AmeriCorps going green

I sent an email to my supervisors:

I'm writing in response to a call for "going green tips" for our individual lives. Though I think these changes are necessary, and I appreciate the opportunity to share, I feel that they should also be paired with the larger changes we must all work toward.
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Our shorter showers, hybrid cars, and organic ranch dressing are far from useful if we don’t also work to change the larger systems of which they are a part. These important yet smaller changes are not nearly on the same magnitude of the problem they attempt to solve: shorter showers will not address the worlds’ water shortages, nor will driving a hybrid change a culture of car ownership, end greenhouse gas emissions, or prevent wars fought for oil security.

Now, if AmeriCorps committed to becoming a “greener” organization, we could enact real green business practices (read: sustainability!) to those (hundreds of?) thousands of non-profits we partner with. This would be change to get behind.

“Going green” doesn’t mean spending more money or expending a lot of effort; rather it is grounded in awareness of our use of resources and an acknowledgement of our relationship with the earth.

I see and appreciate the Forest Stewardship Council certification on the envelopes for the receipt of my direct deposits, but part of the reason I chose direct deposit was to reduce the amount of paper I get. We work for finding solutions to poverty but buy our AmeriCorps clothes from countries employing sweat-shop labor practices (read: exported American jobs).

If we as individuals commit to changing our lifestyles, part of that change should also be working toward “greening” the systems to which we belong, in which we work, and on which we depend.

Partnership for Community Development

PPG, Partnership for the Public Good, is a group in Buffalo, sort of a "think and do tank" which has also been described as a progressive alternative to a chamber of commerce. They create useful online resources, host fruitful workshops, and organize panel discussions on pertinent local, democratically-chosen topics. Check them out, they've got an interesting approach to community development.

rainstick

I'm sitting next to a window working, but I wanted to write that the sleet falling outside hitting the metal screen and the roof next door sounds like a giant rainstick.

Two month report: Americorps

I chose to do Americorps so I could stay in my own country. Perhaps it was also slightly motivated by some underlying "white guilt," my struggles with the current re-definition of colonialism, or neo-colonialism. I want to make sure I'm not part of it, or at least to understand it more and then become a part of it intentionally.

However, I'm not sure I'm able to do that. I have felt like an "outsider" here, still, even in my own country. Also, ironically, one of my strong points for getting this job was my ability to speak Spanish, which I mostly gained from travelling to other countries, and, arguably, spreading ideas of American colonialism.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised though; I am working for the US Government. I am an agent of propaganda as much as I wear that identity, which, incidentally, is strongly encouraged. So far, I've received 5 items of clothing from VISTA with the Americorps logo. "You're our best advertisements," they told us during training. I don't doubt that. Here is where the articles of clothing are produced:

So much for not taking part in neocolonialism!

(Pakistan, Sri Lanka, China, Honduras, and Haiti)

I guess I could contextualize this journal entry a little better. I'm currently reading an article by Kim England called "Getting Personal: Reflexivity, Positionality, and Feminist Research." It's part of my work toward researching the feasibility of low-income car-sharing. There's a specific section of my research called 'research approach' so we can be more reflexive, and more intentional about our methods. England brings up several good, albiet challenging, points. In a nutshell: how can the researcher NOT bring a power struggle into the relationship of researcher-researched? She suggests "supplication", in which “the researcher explicitly acknowledges her/his reliance on the research subject to provide insight into the subtle nuances of meaning that structure and shape everyday lives.” (3) I'm really glad to be reading this kind of critical article.

Also, sort of on a side note (at this point, because I'm not sure how to integrate it), England quotes Stanley and Wise (1993): "treating people like objects – sex objects or research objects – is morally unjustifiable." I've honestly never thought of this, and it's quite an interesting wrench to throw in the gears of normal qualitative research methonds.

How does this boil down into the work I am and will be doing in Buffalo's lower-income neighborhoods? How will I continue to negotiate the boundaries between my status as a US citizen and an outsider to this city?

Stay tuned to learn the answers to these questions and many more!

What it feels like to be white...

I'm starting to realize that if I'm going to write it's going to have to be intentional and sometimes forced if I want to write a lot (which I do). So here goes:

I've been dealing with a lot: trying to become part of a new culture, make new friends, create a new home, and learn the ways these things work around here. Before I moved to Buffalo I knew only a few things about it: that it snowed a lot and that it was a poor city. Being from the suburbs of Chicago, daughter of a upper-middle class white family, I didn't have very much interaction or experience with American poverty. Most of what I understand of poverty has come from international travel (mostly which has been service projects).

Buffalo is 1/3 poor, 1/2 black, and the office I work in is all men. As an upper-middle class white woman, that's a lot of difference, and I feel it every day.

My writing prompt for tonight is an essay I came across while reading the book Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti called White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh.

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McIntosh approached the issue of race through her relationship with male privilege. "If men want to deny (or do not accept) their privilege, there might be a similar situation with race," seems to be her initial thinking on exploring this issue:

"I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious."

Eventually her 'untutored way' resulted in a list of 50 effects of white privilege such as:

" 6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented."

and

"7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is."

and

"21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group."

These specific and relatable examples really bring it home for me. It's fairly commonplace for me to hear privilege being talked about abstractly, philosophically, but I think it's rare to be framed in a way that I can reflect on in my daily life.

McIntosh later suggests that we could take a next step and distinguish between positive and negative advantages of privilege and become "distressed" when those negative (i.e. "unearned") advantages are apparent. Though, "[d]isapproving of the system won't be enough to change them."

"To redesign social systems," she writes, "we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions."

Here is her conclusion:

"Although systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and, I imagine, for some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light-skinned. What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base."

Perhaps we confused privileged whites can start by looking toward feminist men/allies who work daily to recognize unequal privilege among their peers.

For now, I'm at least getting used to feeling my race. When I'm the only white person on a bus half-full of people, I feel it. When I get looked at differently by police, I feel it. I'm starting to realize and break down judgments I have that arise in an unconscious/conditioned manner. Being underprivileged as part of my gender I feel that friction more and am more likely to speak out against it, and I will try to think about how to take these responses to dealing with racial and class privileges I experience here in Buffalo as well.

For the full article click here.

Other quotes I thought were good but I didn't integrate in the writing:

• "I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence. My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture."
• "The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy."
• "Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that racism doesn't affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see "whiteness" as a racial identity."