16 January 2003 (Thursday)
c'mon, make me think
The mind reels backwards in time, grasping fondly at the past. One way or another school will find its way back into my life. I miss it too much. The real world feels stupid and lonely in comparison, a lot of the time.
I wrote way more than I intended in a comment on Jim's last post. It's an entry unto itself, almost.
"On racial preferences...I'm all for programs that target minorities and females in grade school and junior high, that encourage kids to think outside the stereotypes of what they're supposed to be and to consider any future possible. Hell, I'm all for programs that target white males and teach them that they don't have to live up to stereotypes, either.
"Anything else is a band-aid. Affirmative action at the college admissions level, and in employment, is just compensation for earlier failure. You look for the ambitious and talented black woman, and actively choose her over equally qualified candidates, because there are so few of her kind where there should be many. I believe that learning and work environments always benefit from diversity -- which is a whole debate in and of itself -- and that it's this principle of social benefit, not of reparation for past wrongs, that should drive any decision on the subject.
"But whose fault is it, anyway? Who claims responsibility for the failure to really solve the problem? That's the thorny issue. Is it continuing discrimination, subconscious (or quite conscious) racism on the part of those in power? Maybe. But is it possibly a failure of individuals to rise above their circumstances? A community that didn't come together to address its collective ills? A new culture that, abetted by the very phenomenon of racial preferences, comes to expect success as a birthright rather than something earned? It could be that too.
"But look, now I'm being racist.
"The truth is that each feeds into the other. Hence our quandary: preferences breed racism breeds the need for preferences. Digging this thing out at the roots is the only solution. But of course that's the hardest task of all."
posted by enjelani @ 05:54 PM PST [ link ]
14 January 2003 (Tuesday)
projection games
We sometimes play this game, Soren and I: describe a day in the life some prescribed number of years from now, one of an infinite set of possible futures. Say, for instance, that you're now a staff writer for National Geographic. That we live in Burlington, Vermont. That I've been waiting for weeks for a package that arrived in the mail today. They get rather involved sometimes, and it's not always idyllic. Sometimes there are near-fatal diseases. Or problematic children. You can only play this game once you've reached a certain understanding in the relationship -- namely when the prospect of these things, of sharing these experiences together, doesn't freak the shit out of one of you.
A recent session involved one of those cozy professor's cottages, the kind that sit on the outskirts of campus, with enormous bookshelves cluttered with tomes that the owners have actually read, cover to cover, sometimes more than once, sometimes with a pencil in hand. Five guys sitting around the kitchen table, plenty of good beer all around, and the conversation veers from soccer to the New Media to election politics. Pasta just reaching al dente in a big copper-bottomed pot on the stove. A happy kind of tired, the kind that makes you want to just listen to the conversation for a change, that makes you look forward to sleep but also to eating a bowlful of capellini pomodoro in the company of friends, and it doesn't really matter which one happens first.
Funny thing. I used to play this game alone, all through childhood, and frequently the scenario was this: I'm living in an apartment of my own in a city, with big windows that let the sunlight flood my bedroom in the afternoon. I go out to the neighborhood grocery store, and the wind kicks my hair around, makes whirlpools out of fallen leaves. Later my boyfriend calls: do I want to go to the show tonight? Or meet up with the gang at the new Thai restaurant? Or we could just go down to the harbor and walk around, people-watch. I smile, the receiver pressed to my ear.
And that's how it is, now. Reality has come to fit the blueprint, at times down to the last detail. Wish fulfillment. And also a cautionary message: careful what you dream.
posted by enjelani @ 11:48 PM PST [ link ]
13 January 2003 (Monday)
the road to
It's quite possible, I've found, to hate the job and love the career. I guess it's called "paying your dues." Hopefully if I do this well enough the first go-round, I can get someone to do it for me the next time.
Whatever else I may be, I am not a salesman.
posted by enjelani @ 04:16 PM PST [ link ]