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This is Obama's statement about his rescinding of the gag rule. I've bolded what, to me, is the important part. Never in my lifetime have I heard a president speak this rationally. I'm not especially optimistic that the American people can grow up, but it certainly bodes well to see a leader who is willing to make the attempt.
It is clear that the provisions of the Mexico City Policy are unnecessarily broad and unwarranted under current law, and for the past eight years, they have undermined efforts to promote safe and effective voluntary family planning in developing countries. For these reasons, it is right for us to rescind this policy and restore critical efforts to protect and empower women and promote global economic development.
For too long, international family planning assistance has been used as a political wedge issue, the subject of a back and forth debate that has served only to divide us. I have no desire to continue this stale and fruitless debate.
It is time that we end the politicization of this issue. In the coming weeks, my Administration will initiate a fresh conversation on family planning, working to find areas of common ground to best meet the needs of women and families at home and around the world.
I have directed my staff to reach out to those on all sides of this issue to achieve the goal of reducing unintended pregnancies. They will also work to promote safe motherhood, reduce maternal and infant mortality rates and increase educational and economic opportunities for women and girls.
In addition, I look forward to working with Congress to restore U.S. financial support for the U.N. Population Fund. By resuming funding to UNFPA, the U.S. will be joining 180 other donor nations working collaboratively to reduce poverty, improve the health of women and children, prevent HIV/AIDS and provide family planning assistance to women in 154 countries.
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It's what I do when I want to write. It helps me block out all the other voices, lets me concentrate on my own voice. When I was in my early twenties, I took a course in Women's Literature; I audited the course, asked the professor if I could sit in on it. I was the only male in the class. It didn't feel strange to me being the only male, maybe because I've never really thought of myself as male or female. I've just thought of myself as me. Not always something to be proud of, not always something to like. But me. In that class, I learned about "voice," what it meant to a woman to have her voice heard. I understood. I like to think that I changed around that time, that I became sensitive to the idea that voice was a particularly important thing for women. And looking around, I noticed that everywhere, every time, in every place and moment, men were impinging upon women's voices. Women, in the company of men, wouldn't speak, or they'd speak softly, or they'd apologize for their opinions. Men would interrupt. Men would speak louder. Men would intrude, and men would argue, and men would win. What would they win? Were they right all the time? No. But they had volume on their side. They had voices. I had a voice, too. In classes, all through my life, I hardly said a word. I was embarrassed to open my mouth. When I spoke, I made sure I was right about things. I waited for the moment when my words would ring out. Those times were few and far between, but they taught me something else about voice: that volume isn't the only way to have a voice. That wisdom magnifies a voice. That when you can't speak very much, you gather up your forces and wait for the right moment and then say what you have to say. And everyone listens.
It's not enough. Sometimes the opportunity simply never comes. Voice needs volume, too. It needs a variety of things, it needs everything. Too many people never say a word. I've been silent for a long time. This isn't the end of silence, but it's a pause. I have my headphones on now, so I can forget that I'm speaking. I can pretend that I'm thinking. I'm good at thinking. Today, I'm thinking about race. I'm thinking of what it means to me that a black man was elected President of the United States.
I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, but I was born in the city. I moved away from the city when I was four years old, but I have memories of the city. I have memories of cars double parked. I have memories of corner delicatessens. I have memories of children everywhere, dodging from door to door along the row of houses. I have strange memories, distorted memories. The hill in front of the row house where we lived was so high I could roll down it, but later on, I discovered that it was a tiny hill, perhaps two feet high. I remember a friend named Jimmy. I remember that all my friends were white. They were poor, somehow I remember that, too. They were all white. Black people were moving into the neighbourhood, and we moved out.
Cause and effect. Black people were moving into the neighbourhood, so we moved out. We escaped. My parents told me that: we moved because black people were moving into the neighbourhood. I told people that. Why did you move from the city? Because black people came, we got out of there. Pronto. We escaped.
My father hired black people. A few of them. They didn't make much money. He didn't trust them. But somehow, he felt better about himself, because he could say he had black employees. I don't know this; I'm guessing. I learned in school that there were four kinds of people in the world: white people, black people, red people, and yellow people. We were white people. Somehow that was best. My father didn't hire any red or yellow people. I had a neighbour who was an Indian. She didn't look red. Eventually, I realized that her family was from India. She wasn't a red person. She wasn't quite black, either. I had another friend who, in retrospect, I think must have been part Indian (i.e. Native American). It wasn't something he ever mentioned. It wasn't something anybody ever noticed. My father would have hired either of them. He would have hired anybody. He even hired a woman to do a man's job. She was a pest control operator. All the other women in his office were girls. They were pretty and had long hair. They got the men coffee and were fired on Christmas if my father turned against them. The pest control operator was a girl, too, but somehow she was different. I was young then, so I didn't have the words for it, but now I'd say, she had grudging respect from the men. Grudging respect is what my father had for the black men who worked for him. That's different from respect. Respect, people say, is something you earn, but I grew up knowing the truth: respect is a birthright and depends on the colour of your skin.
One of my teachers taught me that black people and white people were the same. He taught me about slavery and that it was wrong. He taught me about Democracy. He taught me about elections. We had an election in our class. We had a President, and a Vice-President, and a Secretary, and a Treasurer. All of the Presidents were white, but that's because all of the students were white. We didn't have black people in our class. I'm not sure we had black people in our school. But it didn't matter. I knew that they were just as human as I. Just as deserving of respect. In our class, we had to memorize speeches or poems. It was an extra credit thing, to be precise, but everyone tried it. We had to stand up in front of the class and recite what we'd memorized. Three people memorized Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech. It was a long speech. I don't know why I didn't try to memorize it. Usually I rose to challenges like that, but for whatever reason, I didn't try that speech. But I listened to the words when the three students in my class recited the speech. The words didn't surprise me. I wasn't prejudiced. Somehow, along the way, with the exclamation point of my third grade teacher, I had gotten the point: that all men are created equal, that black men were men, that they were equal, that anyone who believed differently was bad. My sister liked to wear jeans. She ran around and shouted. She wasn't ladylike. My father's mother castigated her for it. Don't you want to be a lady, she would say. Don't you want to be pretty, she would say. My sister could grow up to be a nurse, or a teacher. I could grow up to be a doctor or a lawyer or a firefighter. I could grow up to be President of the United States. I could be anything. My teacher implied that anyone in the class could grow up to be anything. I took the lesson to heart.
I remember my teacher. He taught me that black men and white men were equal. I learned something more from him, though it took me a long time to understand this deeper lesson. Men and women are equal. Red men and yellow men are not red and yellow: they are human. Gay people and straight people are not two types of people: they are human. George Bush isn't the devil incarnate. Osama bin Laden isn't the devil incarnate. Martin Luther King, Jr. wasn't a god. John F. Kennedy, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ghandi were not gods. Idols don't exist. The devil doesn't exist. God doesn't exist. Ideas are human. We create them. We think them. We're liable to error and sublimity. We fuck things up. We can fix things, too. We're not responsible for the mistakes of the past unless we continue doing the same thing. We're not responsible for the future unless we sabotage it. Animals are wonderful. The world is wonderful. The world is incredibly, fantastically complex. Everything is complex. Nothing, nothing at all, is simplistic. You can take a microscope to something and keep looking at it forever and not get to the end of it. It all follows. It all follows. All of it. Everything, everything follows from that idea: that black men and white men are equal. People around me who believed differently were wrong, and therefore, every idea was suspect. Everything, everything had to be looked at carefully, looked at askance, looked at skeptically, looked at long and hard for the rest of my life until I figured out what it meant. Nothing could be taken for granted. There would never be enough time to figure everything out because nobody around me could tell me what was going on. There were no shortcuts to anything. One idea: that all men were equal. And everything changes.
Nobody I knew believed it. My friends made all sorts of jokes about black people. They were stupid and lazy and untrustworthy. They were violent. They were something to fear. I heard tales of race riots from the year before in the school I was about to enter. I heard how dangerous the city was becoming. I heard how lucky I was to get out of there. I listened to what people said and came to a conclusion: everybody I knew hated blacks.
My father's father hated blacks. My parents, lip service aside, hated blacks. My friend's parents hated blacks. My friends hated blacks. I could do anything I wanted in life but two things: marry a black person or be gay. Those things would get me disowned. I realized that I found black women very attractive. Much more attractive than white women. I secretly believed that one day I would marry a black woman.
I had a friend in high school. He was not prejudiced. In a sea of secret hatred, he shone out as the one person I knew who was absolutely without prejudice. We went into the city. The fearsome city. I learned to love the city. I wasn't afraid of black people in the city. I met them, talked to them. Every time I met a black person, I was proud of the fact. This is what it means to be a white person in the United States: you identify yourself according to your stance on racism. If you're racist and don't know it, you avoid black people and give yourself reasons that have nothing to do with the colour of their skin. If you're not racist and know it, you take pride in your black friends; you show them off; you look at your white friends carefully when you show them your treasure. If you don't know whether or not you are racist but hope that you're not, you feel incredible guilt no matter what you do. You try. That's what good white people do in the United States: they try. They listen to black people and do their best by them. They try, and they generally fail. I can't explain this very well. I tried, and failed. My friend, who was without prejudice, didn't try, and didn't fail. He was my model, I suppose. Without my teacher, I might not have thought about the issue at all. Without my friend, I never would have known what it means to be truly without prejudice. I haven't escaped this dilemma. I don't think I ever will. Am I prejudiced? No. I'm not. I can say that with certainty, though perhaps I couldn't do so before moving to Toronto. But racism is still in me. There's a tether of it attaching me to the past, to the history of the US. I can, occasionally, interact with black people without being aware that I'm interacting with a black person. I'm getting there.
And so I moved to Toronto, the most diverse place I've ever been, probably one of the few truly diverse places on the planet. Not merely diverse. Integrated. But what do I mean by these words? Diversity in the United States means there are black people and there are white people. What it really means is there is a black person. Forty white people plus one black is diversity. You hear people say diversity when they mean there's a black person. It's a code word. Diversity. Multi-cultural is another code word. In Toronto, black people walk around unselfconsciously. They don't look over their shoulder. When I meet them, they don't treat me as if I'm white. They treat me as if I'm human. Black people in Toronto walk throughout the city speaking and laughing and smiling and holding hands. I can't think of a time I ever saw a black person smile on the streets of Boston or Washington DC. Ever. What does it mean when the first time you see a black person smiling on a city street you notice it as something unusual?
This isn't a story about Toronto. In fact, it's not really a story at all. Everyone who lives in or has lived in the United States could write similar words. Everyone has one's own history about black and white. Everyone has anger about it or guilt about it or denials about it or pride about it or fear or despair or hope about it. My story isn't unique or particularly interesting. So I'm going to tell a related story, one that didn't happen to me, that I didn't experience, but that somehow sums up for me what it means to me that Barack Obama has been elected President of the United States.
One day two years ago, my spouse was walking downtown on her way from somewhere to somewhere else. She reached a street corner and realized to her surprise that nothing was happening. Traffic wasn't moving. There was no sound. What was going on? There was a truck stopped in the middle of the intersection, and all the other traffic was paused. In the centre of the road, there was a pigeon, sitting there, just sitting in the road, right in front of the truck. The truck driver waited, but the pigeon didn't move. The truck driver drove forward just a tiny bit, hoping to scare the bird into flight. The pigeon didn't move. What happened next? These are the things that did not happen: the truck driver did not keep inching forward, the truck driver did not run the pigeon over, the truck driver did not honk, other drivers did not honk, nobody tried to scare the bird into flight, nobody ran the bird over, nobody shouted or cursed or shook their fist or beeped their horn or honk to frighten the pigeon. What happened? The truck driver opened the door of his truck and stepped outside. He walked up to the bird, softly so as not to frighten it. He reached down and lifted the bird in his palms and gave it a little toss towards the sky, and the pigeon, knowing what to do, soared into flight.
What did it mean to everybody who saw it happen? Who has seen the like of it? A pigeon! A fucking pigeon! What does it mean? What could it possibly mean?
Hope.
There wasn't much hope, and then there was some.
It's not an empty word, but it's an embarrassing one. You say it, and people look at you with scorn. They raise their voices to drown yours out.
Well, I'm used to having my voice drowned out. A lot of us are.
I'm going to say it anyway:
I have hope.
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I just wrote what follows as a response to someone in my last entry, but I think my words have wider relevance, so I'm posting them here as a separate entry. Let me preface it by saying this: when I started this journal something like eight or nine years ago, I had a wide variety of people reading it, including quite a few with who I disagree on a range of issues. After 911, livejournal polarized, and for one reason or another, nearly all of those people departed (or I departed them) from my friends list. One conservative remained. I kept him on my list, and he kept me on mine (I assume), because we respect each other, because there's more to life than agreeing on political issues. It's possible to disagree on things and still communicate. I'll repeat that: it's possible to disagree on things and still communicate. Remember that. The US is a polarized place, severely polarized, and once, not long ago, it was much less polarized. Livejournal, and much of the internet, in fact, has become a huge echo chamber. All those voices you hear, you know, the ones agreeing with everything you think and say...they're not the only valid voices out there. Other perspectives matter. Sometimes it's hard to find those other voices. Sometimes it's painful to listen to them. Sometimes you hear them and retain your ideas, deciding that those other voices are wrong. But you know what? Sometimes those other voices end up being right. You won't know that unless you listen to them. Give them a chance sometime. Chances are, you're resilient enough to bear the risk.
Anyway, here's what I wrote to my friend when he expressed surprise that I'm pleased with the US election result. I'll just add the impression I've given him (the impression that led him to believe I wouldn't be so pleased) is a valid one. He's seen that I'm willing to listen to other points of view, that I think on my own and don't blindly accept other people's rhetoric. What he perhaps didn't quite see is that I can think critically and doubt other people's words while still agreeing with some of their basic premises, just as I can disagree with some people and still respect their point of view. Etc.
I left the US because I couldn't bear to live in a country which starts unjust wars and tortures people and which had utterly abandoned its ideals. And I watched as every single thing the Bush administration touched turned to crap, and how nearly every Republican in office was corrupt in one way or another. What would possess me, or anyone for that matter, to support any Republican whatsoever? Not that I ever have in the first place, but since I'm pretty much of a centrist except for equality issues (which I'm solidly left on), I've always been willing to give some benefit of the doubt to politicians on both sides of the political divide. But even if I supported McCain, which I do not, his choice of Sarah Palin as a VP was obscene. That she had any chance of becoming the President of the US is utterly outrageous.
So even if I didn't support Obama, I would have voted for him, because the alternative, continuing _any_ of the policies of the Bush administration, or putting someone utterly, utterly unqualified to be President (Sarah Palin) near the summit of the US government, would have made me choose Obama.
But in any case, I do support Obama. Totally. I saw your post earlier. It's ridiculous. I'm sorry to have to say this, but you, my friend, have been hoodwinked by right wing rhetoric. Obama is the best thing to happen to the US in a long, long, long, long time. The whole world has been waiting for this moment. The US has an opportunity to move, solidly, into the 21st Century. On virtually every issue, the US has lost the respect of everyone. I don't know if you can see that from inside the states, but from here, it is overwhelmingly clear that the US has entirely lost the respect of the rest of the world. That should matter to you. How is the US supposed to follow its ideals if no one else trusts or believes that the US can live up to those ideals?
Today, this very day, this very moment, the US has regained a lot of that respect. Do you hear what I'm saying? Simply by electing Obama. And, of course, because the other countries of the world want to give the US the benefit of the doubt. I've seen this, though I don't have time right now to go into detail. The rest of the world wants the US to live up to its ideals, and last night, it did just that. This is the first, the very first, time in a number of years when the US did actually live up to one of its ideals, and the rest of the world is ecstatic. ECSTATIC. This should matter to you. This should make you question all the information you've been spoonfed. I know that you are intelligent. I know that you think critically about the information you receive. However, I'm telling you, it's not enough. You need to step outside your world and look at what's going on from an entirely different perspective. The rest of the world has been looking on in horror at the US, and for the first time, they are breathing a collective sigh of relief.
Does this mean that Obama is some sort of superman who is going to change the world and live up to everyone's expectations? Of course not. Being the President is an impossibly difficult task. He has his work cut out for him, and nobody is going to agree with everything he does. That's the point of having a democracy: the people get to judge the leaders and change them if necessary. Your fears are groundless. You've already lived through a nightmare, whether you fully recognize it or not. Right wing policies have done incredible damage to the US. That doesn't mean that left wing policies are going to be perfect. They're not. The US needs perspectives from both sides, from every side. All I will say for certain is that this is a genuine chance for the US to move forward again. It's a genuine chance for recovery, and you should support that.
I don't say all this lightly. You should step back and out of your comfortable perspectives and think deeply about what has been going on. Your fear and cynicism, though warranted, are not the final word. There's room in this world for hope and striving for ideals. The cynical, fearful world you live in (the world that the US has become, and it has truly become a cynical fearful place) is not the only world. There are plenty of places in the world (I live in one of them) where cynicism and fear are hardly present at all. There are places of peace in the world, and there's no reason whatsoever why the US can't be one of those places. The world is a bigger place than you know. I'm not saying this as a personal attack. I respect you very much and want you to imagine the possibility that something amazing has just happened, and that maybe it's a good thing.
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I think I'd recognize this passage in any language. Terribly beautiful and sad, I find it. Il s'était tant de fois entendu dire ces choses, qu'elles n'avaient pour lui rien d'original. Emma ressemblait à toutes les maîtresses; et le charme de la nouveauté, peu à peu tombant comme un vêtement, laissait voir à nu l'éternelle monotonie de la passion, qui a toujours les mêmes formes et le même langage. Il ne distinguait pas, cet homme si plein de pratique, il ne croyait que faiblement à la candeur de celles-là; on en devait rabattre, pensait-il, les discours exagérés cachant les affections médiocres; comme si la plénitude de l'âme ne débordait pas quelquefois par les métaphores les plus vides, puisque personne, jamais, ne peut donner l'exacte mesure de ses besoins, ni de ses conceptions, ni de ses douleurs, et que la parole humaine est comme un chaudron fêlé où nous battons des mélodies à faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les étoiles. With echoes, I'm sure, of this: E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle. Current Music: Separation - Halou
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whorlpool's journal
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