Day 21: What did they see?

There have been various of my usual sorts of things tumbling about in my mind, capturing the magpie's attention to greater and lesser degrees, over the last few days.  I'd been thinking that maybe one of those might come to the forefront today, asking to be written about, when I saw this article, entitled, "Video shows last moments of Dallas man, restrained as officers joked". 

And it just seemed like something that needed to be acknowledged. 

Because it's not the first time.  And, although I wish with all my heart that this next bit weren't so true that it's appallingly easy to type, it won't be the last. 

There are so very many things to say about this.  Things that acknowledge complexity.  But in my mind there's also something very simple here.  It's not OK.  It's not OK to watch someone die because of something you did to them, while laughing.  Ever. 

I keep stalling out there and trying to figure out what to say next.  I know that what many people say at this point is that police officers sign up for a job that is dangerous, and they respond as they do because of their training and because they're working in dangerous environments.  And that many of them - most of them, even - are good people.  They'd also say in this case that this man was mentally ill (he is the one who called the police because he was having an episode of his illness), and on drugs. But saying that in this context is sort of like saying that Brock Turner had Olympic prospects.  Or that a 16-year-old rape victim should have been told that pressing charges against her rapist would ruin his life.  It's really not the point.  It privileges the narrative, the perspective, the life, of a person who did something callous and fundamentally inhuman.  It turns the victim into the perpetrator, and erases their perspective and humanity from the story.

What I keep coming back to, especially in cases like this, where we're not talking about a split-second reaction, but rather about a prolonged, extended act of callous violence and disregard for the suffering of another human being, is - what did those officers see?  Not whom did they see, because it seems to me that they must not - they could not - have been seeing a fellow human being; but rather what did they see?  Does mental illness inherently make someone less worthy of consideration as a human being?  Does Blackness?  I mean, I get that the data are in on that one - for many people, the answer is yes. 

And I don't think it's just a matter of, police officers have to make split-second life-or-death decisions, so sometimes they get it wrong (that was certainly not the case here, or in so many other cases).  That is, in so many ways, too easy.  It not only lets those who actually commit these crimes off the hook, but it lets all of us off the hook.  It allows us to refuse to take responsibility for all of the many many narratives floating around that tell us that the mentally ill are somehow less human; that people of color are somehow less human.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, even in a situation where someone poses a danger, it is possible to see them as a human being.  And that's why I don't buy the argument that officers need to be able to just act in the face of danger, full stop.  Sure they do; but whom do they see as they move towards action?  What narratives, life experiences, beliefs inform their vision?  We know that people of color, and especially Black men, are seen as larger, older, more dangerous than white men of the same ages and sizes.  That's a cultural lens.  It's the racist smog we breathe.  Put a gun in the hands of someone steeped in that smog, and it's nearly impossible to prevent tragedies.

It's the laughter that makes me ill.  What would it take for me to laugh at the dying suffering of any living being?  What justifies that distancing of one self from another?  What do we have to tell ourselves to make that seem in any way normal; or, worse than normal - understandable, justifiable, something that we support?  I do not believe that police work requires inhumanity.  I don't buy the narrative that we need tough people to do the tough work - not if our definition of tough people is, people who don't see the spark of humanness in other people.  It seems to me that the only people who should be doing that tough work are people who are able to see that.  And that we need to provide the support and structure to make that possible.

There is so much more to say here, so much to consider, so many intertwining forces that come together to create these tragedies, again and again.  But mostly, my heart cries out: how could they laugh?  How can they live with the knowledge that they laughed?  What are we doing to ourselves to create a world where that happens?

Day 15: Making progress

When Tess went off to college, I knitted her a blanket. 

 

 Knowing how long it had taken me to knit it, I decided to make sure that I'd have plenty of time to knit Kivrin's, as her time for college approached.  Like her sister, she has very good taste (and no sympathy for how long it might take to knit something), and chose this. 

Sigh.

I ordered the yarn, and got started last fall, figuring I'd have lots of time.  I knew that I also had some graduation knitting to get done (I decided years ago that each of my friends' kids would get something hand-knitted when they graduated from college: shawl-type objects for the women, and socks for the men; I have a few who have gone a different route, and so I need to figure out a nice milestone-type occasion to knit them something)(the flaw in this plan is that they tend to come in batches, which has meant some very busy knitting years for me).

Then things, which had been difficult, kind of fell apart.  (I write all this with Kivrin's permission.)  Briefly, Kiv has several learning disabilities* which don't have an impact on her ability to actually comprehend high-level course material, but which do have an impact on her ability to process verbal instructions and to organize herself.  And her school has the most ass-backward way of managing disability accommodations that I have ever heard of.  Basically, her teachers decide what they think she needs, on the basis of, apparently, watching her in the classroom.  (Rather than, oh say, reading her diagnosis.  Or talking to a professional.)(Some of the teachers who were deciding what  accommodations were reasonable literally did not know that she had cognitive disorders, and the school counselor kept trying to tell us she has ADHD, suggesting that they did not read the diagnosis put together after an eight-hour battery of tests by a neuropsychiatrist.**)  Because she is smart and articulate and (and I kid you not, this is what one of her teachers said in a meeting) dresses well and looks put-together, and because she was working towards her International Baccalaureate diploma, they decided that she was using her "disabilities" as an excuse to get extra stuff (they actually said this).  And that she therefore didn't need the most crucial of the accommodations that she requested: assignments and due dates, ahead of time, in one place (read: a syllabus); and the ability to turn things in late when she missed getting the assignment because they wouldn't give her that first accommodation.  Teachers also refused to proactively check in with her (as in: I'm collecting assignments now, do you have yours), or to help her remember to get a list of what she heard them assigning in class signed to confirm its accuracy.  There's more, and I won't go into it all, but there was a very strong sense of, smart and learning disabilities don't go together, so she must just be trying to get away with something. (That was actually said out loud several times at one memorable meeting, where it was suggested that she stop doing the IB program, and stop doing theater tech, rather than providing reasonable accommodations for her disabilities.)(Pointing out to them that she was very successful in a college summer class when she was given - gasp - a syllabus with the schedule of assignments so that she could track them more easily was totally dismissed.) 

The last two years of high school have been brutal, frustrating, and exhausting for both of us.  For some time, I was reading textbooks out loud to her each night, and taking dictation on assignments (just to name one example).  Long story short, there came a point in her senior year where it was unclear whether she'd graduate in June or have to finish up in summer school.  And since she was waitlisted at the two colleges she really wanted to attend, we were all rethinking this coming year as a year for her to take classes that interest and excite her at our local college, regain some confidence in her ability to function in an academic setting, and participate in some of the fantastic theater programs in the area. 

In the middle of all that, the college blanket took a backseat.

And then, Seattle University (her top choice school) accepted her.  And she graduated.  (I literally had so braced myself for things to go sideways at the last minute that I couldn't believe it, even once they handed her a diploma with her actual name on it.)  And, in July, she received her International Baccalaureate diploma (which is totally no joke at all, dudes - that's a demanding program). 

So guys, she's going to college.  In September. 

!!

I have been knitting madly since it hit me that this is all real.  I did the math at one point, and calculated that it's taking me about five hours per square of knitting time; then there's the putting it all together.  I figure if I have the squares done by the end of August, drop dead, I should have enough time in the first two weeks of September to put it together.  Right?  (right?)

 Twenty-one squares down, half a square OTN, eight and a half left to go.  I've got this.

*Dyslexia, auditory processing disorder, visual-spatial processing disorder.
** Guys, if we had this much trouble, with all of the resources we were able to access, up to and including an accurate diagnosis, can you even imagine what it's like to be fighting this system without time, money, and information?  Your kid would be on ritalin, sitting in the back of the classroom, faster than you can say, get out of our hair.  As we come out of the other side of this, I keep wondering where I can leverage what I know and have to benefit folks who just aren't as lucky as I have been.  The system seems intractable, though.  At some point, I may expand on this with a post about what I learned about disability accommodations in education, and what we learned from the lawyer we consulted.  In any case, I'm mulling it over.

Day 4: Singular they

A propos of yesterday's post...

The New York Times recently published an interesting opinion piece about the use of singular "they".  It was especially interesting to me because the author proposes doing something that I have considered doing - using "they" for everyone, as the default singular third-person* pronoun.  (The reasons why I don't think this is an unproblematic suggestion are a post for another day.)

It's worth backing up here and saying that I naturally think about pronouns and gender.  Because a) I'm a linguist (see the title of the blog); b) I teach a language and gender class; c) my daughters both have friends who identify as gender fluid, some of whom maintain their original gendered pronouns, others of whom prefer "they"; d) to my own surprise, I find myself struggling to use "they" to refer to a specific singular human being (although I have no trouble whatsoever using "they" to refer to a non-specified singular human being, and find the arguments that "they" can only be used with a plural antecedent specious, see more below).  It's the combination of those things that attracts my attention, in the form of - hunh, I wonder what's going on there?  I have, in the past, had relatively little trouble when friends (or friends of the girls) change their preferred names.  After some mistakes, I usually settle into the new name fairly quickly.  I am definitely of the opinion that people should get to decide what they're called, whether as individuals or groups - naming is a form of power, and the protests of the dominant group that they can't keep up with the preferred names of non-dominant groups is a way of maintaining power.  Any time someone protests over something like a name change, or a particular way that language is used, it's time to start looking at power structures.  (When someone says, what's the big deal with me using X label to refer to you, instead of your preferred Y?  I always want to say, if it's not such a big deal, why not just do it?  The answer is because it is a big deal - naming is power, and the right to name is a way of asserting power.)  So what the heck is it that makes it so difficult for me to remember that my daughter's friend is "they" rather than "she"?

In response to the article, I posted the following**:
As a linguist who teaches about language and gender, I have always found the insistence that “they” shouldn’t be used to refer to a single person problematic, in the sense that such a rule doesn’t describe what many people actually do with language*** - which is to use “they/them” to refer to singular, unknown or unspecified people. We do this all the time, and to suggest that it’s confusing or ungrammatical to say “Everyone should turn in their homework now” doesn’t accurately capture reality. The place where I have unexpectedly found myself struggling is when referring to a known and specific human being as “they”. My sense is that this is difficult for me precisely because, in my mental grammar, “they” encodes a nonspecific person; I don’t think I’m alone. Nor do I think that this is immutable - we change the way we speak all the time. Grammatical elements of language (pronouns, in this case) are more difficult to change, but not impossible. As a relevant case in point, consider our second-person pronoun, “you”. Historically, “you” was our plural pronoun, while “thee/thou” was the singular. I don’t think anyone would argue now that it’s confusing to say “you should come to dinner” - even though sometimes it is (do you mean me? Or my whole family?). We negotiate those confusions in other ways [e.g., the addition of y'all to our lexicon; and when y'all, in some dialects, came to refer to singular human beings, the further addition of all y'all]. So there is no reason why our pronominal system can’t absorb a similar change in the third person. And many reasons why it should.

I've been mulling this over more since then.  Someone posted a question on my comment, saying that they thought that "thee/thou" was like Spanish "usted", that is, a formal pronoun, which caused me to confirm my assertion (I was correct; here's an interesting summary).  Basically, the pronoun "you", once simply a second-person plural pronoun, came to have a pragmatic function of also indicating respect, or of denoting a relationship between strangers (as "vous" does in French).  "Thee", over time, began to fall out of usage, except in intimate relationships in some dialects.  But it had already been encoded in the King James Bible, and in poetry, and so began to take on an additional pragmatic function as a marker of religious or poetic language, which is probably why the person who commented thought it meant the formal (when, in fact, in the Bible and poetry, it was simply marking the singular).  Summary: pronouns can come to mean more than simply first/second/third person singular/plural; they can also denote social relationships or roles.  When those additional denotations become the dominant meaning in the mental grammars of speakers, then language changes.  

The idea that we can't use "they" to refer to a specific, single, human being because it's ungrammatical or confusing just doesn't square with the evidence.  But it does square with the kinds of language ideologies that we use to police non-dominant groups.  And it does square with a strong belief that we shouldn't have to be uncomfortable when we speak - an idea that is only true for the dominant group (non-dominant groups in any given setting live with discomfort when they speak).  I tend to think that discomfort is important - it tells us when hidden norms and values are being challenged, and gives us an opportunity to look at them head-on, and to ask, whose values and norms?  To whose benefit/loss?  And, where do I stand?

*  Just for those who don't swim around in grammar all the time, some definitions.  First person refers to the speaker (in English, I/me/we/us).  Second person refers to the the addressee - the person or people being spoken to (therefore, the second people in a conversation)(in English, you).  And third person (as I always say to my students) refers to the spoken-about (she/her/he/him/they/them).
**  I am not one of those folks who leaves comments all the time - I very rarely do.  I also very rarely read comments, because they usually just annoy the crap out of me.  As my comment probably did to some other poor soul who chose to read it.
*** Linguistics is the study of what people actually do with language.  In other words, we describe real-world language use, rather than prescribing how language ought to be used.  A linguistic anthropologist, such as myself, might look at ideologies around how language "should" be used as an object of study, but our field is not focused on grammatical nitpicking.  That is not to say that we don't all have our pet peeves around language use - but when we are being professional, we know that those are ideologies/opinions, rather than true statements about grammar; the question of "good" versus "bad" language is not a linguistic one.  I often wish more people knew this, because as soon as I say I'm a linguist in any social gathering, people find some excuse to wander off and never talk in front of me again.  Little do they know that, rather than judging, I am listening carefully so I can gather data!  (mwahaha)

Reflections on Instagram and conversations about racism in the knitting community

I have been absorbed in the conversation on Instagram this week, about racism in the knitting community.  I have been reading, watching people’s stories about the precipitating event and about the responses to that event, thinking carefully. (Note: by “precipitating event”, I don’t mean “isolated incident” – I mean “one thing that looks a lot like countless other things that just haven’t happened to lead to a big important conversation, even though they should have.)  What I’ve seen has resonated with what I know to be true in academia, and with what I have been also seeing and worrying a lot about in the mindfulness community, where words like ‘forgiveness’ are bandied about without any context or discussion of what it means to tell, for example, POC to forgive without a concomitant addressing of the ongoing institutional violence and oppression that they are being asked to forgive.  That, folks, is a problem.  That is something that I’d like to talk more about in the future, when I can make better reference to the people who are on the front lines of dealing with that, and who have written and spoken wisely and thoughtfully about it. 

By the same token, I don’t want to summarize the discussion on IG or speak for the people who have done so much educating – that they shouldn’t have to do – over the past week.  I’d instead refer you to: @ggmadeit; @thecolormustard; @su.krita, who kindly gave me permission to point you in their direction.  There are many other people doing this work whom I hope you will seek out as well.

I really wasn’t sure that I’d end up saying anything about this, for a couple of reasons.  The first has to do with my own use of IG, which, until this week, has largely been to follow friends and family – in other words, it hasn’t been a place where I’ve engaged a whole lot with the knitting community.  In the last week, though, IG has become a place where I follow knitters and spinners.  In some ways, I’m not sure how I feel about that, because I’ve been trying to spend less time on social media, not more.  But at the same time, I can’t regret the inspiration I have drawn from the projects and work of so many fantastic and creative women.  So.

This blog is the space where I have done much more connecting and thinking about making and the world of makers.  And this is the space where I have to look at and think carefully about the makeup of the blogs and bloggers I follow, which are almost exclusively white women.  That is not OK, and it is not OK that I hadn’t until now taken steps to change that - to make sure that the blogs that I read and follow represent the world that I live in.  I also have to think about my disappointment in several of the well-known white women designers whose work I love and whose blogs and IG feeds I do follow, who have said absolutely nothing about the work that’s been done this week.  It’s impossible for me to imagine that they don’t know about it, so where are their voices?  Where is their work to amplify those who have spoken so clearly this week?

And that’s what finally helped me to realize that I need to say something.  I don’t have a lot of readers any more, and I don’t have very many followers on IG who are part of the knitting community.  (In fact, for those of you who aren’t knitters who followed the link from my IG feed – hi!  Yes, I have a knitting blog – who knew, right?). So, it’s not like I can do a lot of amplifying here.  And I don’t want to tell the stories that BIPOC members of the community live every day and have told so well (see those references above – there are so many more).  Instead, I want to talk about parts of the response to those stories that have disturbed me greatly, and that have done additional violence to those who exposed themselves in coming forward to talk about their experiences of racism in the knitting community. 

And I want to say this very clearly to those women who have been doing all of this work – that, I say again, they should not have to do – I hear you.  I know that you know this, but I want to say that I know that you are not crazy.  Racism and its effects in the knitting community (and academia, and the mindfulness community, and and and…) are real and corrosive.  Thank you.  Thank you for taking the time and emotional energy to talk about that.  Thank you for your continuing work in calling people out on the deeply problematic ways that they’ve responded to the initial discussion.  I can’t imagine the toll it’s taken on you and continues to take on you.

It’s those responses that I want to talk about a little more.  I can’t say that I’ve been surprised by the way that many WW have responded, nor by what they’ve said in their own posts, and in the comments on the posts I reference above.  But I have been disgusted and appalled.  There are two trends in particular that I want to call out.  First, the “I’ve been afraid to say something” (because someone might get mad at me, I might say the wrong thing, etc).  And second the “let’s get past this/I want this space to return to being my happy space/let peace begin with me/let’s level up” responses. 

OK.  “I’ve been afraid to say something because I might say the wrong thing and then someone might get mad at me.”  I hear this all the time from young men in my gender classes.  (And I, too, feel that fear.)  There they are, perhaps for the first time, sitting in a room with women who talk about the ways that sexism and violence against women inform everything that women do, every single day.  And at some point, some young man says exactly that: I’m afraid to talk because I might say the wrong thing and someone might get mad at me.  And I say – and I say this with genuine love and sympathy – good.  You should be afraid, and you should know what it’s like to have to watch every word you say because someone might take it the wrong way and police you.  Welcome to the lived experience of members of oppressed groups, who have to watch what they say all the time.  All. The. Time.  Every minute of every day.  And for whom the consequences of saying “the wrong thing” aren’t just facing the momentary discomfort of being called out for it.  The consequences are far worse and far more systematic.  Loss of jobs.  Violence.  Lack of justice for violence perpetrated against them.  All of that and more.  So, with love, I say this same thing to the women on IG who have left that comment: sit with that discomfort.  Think carefully before you speak.  And, when you have something important and useful to say, say it with care, and then listen, with care, to what people have to say to you.  If someone takes the time and energy to tell you that what you just said was problematic, think for a moment about how hard it was for them to do that – given that difficulty, assume that what they’re saying is important enough to take on board.  And that goes for what I’m saying here.  There is no way that I am getting this all right.  I am trying my best, but I live and breathe a racist system just like the rest of us.  I am sorry for what I am getting wrong, and while I don’t think it is anyone’s job to educate me, if any of you want to share with me how I can do better, I am listening.

My other response to this fear of saying the wrong thing is this: maybe we should all be careful, all the time, of our words.  I’m a linguist in no small part because I believe in my guts that words are powerful things.  They change worlds.  With Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Day coming up, I can’t help but think of his famous speech – when he said he had a dream, he was speaking that dream into reality.  We are not there yet, but his words call into being the possibility of a better future.  Which is what we all need to be working towards, and what I hope the knitting community can take a step towards, thanks to the powerful words of women who spoke and speak out.

And that brings me to that other response that I’m really hating right now: Ok, we’ve said this stuff, now can we go back to our peaceful happy place?  First off, if we really read what people had to say, we’d see that, obviously, that space is neither peaceful nor happy for those folks who wrote about the problem of racism in the community.  Right?  So we can’t go back to that – we shouldn’t want to.  We should want to go forward, to something more inclusive.  How can this be my happy place if it’s someone else’s oppressive place?  This is the hard and important work for white people: to see and acknowledge and feel the pain and violence that white supremacy causes to us.  To white people.  To want to return to a happy place that we know is exclusionary to others makes us less human.  I don’t want to be less human, just because it’s easy.  And I don’t want my desire to dismantle racism to come from a place of white saviourhood, which is what happens when I think of it as something that’s happening to “them”, over there.  Racism is toxic, period.

This also highlights a thing that I’ve mulled over in both personal and social relationships for a long time: the habit that people have of wanting to take credit for the good without taking responsibility for the bad.  In personal relationships, this happens when I say, but these things you did? They were abusive and painful.  And the person I’m talking to says, why do you always want to talk about the bad things?  What about all of the good things? 

Yep, the good things are there.  But you can’t pretend that’s all that’s there just because it’s easier and more comfortable, when the bad things are making lumps under the rug where you’ve swept them.

In history, white folks want to do this.  We want credit for Lincoln without taking the responsibility for Jackson.  And responsibility doesn’t mean a quick mea culpa and then can we move on please?  I’m thinking restitution. I’m thinking dismantling structures that replicate the injustices “of the past” again and again.  Sorry and now let’s move on doesn’t cut it. 

I didn’t mean to write this much, and I think it’s time to stop and listen. A few final words.  First, if anyone reading this has responded in one of these ways, please realize that doing so, or glossing over this past week as if it didn’t happen, is another form of violence.  Please don’t do that.  The second thing is to remember to see the women who came forward to speak in all of their resilience and glory.  Their feeds are full of creativity and beauty that I find totally inspiring.  Please don’t treat their feeds as pain porn to feed some kind of white liberal guilt.  This conversation is one part of a much larger whole – a critical part, but not all that there is.

Thank you.

At a total loss

I was going to write a post today about all of the projects that have required re-dos in the last week or so, with the good news that things generally seem to be back on track. But my mental composition came too soon, apparently.

I have been struggling with the finishing work on the Northmavine Hoody, which requires, let me tell you, a LOT of finishing work. Mostly, I have been doing it with good cheer. There was the hood, which required unkitchenering and further knitting (because it was too small), but I did that. And then there were the endless ends to be woven in (four for every eight rows of knitting for the entire sweater, arms, and hood), but last weekend I put many hours into that job and got it done. I kitchenered the underarms. I knitted the pockets. And then it was time to pick up stitches to knit the facing around the fronts and hood edges. I did that. All 500+ stitches, then six rows of knitting. So far so good.

Then it was time to turn to the wrong side and pick up stitches in the purl bumps left by the first round of pick-up-stitch. That was not easy. It was so not-easy, in fact, that I resorted to another option: I turned to the right side, picked up one leg of every knit stitch in the original pick-up row, and then turned everything back around and worked from there. That seemed to work, but knitting the five rows for the inside facing was fiddly, fiddly, fiddly. Partly because it's just long row after long row, and partly because each of those long rows had to be completed while working around the needle that was holding the front facing stitches. And (it must be admitted), partly because I was working with stitches squeezed tightly onto several shorter-than-optimal needles, because I just cannot see buying yet another pair of needles for this project, just to do this one thing (believe me when I say I have, one way or another, already bought an unconscionable number of needles for this project).

But I persevered. Through knitting the two facings, and then through the endless three-needle bind-off to attach them, leaving live stitches that now, in the almost-final stage of finishing, should be available for an i-cord bind-off. Except not.

Because something just is not right, and I haven't a clue why not, and I could really use some help here.

If you look at that first picture, you might be able to see what I'm talking about. See how the stitches look all lovely and straight on the left, and then start biasing increasingly as you go right? The biasing continues about halfway around, and then the stitches mysteriously line up neatly again.

The second photo shows the neatly lined up stitches. And the third, the neatly lined up inside facing stitches. But then, presto chango: bias.

And I don't know why. All the stitches were picked up the same way. And they line up, no biasing at all, along both fronts, biasing increasingly along the tops of the fronts and the hood. If I'd misaligned the stitches, I'd expect the biasing to continue all the way around once it starts, but it doesn't. At this point, the only option I can see is to rip this all out (a week of work!), and start again, but I hate to do that when I don't know what I did wrong in the first place - because how will I avoid doing it again? Any thoughts? I could use some advice here...