Sobre el sexismo en la vida cotidiana

I have had a version of this conversation several times in the past month.

Whiteman, with or without education: Public higher education in the United States is free.
Professor Zero: It is not.
WM: You are wrong. The United States is a rich country and the definition of public education is that it is free.
PZ: I have three or four higher degrees from U.S. institutions and I am tenured faculty at one; I know a little more about the cost of higher education in the U.S. than you do.
WM: I do not believe you. You need to come to dinner with me so that we can debate this matter.
PZ: Thank you, but I am not available.
WM: You need to be available, because this conversation is of great interest to me. What is your cell phone number?
PZ: I don’t know.
WM: What? You don’t know? That’s terrible! Why don’t you know?
PZ: Women don’t know things.
WM: You need to know your cell phone number for your safety!
PZ: I don’t know it so that, even when I am wracking my brain for ways to bow out of a situation like this one with some kind of grace, I will be unable to cede to pressure to give it out.
WM: You mean you don’t want to go to dinner?
PZ: That is what I said.
WM: Is there another man?
PZ: That does not concern you.
WM: Of course it does, because I am interested. If there is no other man then it is your duty to have dinner with me so I can explain the U.S. higher education system to you.

Normally I do not let the conversation develop this far but at an event where my interlocutor was a friend of a friend I had to.

Axé.

Sobre el racismo en la vida cotidiana

Gonzalo Portocarrero (among others) says we should look at racism in daily life. The other day we went to a rather fancy lunch at RUSTICA and I noticed that many employees - many more than in most restaurants - were Afro-Peruvian. It had to be intentional.

Given the atmosphere the restaurant creates I decided this was superficially an attempt to demonstrate that we really were eating traditional Creole food, and more deeply, an attempt to satisfy our nostalgia for slavery. When the women employees got up on the bar and danced a festejo, I knew for certain that the restaurant was selling race and gender in addition to food, folklore and the chance to spend a few hours inside a beautifully restored early 19th century building.

I doubt anyone else in the restaurant had this reaction and I strongly suspect that had I said anything I would have been told that I was overly sensitive to racial issues like all Americans, that I was puritanical, and that I was imperialistically supposing that acts which might be considered racist in the U.S. are racist everywhere.

I think that although race may be expressed and understood differently in different places, racism is remarkably uniform.

Axé.

El nuevo look

For over twenty years South American haircutters of various nationalities have periodically redesigned my hair such that I have big puffy bangs, minimal sides, and a tail - like a large version of the classic cut for short hair, since my hair still stays long. These haircutters do no not know each other but it is as though they were in collusion with each other to convince me that this is how I should have my hair. Now it has been done again and for the first time, it actually looks good. I may try to have it reproduced in the U.S.

Axé.

On Jindal and Katrina

Bobby Jindal is worse than Katrina. Read all about it at FireDogLake. I was tipped off to this post by the resting Redstar Perspective.

See also Dancing With Katrina, by Geoffrey Philp, dedicated to our own Kalamu ya Salaam.

*

Our other featured post for today is Incipit, on academia and integrity, by Servetus. Here in Lima there is full sun for once but most of us are suffering from malaise, partly due to winter and smog, and partly due to work and family problems. We are being inspired by Servetus.

Barack Obama, meanwhile, is drifting further to the right.

Axé.

More Support for the Opposition to the Putative Virtue of Powerlessness

I

This is the Fourth of July, an excellent day to be un- “A-merry-can”, as the Field Negro would put it, so I choose it as yet another day to oppose the Reeducation industry and its belief in the virtues of powerlessness. Check this out:

Feeling powerless is no fun. A lack of control can make the difference between contented and unhappy employees. But new research shows that a lack of power doesn’t just make people feel disgruntled. It has a more fundamental effect on their mental skills.

In a series of experiments, Pamela Smith from Radboud University Nijmegen has shown that the powerless actually take a measurable hit to important mental abilities. Even if people are subconsciously primed with the concept of being powerless, they perform more poorly at tasks designed to assess their ability to plan, focus on goals and ignore distractions.

According to previous research, a lack of power forces people to constantly re-evaluate their own goals and monitor more senior individuals. Without authority, a person’s actions rely on instructions and may constantly change at the whim of their superiors, whose own motives and goals must be guessed at. Monkeys show similar behaviour. Studies have found that subordinate rhesus males follow the gaze of those with higher status, while dominant individuals only look in the same direction as others with greater standing.

Smith reasoned that this constant re-evaluation draws the brain’s resources away from other needs, including a set of mental abilities known as “executive functions”. The term is loosely defined but accurately named and refers to a set of master processes that govern and control more basic abilities, like attention and motor skills. They allow us to plan for the future, adapt to new situations and carry out our goals. They allow us to carry out actions that further our goals while restraining us from those that hamper them.

And yes, I know that the Reeducators will now say that this is not what they mean when they discuss powerlessness. Unfortunately they also say they do mean this, when they encounter someone who has personal power.

II

I think my fundamental issue with the Reeducative enterprise is its essentialism, i.e. the idea of a fixed identity and a “real you” that is necessarily the layer of yourself which has the characteristics Reeducation seeks to bring to light.

Another major issue for me in Reeducation was its negativity. For instance: the PhD I did, and the research interests I developed, grew in some part out of certain problems I had or had had. According to Reeducation that made it a bad idea.

It also seems to me that Reeducation did not give people enough credit and insisted too much that they do their worst and not their best. This is where I disagree with it most strongly.

My third major issue with Reeducation is how judgmental its denizens were.

III

The day I wrote this post, I took 45 minutes out of a work day to help somebody who doesn’t read well, read a legal document. I know the Reeducation people would say he was wasting my time and I was being ‘codependent,’ but I disagree. Now, they would have praised me had I done this on television, or through a national organization which would give me credit for doing this, because then I would have been “doing something for myself.”

But to just do something as a true favor or as a courtesy or out of friendship is frowned upon and I have cultural problems with Reeducation for this reason. In fact I do have the power to help this person read. In fact, armed with the information I gathered through my close reading, he is empowered to fight city hall, which he ought to do. They have no right to charge the fine on his building they want to charge, and they know it.

In Reeducation this neighbor would be told to submit to authority, admit he is powerless, and “take responsibility” for his putative error. I would be told that supporting him in his self-defense effort was “codependent” and “enabling” to him, and that identifying City Hall’s error was “blaming” them. But this is ridiculous … and it is why I oppose mainstream “A-merry-ca,” Reeducation, and the idea that powerlessness is a virtue.

And I note that Reeducation values private success but not political change. I have heard that there is a book criticizing Oprah, whom I do not watch, for helping to popularize a version of this view of the world to the masses.

Coda

I also find it very strange that in “A-merry-ca” individual Republicans are expected to feel powerless (and also “unsafe”) but also to expect the national government to exert all sorts of inappropriate and coercive power elsewhere, and that individual Democrats are expected to say they disagree with the government but are powerless to oppose it. It is these combinations of abdication of responsibility and extreme judgmentalism I find so strange.

Axé.

NOMINA DE PLATOS

Lima city water can be drunk, and there is no recycling, so if you insist on buying spring water in plastic bottles you are truly accelerating your contribution to global warming. And Peru is famous for food, so I am going to list some of the foods I encounter constantly.

That I like
AGUAYMANTO
AJI
AJI DE GALLINA
ANTICUCHOS
ARROZ CON POLLO
ARROZ CHAUFA
BISTEC A LO POBRE
CAPULI
CARAPULCRA
CAU CAU
CEVICHE
CHANFAINITA
CHIRIMOYA
CHOCLO
CHUÑOS
CHUPE DE CAMARON
CUY
KEKE
LOMO SALTADO
LUCUMA
MARACUYA
MONDONGO
MORCILLA
OLLUCO
PANCITA
PAPA HUANCAINA
PARIHUELA
POLLO A LA BRASA
QUINOA
RACHI
SOPA DE MOTE

That I don’t like
ARROZ CON LECHE
COLA INGLESA (like Danish “red soda,” truly horrid)
CHICHA MORADA
EMPANADAS
INKA COLA
GUANABANA
MAZAMORRA MORADA
PAPA RELLENA
PICARONES

The Latin American world is very faithful not only to Nescafé but also to preserved forms of milk. In Brazil it is powdered milk, and here it is condensed milk. There is fresh milk, and also pasteurized “long life” milk, and I buy these, but everyone wants condensed milk.

Axé.

Waripampa

Our cook is going to Huaripampa this weekend to investigate the possibility of buying property there, and I am envious. This video of one Huaripampa musical culture is not of the Huaripampa she is going to, and it was filmed in Lima, but it is truly excellent, so I am posting it as a way of singing.

Initially it was unknown what we would eat for the two days our cook would be gone. After much discussion it was resolved that before leaving she would leave food ready for the first day of her absence, and that we would eat out the second day. It is believed that she will be back on the third day in time to make lunch, but I notice she has not confirmed this herself. I think we may have a food crisis on that day, because we are utterly dependent upon her cooking.

Meanwhile, I have learned at last to read and write in the dim florescent light which pervades this country, I have discovered that the water does get hot if you wait ten minutes, and I am dressed in multiple layers against the cold and damp. I have a great deal of small change at all times for taxis, and I am the fourth best person in the house (putting me at the 50th percentile) at giving directions to cab drivers and bargaining for fares.

I am not taking buses or collective vans because many are inconvenient to where I live and I am trying to conserve energy. I still love the animated way the bus and van helpers hawk the destinations and routes. I am not walking (except on the beach and the malecón, which have ocean breezes and offer stellar Pacific views of the kind you know if you have been anywhere from southern Chile to Alaska) because the horns honk so much and the air pollution is so bad now that in most parts of town I do not cover more than a few blocks before succumbing to the noise and fumes.

Taxis, groceries, and clothes are inexpensive here, but prices of books, computers, cappuccinos, gasoline and haircuts are comparable to those of the United States (although I have also seen 98 octane gas advertised at $6 a gallon). My favorite bookstore is the Virrey on Miguel Dasso, and I like the Havanna espresso place next door.

The aforementioned venues are exceedingly comfortable and bourgeois, but the best places to buy clothes are the stores near the central market in Lima and the Gamarra market in La Victoria. I got an interesting tailored blazer in Lima for $30, and I could get a beautiful camel blazer for $45. At Gamarra I could get a full length coat of baby alpaca in an elegant cut for $70.

Axé.

La Prueba

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts’ desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

H.L. Mencken wrote this and just to make sure it was true I googled these two sentences, discovering that he wrote them in the Baltimore Sun on 26 July 1920. He was referring to the fact that since Presidential campaigns are waged in the media the candidate most likely to win is the most vacuous.

This of course also appears to be an anti-populist phrase. But I am often struck to see how accurate portrayals of nations still are decades and centuries later, and I am beginning to think there is actually an “American” national character.

*

That post was about as interesting as I could get today, a day I spent sifting through papers, taking notes, and having the impression that although I was now being diligent I was quite behind and was not advancing. When are things progressing by fits and starts, and when are they going in circles, was my question - in other words, how does one distinguish between optimism and sanity?

In desperation at 7:15 PM I discovered the best online cultural agenda of Lima and ran off to the play listed below, whose nature I was able to discover ahead of time by googling it. Really I was going because it was at 8 and I was interested in seeing a play directed by Francisco Lombardi, with whom I am only familiar as a film director. You can tell how behind I really am because I did not know the play, the author, or how famous both were. I also did not realize that the play would address in part my question of the day, how to distinguish between optimism and insanity.

Teatro del Centro Cultural PUCP
(av. Camino Real 1075 - San Isidro)

Teatro: “La prueba” de David Auburn (Estados Unidos), a cargo de Wendy Vásquez, Carlos Gassols, Vanessa Saba y Diego Lombardi, Dir.: Francisco Lombardi; a las 8:00pm.
Entrada general: S/.25

The Centro Cultural de la PUCP is lovely and elegant, and I do not know how old it is; I had not been there before. It has the theatre, a café, a good bookstore with genteel libreros, and more. It also has parking and everyone but me had apparently come in a car. Therefore cabs do not pass in front of it at night and the buses that stop at the corner are not going to my house. If you want to catch a cab, or choose from among a greater variety of buses and collective vans, from the CC-PUCP at night, I recommend walking to the Ovalo Gutiérrez which is nearby and has many vehicles.

Cabs here don’t have meters - you negotiate a price. It cost $3.67 to ride to the CC-PUCP from my house and $3.33 to ride back. That was because the second cab was older and smaller, I believe. Peruvians pay slightly less, but I do not get the very best prices because I look foreign. The play cost $8 so this most refreshing evening cost $15.

Axé.

Best of the Blues

It is the weekend, so we must sing! Singing recommendations for this weekend have been made by our contacts at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. They are singing with these stars:

BOBBY BLAND - Z.Z. HILL - ROBERT CRAY (especially the song “Back Door Slam”) - SIR CHARLES JONES - RAY CHARLES - JOHNNY TAYLOR - and MISS TOMMY YOUNG (especially the song “Do You Still Feel the Same Old Way?”).

Of these my favorites are Z.Z. Hill and Sir Charles Jones. This has in part to do with their names, since I am myself listening to other music at this point.

*

Specifically, the music to which we danced and sang included huaynos, Creole waltzes, and reggaeton. Before that I was at the feast of St. Peter in Chorrillos, wherein the saint is embarked on a fishing boat and set out to sea. TV Peru found me eating ceviche by the pier and interviewed me, and a friend who happened to turn on the news later in the day saw the clip.

Axé.

Film Movement

Film Movement is not a service like Netflix but in some ways it could replace it. Check it out. What do you think?

Meanwhile there is a complete and excellent blog on the Fujimori trial, which is ongoing. Alan García, our current president, also faces human rights charges for events including the El Frontón massacre. And I begin to realize why it is that Peru now reminds me of Nicaragua: it is war torn and you can really tell.

Axé.