Intersections
Living in colour & complexity
Greetings, this Presidents Day, Black History month, the Mardi Gras-to-Lent of Christian seasons and Lenten rose of the gardening one.
As for intersections, from both news and psychological perspectives today’s title theme is more spaghetti-junction-interchange than a black-&-white crossroad with 4-way-stopsigns.
Hence the illustration at top center. (Plus I liked the photo’s hint of Mardi Gras colors.)
With Presidents Day at left some early looks at ‘24 election politics are again illustrated by Ben Wiseman of The New York Times. A serendipity from columnist Frank Bruni, his column (linked below) this week happened to be a highway alert sign apt for today’s theme. He added it to last week’s floor-style 2024 caution. By the November ‘24 election it may be interesting to view a collection of these together.
Now for that wonky-sounding mouthful, what I fear may be another emerging buzzword or dog-whistle weaponized on many unlikely fronts of the never-ending so-called culture wars…
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Intersectionality
As noted last week, or you maybe have been seeing as well, the banning of this idea — even use of the word itself — is showing up among efforts in a growing number of Republican-led states. Among these: “don’t say gay, slavery, white supremacy, Jim Crow, discrimination, economic inequity, civil rights movements, heroes or history;” so-called “parents’ bills of rights;” “Moms for Liberty/M4L” conservative-action groups’ book-bans; and non-academic political-appointee trustees defining, re-creating and eliminating college and university curricula and faculty.
All are seemingly spontaneous, grass-roots efforts arising one issue-, one community- and state-at-a-time — by right-thinking Americans.
All are also remarkably similar in language, content and inter-connecting of seemingly unrelated issues, solutions to non-problems. Ironic that they are quite, well… intersectional.
That’s a terribly cumbersome term, and I find I still lament that ‘woke’ has become so politically hijacked and weaponized beyond usefulness anytime soon. Both news and psychology/mental health dimensions here had me revisiting last spring’s 4.24.22 edition Imprints and Blindspots: A Bifocal Take on American “Wokeness.” (Under subhead “On Woke and Wokeness.”)
Meanwhile, here’s at least an operating definition of intersectionality:
Back in 1996 the Harvard and UCLA law profesor Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term in her writing and teaching regarding civil rights and equality. It’s most commonly used and assumed to refer to the interconnected nature of various ways we experience, think of and identify ourselves — such as age, disability, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, indigenous group membership, nationality, gender and race. Examining these as overlapping and interdependent informs understanding of how that exacerbates the disadvantage and discrimination people experience.
Until recently less studied or applied is that intersectionality’s converse is also, importantly valid: The interconnected, overlapping and interdependent areas of relative privilege also exacerbate advantage, blindness to discriminiation and presumption of merit rather than recognition of hardship.
I was looking to apply intersectionality in relatable terms for different situations:
🌀For journalists and scholars it’s skillful inquiry and contextualizing.
🌀For psychologists and mental-health practitioners of all sorts, it’s our second-nature use of the “ADDRESSING” model (an acronym roughly like the categories listed above.)
🌀In fields from business and the law to sales and effective retail politics it’s known — and can be rewarded or punished mightily — as applied emotional intelligence.
🌀From vast research, educators know that empathy and behaviors expressing it are learned — thus best taught — from stories of people and fictional literary characters with whom we can identify and feel compassion (not from rules, controls, secrecy.) This, by the way, similarly describes that famous teacher followed by so many students/disciples including Republicans: Jesus — for whom a primary teaching tool was parables of the outcast, thief, prostitute, powerless other.
🌀From soul perspectives both psychological and religious, intersectionality is from the ecumenical view. That involves engaging, learning from both the other of the unconscious/Soul and the other person’s faith — the other’s “country.” The process thus informs, deepens or transforms one’s own.
It’s reassuring to consider how deeply and widely intersectionality is woven throughout Americans’ lives and endeavors. It’s difficult to fathom that any of us, vastly privileged to profoundly marginalized and oppressed, would want — or can afford — to eliminate this way of learning, thinking and operating for coming generations.
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Moving to some examples from current news-scape, the two following segments combine stories, visual illustrations, a few quotes and comments that in different ways demonstrate an interconnected or intersecting approach. Following and pondering this week’s fare has had some of that “first this… and then, this?” quality.
“Let’s Talk About It” … (or, Nah, Let’s Don’t?)
Starting with illustration at bottom left column, we have former SC governor and Trump administration UN ambassador Nikki Haley on Tuesday announcing her 2024 presidential election campaign. In the announcement video (browsable on You Tube) she manages to both play her own proverbial race-cards and proclaim that “nothing could be further from the truth” than American systemic racism.
Nikki Haley announces she is running for president (The Washington Post)
Nikki Haley released a video Tuesday saying, “It’s time for a new generation of leadership.” She added, “I’m Nikki Haley, and I’m running for president.”
For many reasons Haley by all accounts has a heavy lift to be a viable candidate. But she’s meanwhile a good illustration of the needle-threading aspect of intersectionality, even while one denies its validity or existence. This piece rather nails that.
Nikki Haley’s Announcement Video Is a Sloppy Mess (New York Magazine)
The video does get off to an interesting start, leaning into Haley’s racial identity as the daughter of Indian immigrants who grew up feeling “different” in a state with a deep history of racism and Black-white divisions… She solemnly attacks liberals who say the U.S.’s “ideas are not just wrong but racist and evil” as images of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the “1619 Project,” and Black Lives Matter protests are shown. In fact, what leftist critics invariably say is that the U.S.’s ideas are noble, but their implementation has been hypocritically lacking.
Haley timed her non-racist-America “strong and proud, not weak and woke” campaign launch during the federal court domestic terrorism sentencing trial for racist hate crimes. Defendant was the Buffalo mass-shooter who staked-out and targeted a predominantly Black neighborhood grocery store and killed multiple victims, nearly all of them Black.
Buffalo Gunman Sentenced to Life in Emotional and Dramatic Hearing (NYT)
During a statement from a victim’s relative, a member of the court audience had to be restrained after lunging at the gunman.
BUFFALO — The gunman in a racist massacre at a Buffalo supermarket last year was sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole on Wednesday, after apologizing for his attack amid a torrent of raw emotions from the victims’ families, including one man who lunged at him in court.
“You will never see the light of day as a free man again,” the judge, Susan Eagan, said after reading a statement about the harmful effects of institutional racism and white supremacy, calling it an “insidious cancer on our society and nation.”
The sentence reflected the outcome of a guilty plea to 10 counts of first-degree murder and a single count of domestic terrorism motivated by hate, which carries a penalty of life imprisonment without parole. He was the first person in New York convicted of that domestic terrorism charge.
As for Haley and her own history…
The photo at top left depicts the Confederate flag that flew at the SC state house —until then-governor Haley ordered it removed, a week after a flag-toting avowed white supremacist gunned down nine Black Charlestonians, including a legislator clergyman, at church. That was before she decided nothing could be “further from the truth” than a racist America.
S.C. Gov. Haley calls for removal of Confederate flag near the state Capitol (June 22, 2015, The Washington Post)
Since the church shooting last week in Charleston, more and more people have called for the removal of a Confederate flag hanging near the state capitol.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley Signs Bill Removing Confederate Flag (NBC News, July 9, 2015)
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley signed into law a bill that removes the Confederate battle flag from the capitol.
Unbelievably bipartisan as it seems in today’s environment, along with Haley this move had vocal, enthusiastic support from both Charleston’s popular longtime mayor, Democrat Joe Riley, along with Republican U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham.
Moving to center column above…
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DeSantis’ Florida: A war on wokeness… presidential pre-campaign… both?
Pictured are Florida protest marches and continued actions by as-yet-unannounced, presumed-2024 presidential candidate, Governor Ron DeSantis. (A horror-ticket fantasy of mine would be a DeSantis/Haley run.)
DeSantis ramps up ‘war on woke’ with new attacks on Florida higher education (The Guardian)
OPINION/Dismiss Ron DeSantis at Your Peril (Frank Bruni/Yield sign illustration by Ben Wiseman of The Times)
DeSantis Retrograde “War on Woke” Education, Social Progress Stirs Protest in Florida Capital (Alex Wagner, MSNBC & NBC News)
This one features Crenshaw, who coined intersectionality decades ago, and provides a thorough look at how these various “war on woke” efforts, about seemingly different issues, are related.
Florida Officials Had Repeated Contact With College Board Over African American Studies (NYT)
Looking more broadly at education across America….
OPINION/America Should Be in the Middle of a Schools Revolution (David Brooks, NYT)
Schools become flashpoint for Republicans eyeing White House (AP in The Charlotte Observer).
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… now add mental-health, gender roles and identity, sexual orientation… plus the politics of US education
At top right column is an Arizona prayer vigil memorializing the large numbers of teens lost to suicide in recent years. The photo highlights a horrific CDC report this week, releasing a large national study’s findings of dire increases in suicide, trauma, sexual violence and bullying for teens.
The bottom photo, of two books removed and banned from two Charlotte high schools on insistence of Moms for Liberty M4L. The book title underscores this and NC legislative actions to limit and restrict the very federal teen risk survey that reveals the dire, life-threatening problems teens are facing.
Two Charlotte schools pull books after complaint about sexually explicit content (The Charlotte Observer)
An important reminder that race is far from the only often-overlapping, intersectional concern. At stake are grave, even life-and-death ones involving mental health — including the critically needed work of school psychologists and social workers considered a first line of response to the nation’s escalating teen mental-health crisis.
Teen girls ‘engulfed’ in violence and trauma, CDC finds (The Washington Post)
Almost 15 percent of teen girls said they were forced to have sex, a 27 percent increase over two years. Thirteen percent attempted suicide, compared with 7 percent of boys.
Most comprehensive of the stories here on this, Richard Weissbourd, the Harvard lecturer and psychologist quoted actually describes a dictionary example of intersectionality as fundamental:
…not a single cause to explain the data but rather interacting causes that vary by race, ethnicity, class, culture [LGBTQ or questioning] and access to mental health resources.
Since 2011 this is an every-two-years federal Youth Risk Behavioral Survey. The 2021 results both reflect and detail the exponential increase in deadliest and most traumatic risk factors — such as suicidality and sexual violence — during and since the covid pandemic.
This is the same survey restricted or eliminated by parental opt-out in the current so-called Republican-led “Parent Bill of Rights” bill underway in North Carolina’s legislature. It’s a single vote — or absentee Democratic legislator — away from being passed through overriding of the Democratic governor’s veto.
Unfortunately at-risk students, with parents who refuse to allow the survey questions even to be asked, are then at extremely high risk of never seeking or getting the help they need. (Besides the difficult job of teachers, it is unimaginable to me how the psychologists, social workers and counselors schools so desperately need can possibly build the deep trust relationships essential to their work of helping teens in this environment.)
‘Parents’ Rights’ bill may hurt mental health funding (The Charlotte Observer)
Important to note about this most recent national risk-factor survey, the schools surveyed are both public and private. Significant increases in depression, trauma and suicidality involve several groups. But parents and legislators resisting the survey — and open dialogue and resources about risk factors including sexuality — would do well to note that the survey is far from irrelevant regarding large numbers of whites, and girls:
White students were more likely to experience sexual violence than Asian, Black and Hispanic students, and they were the only group to see an increase in it…
Though usage was significantly down over a decade, girls were more likely than boys to have consumed alcohol and used marijuana during the past 30 days. They also were more likely to have recently vaped or ever used illicit drugs such as cocaine, heroin, inhalants, meth and hallucinogens.
Girls were almost twice as likely as boys to be electronically bullied through texting and social media. The targets of bullying were more likely to be White, American Indian or Alaska Native, or LGBQ+.
Other reports on the findings…
Teen girls and LGBTQ+ youth plagued by violence and trauma, survey says (NPR)
CDC says teen girls are caught in an extreme wave of sadness and violence (NBC News)
A new report finds an "overwhelming wave of violence and trauma" and never-before-seen levels of hopelessness and suicidal thoughts among high school students in the U.S.
Turning now to the month’s focus…
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Honoring Black History
Hope through an immigrant’s view…
Montana’s Black Mayor (The Atlantic)
Wilmot Collins fled a civil war in Liberia with big ideas about what America can be. But can it ever live up to what he imagined?
And yet, citing and underscoring the forces and efforts of the current environment as noted above…
Alma Adams: Sound the alarm. Black history is under attack (The Charlotte Observer.) Pictured at right.
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All of which points toward the still-a-work-in-progress aspirational aspect, the goal of increased conscious awareness, in one of today’s title phrases:
living in colour…
Pictured at center are key figures in the recent CBS Sunday Morning story commemorating President Harry Truman’s historic executive order to desegregate the U.S. Armed forces — and the continued struggles for full equality during each of the nearly seven and a half decades since. The piece is well worth the full read, or video viewing.
Fighting For Racial Equality in the Military (CBS Sunday Morning 2.12.23. Text and video versions linked.)
Some of my comments, a couple of which surprised me:
🌀The shift in these visuals, both pictures here and video version, from the black & white/gray of old newsreels and newspapers to color had an unexpected intensity.
🌀 I don’t personally recall finding color vs black & white TV particularly dramatic, or exactly when the shift occurred. But viewing this feature, perhaps partly due to its subject of race and color, after b&w Harry Truman and soldiers at war in Vietnamese jungle there was a visceral coming fully to life element to the later pictures and interviews in color.
🌀 It seems a great image for those rare experiences where new awareness or aliveness floods in — perhaps meeting your child for the first time, falling deeply in love, bringing something creative to life, or grasping the full reality of another’s experience for the first time.
🌀At such times it’s as though colors fill in where the picture had been black & white… and everything else rendered grayscale by comparison. We become aware or conscious of things that had been hidden, unconscious. Paraphrasing Jung, bidden or not, soul comes in.
🌀 It occurs to me that this may be a good addition to alive and awake as substitute terms for woke: Living in Colour (with the alternative British “u” a good reminder to use mindfully.)
🌀Oh, and of course an ear-worm accompanied this week’s process: Chicago’s Colour My World.
Toward closing,
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The week’s Mardi Gras…
Mardi Gras is translated from the French as Shrove Tuesday in Christian tradition. From Latin, shrove is having been “shriven,” or sins confessed. In America it’s also called Fat Tuesday, when traditionally often pancakes are eaten. This is to get foods such as sugar, eggs and fat out of the house before the 40 days of fasting during Lent that begins Wednesday.
Mardi Gras colors are: Purple, symbolizing justice; Green for faith; and Gold for power.
Pictured here at top center is the symbolic fleur-di-lis, literally translated flower of the lily. It depicts New Orleans’ deep ties to France since explorer La Salle first claimed the Mississippi Valley in King Louis XVI’s name, placing the fleur-de-lis flag.
The other photos here are of Lenten rose (helleborus) in garden. And the arrangement is from several springs ago, when my floral-whiz mom was still able to envision, gather and create such pieces with all-seasons’ magic. Lenten rose is a favorite for its unusual green-white blooms in the middle of dreary winter even in snow, and lovely evergreen foliage year-around.
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Today I leave you with some chuckles. Colbert’s in fine form regarding his “best friend” fellow South Carolinian Nikki Haley. It’s a good warm-up for laugh-aloud tribute to “Meatball Ron” DeSantis (which Colbert sings to the tune of Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl.”) Be forewarned, the latter might stick in your head. For days…
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And, that is all I have! Talk to you next week.
🦋💙 tish
… it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
— William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”
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