feel are unfair towards them. In one case, the single mother protested by taking off her headscarf (the wearing of head-scarf is mandatory in the Syariah court) (Hanifah, 2002). In other instances, individuals resisted oppression by revealing their cases in newspapers in order to get public attention, especially from politicians other authorities. Changes could be more readily obtained if these women were supported by NGOs that have good contacts with media and politicians. However, the main problem in these movements is that most of the participants are women. Drawing on MacIntosh’s (1988) analysis of male privilege, Muslim men should also play an active role in helping these women to gain their rights and fight against oppression, since they have privilege over these women in society. As a whole, it is obvious that the Muslim single mother issue in Malaysia is indeed very complex because of the interlocking systems of oppression. Since my meta-analysis had to rely on secondary data by combining the different cases and opinions of

WRW - 176 Single Mothers in Malaysia experts that approach this issue rather differently (i.e. not from a Black feminist perspective which encourages inter-sectional analysis), there should be more scholarly studies and primary research conducted to demonstrate further how the matrix of domination operates within specific societies. This is vital since cross-cultural comparison will increase the reliability and validity of these studies. However, researchers should also bear in mind that this is indeed a sensitive issue and that therefore it may be hard for researchers to get participants who are willing to openly discuss with the “outsiders” the problems they face. Thus, gaining the participation of additional informants, preferably respected women and men in the community, will be useful for researchers in studies like this. Moreover, researchers can use open-ended but anonymous questionnaires, in which the Muslim women’s identities are concealed. This is because they may feel more comfortable in expressing their experiences of oppression confidentially where their identities remain anonymous. However, the challenge for this would be to design questions that could tap the different axes of oppression without offending the participants. Therefore, researchers should use the back-translation strategy for the questionnaires to ensure that the questions are properly translated and can be understood. The best scenario for researchers will be if there are organizations and movements fighting for women’s rights within the community because women who are involved in such activism will be more than happy to get their voices across to the public. Although studies on sensitive issues like this are challenging, future studies are essential to expand people’s understanding of single mothers’ issues. Let’s not allow the academic sphere to be an additional site of oppression for Muslim women!

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