Bukola's shared items
by Latoya Peterson
Here are the slides to our presentation, with a few quick notes added. Check back in about three hours, and we will have the video of the session and the Q & A available (just as soon as it finishes loading.)
Some things to remember: We found ourselves with about four hours of material that needed to be shrunk into forty minutes – so a lot of things we wanted to discuss (the Jade Raymond situation, recruitment and outreach from the gaming industry, how different races/ethnicity are represented in games) hit the cutting room floor. In one of the segments, I refer to a fifty page paper I’m holding on to – that paper covers those topics more in depth, and I will publish it here after I revise it some more.
(Special thanks to Naomi and N’Gai for agreeing to be on the panel, everyone who showed up, those who weren’t there but tweeted and retweeted the findings, and Allison Bland for volunteering to tape this!)
Social Justice and Video Games – Part 1 from Latoya Peterson on Vimeo.
by Latoya Peterson
Me, N’Gai Croal, and Naomi Clark are all in full effect at SXSW – and we are so excited to present the panel on Social Justice and Video Games. If you are at SXSW, we’re on level 3, room 6AB, at 3:30 PM CT.
If you are NOT at SXSW, we are going to do our best to stream the coverage for you. Naomi’s laptop just crashed, so I am not sure what we will have. The hashtag for our session is #gamingjustice – you can follow the tweets. I also brought a video camera, and we will be posting the slides from the presentation soon.
Photo credit: Bri, Joel & Indy by Kevin N. Murphy via Flickr
This Saturday, I moderated a panel on Power Couples for Harvard Business School’s H. Naylor Fitzhugh Conference. I learned some valuable lessons from the three couples on the panel on how you and your man can make it work.
Where and how you meet matters. All three couples said that the circumstances under which they met were positive influences on the development of their relationships. One couple met while they were both in the military. Since they were always neck-in-neck with similar rank, no one’s career was ever prioritized over the other person’s. Another couple met while the woman was in B-school and the man was getting his PhD, so they spent hours doing homework together and envisioning their future together. The last couple met through online dating, and they were able to put their expectations in the forefront since they both had children from prior partners and dated enough to know what they really wanted in a partner.
You need to have a shared vision. Each couple talked about how they explicitly had visioning sessions or discussions where they spent time thinking through what they wanted their life to be like. This sounded very fun to me, but I imagine it can also be a bit scary for a guy if you launch into visioning sessions early in the relationship. (I am very guilty of this. Mr. C and I often laugh about how I outlined our marriage timeline after three months of dating!) Having a shared vision provided a strong foundation for the couples so that when times got rough, they knew that they could count on one another to maintain the vision.
Marriage is not 50/50. It’s not always about each of you giving as much as the other person is giving. Sometimes, you have to give more than the other person is giving. When one panelist lost her job, she leaned on her husband to support them both. At this point, it was more like 70/30, but the couple still made a whole 100%. I had never thought about marriage as a fluctuating partnership, where sometimes you are giving more energy, effort, and financial support, and sometimes you are receiving more.
Two hard-charging careers cannot lead the relationship. Both of you can have high-paying, demanding, fulfilling careers, but not really at the same time. If you have children, your relationship with them will suffer. If it’s just the two of you, your relationship with one another will suffer. This was a hard one to hear, because I’d like to think that both my husband and I can be super-ambitious people at all times. It also makes me wonder if I’ll have to marry a Type B—or if I’ll have to tone down my own ambitions to keep my family together. I’d love to outline for all of you my current thoughts on how it could all go down, but seeing as I’m not engaged, I’ll keep my plans to myself.
Married people think about divorce! I was surprised to hear the couples say that divorce sometimes crossed their minds but that they never considered it as a viable option. It makes sense that a married couple might get exasperated and consider divorce, but it was so strange hearing it out loud! It made me wonder how explicitly the couples had discussed their views on divorce before getting married.
Married people have marriage mentors. Marriage is hard, and it’s really helpful to have people who can help show you the way, and keep you encouraged when you just want to give up. Just like mentors are indispensable in the job search, they are very important in fostering and maintaining a relationship with your husband. Having shared mentors that you can both turn to for guidance might be even better.
Faith matters. All three couples had a shared understanding of how important faith and spirituality was to them. I think that this is a very important aspect that I sometimes forget. I want to be with someone who encourages me to foster my spiritual practices and is there with me on the journey.
Maintaining intimacy is important. They weren’t just talking about having enough sex (Remember how Miranda and Steve hadn’t had sex in 6 months in the SATC movie?!). They talked about how important it is to do things as small as holding hands in public, letting your kids see you kiss, and kissing each other before you leave for work.
Marriage is really, really hard. All three couples kept emphasizing how challenging maintaining a marriage is. They said that Hollywood makes marriage look like this wonderful, sunshiney experience where everything in the world suddenly becomes right. One panelist said that she wishes her husband was still her boyfriend, because she misses having that time to just focus on the two of them and their relationship—rather than all the life obligations that take up lots of time and energy. This made me take pause with my eagerness to get married. I want to savor every stage of the relationship for what it is, and try not to rush us so much. It’s hard for us Crazy Girls, but this was a great reminder to let your boyfriend be your boyfriend—while you can both enjoy it.
Also, the reporter is looking to interview someone who fits the following:
"Do you own a condo, and someone else in the building rents (not from you)? Ever wonder who's better off?"
If you fit the qualification and are interested in being interviewed send me an email (bostongalsopenwallet at yahoo [dot] com) or leave a comment with your contact info and I will pass it along to the reporter.
By Deputy Editor Thea Lim
So we’ve been getting lots of emails about this, both from readers and friends – in late February Zeta Tau Alpha , a predominantly white sorority, beat out three black sororities at the Sprite Step-Off, nabbing the $100,000 prize and honours as the best step team in the country.
This caused an immediate backlash. In the video below, as soon as the second place winner is revealed you can hear the crowd booing while other audience members begin walking out:
Five days later, in an (alleged) panic Sprite announced that there was a scoring discrepancy, allowing them to announce a tie and give another $100,000 to the second place winners, Alpha Kappa Alpha.
For readers who don’t know about stepping and black sororities and fraternities, Lawrence Ross explains on CNN what it means to have a white sorority beat black greek associations at a massive, televised step comp:
To understand why this is a big deal, you have to understand that African-American fraternities and sororities are as close to the Animal House stereotype attached to white fraternities as Pat Boone is to hip-hop. Black fraternities and sororities, known as the Divine Nine, form the fiber of African-American leadership in this country and continue to produce the leaders of tomorrow.
…The roster of Divine Nine members is a Who’s Who in African America: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson, Michael Jordan, Maya Angelou, Dorothy Height and over a million others count themselves as members. The civil rights movement is populated with Divine Nine members who developed leadership skills on college campuses… Pride in one’s organization is paramount to Divine Nine members, and one way to express that is through stepping.
Divine Nine fraternities and sororities take great pride in being original and innovative in their dances: highly coordinated, with elaborate costumes, and sometimes performed before thousands. It’s a point of pride to perform, but to win for the glory of your fraternity or sorority is the ultimate.
So when Zeta Tau Alpha members won the Sprite Step Off, it was not just that they’d beaten African-American sororities, it was seen as the first assault on yet another African-American cultural tradition that, if not guarded, would be appropriated from blacks like jazz and hip-hop.
For Sprite, Zeta Tau Alpha was enough of a racial minefield to justify spending an extra $100,000 to quiet folks down. Ok, so that’s just speculation.
But there’s been a backlash to the backlash. Several prominent black journalists (including Lawrence Ross) have chastised the black greek community for complaining about the white win. Jason Whitlock writes that the case of Zeta Tau Alpha shows that “the moral of the story will be that black people have no issue with being just as discriminatory as the white power structure they rail against.” This thread on Bossip is full of commenters saying that it is racist for Bossip to have a problem with Zeta Tau Alpha’s win.
Do I think Zeta Tau Alpha deserved to win? I don’t know a lot about stepping, but I’m going to trust the judges and I assume they were amazing. But do I think they should have won?
Well, no.
Writing for the Root, Lawrence Ross says:
The problem with the arguments presented by the critics is that they tend to gloss over the question of whether the Zeta Tau Alpha steppers were actually better than their competition. Instead, most of the criticism has been reactionary and sought to deny Zeta Tau Alpha the opportunity to compete based solely on their skin color.
By doing that, black Greeks do a disservice to our historic legacy. African-American fraternities and sororities were born in circumstances that sought to combat judgments based on race. And to do the same as those who would deny us opportunity, based on the notion that we’re somehow protecting our black cultural integrity, is morally bankrupt.
The problem with this argument is that it lacks context. Not historical context on stepping – Ross wrote the book on that, literally – but racial and political context. As Ross states, black fraternities and sororities came up as spaces for black students to be together, necessary in a racist climate. Well, it’s not as if that racist climate has disappeared. I am not sure if there are black frats and sororities at UCSD – if there aren’t, they sure could use some.
When Whitlock argues that black folks who would deny a white step team step awards is bigoted, and akin to white folks who support segregation, he’s suggesting that systemic racism no longer exists. In my book, the only way you can be racist is if you have the institutional power to be racist. The fact that black folks have more presence within the world of stepping than white folks, does not delete the barrier that racism creates for black folks in many other arenas. And you don’t have institutional power in bits and pieces – even if stepping is dominated by black folks, it exists within a racist context. This means that even within the step world, black folks don’t have institutional power. Stepping doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
When white folks don’t want black folks to participate in something, that’s racist. When black folks don’t want white folks to participate in something, it is not racist. That’s right! And no, this is not because I have a delusional double standard. In order for this to be a double standard, white and black folks would have to have to same level of power universally. But instead power relations in our society continue to extend far far more opportunities to white folks than to black folks, or any other folks of colour.
I would have no problem with a white team winning at a historically black competition, if black students (and other students of colour) were excelling at every mainstream (read:white) college turn. Instead, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education has multiple statistics showing that black students have lower rates of graduation, citing racism, lack of space for supportive black campus communities, and strained family finances as reasons for this discrepancy. And if/when black students do graduate, it’s not like skin colour disappears. This New York Times article from the end of last year states that:
the unemployment rate for black male college graduates 25 and older in 2009 has been nearly twice that of white male college graduates — 8.4 percent compared with 4.4 percent.
Racism hampers all students of colour. Similar stats exist for black and non-black Latin@ students, and let’s not forget the recent admissions data we’ve seen about Asian American students.
Stepping and black fraternities and sororities exist to give black students a reprieve from these barriers, and a space to be together and celebrate who they are. As a non-black person of colour, I wish I had that – if anyone is setting up dance competitions for mixed race SoutheastAsian/Irish/Canadian women, let me know.
When top honours in such a space go to a white team, it is not an aberration or a historic event – it is a repeat of what happens all day every day, outside of that very small space. While I am absolutely sure that Zeta Tau Alpha are a great stepping team, they are still part of the dominant culture and reap its benefits, while black students bear its brunt. Being told that you are inferior to white folks all the time takes its toll – as the struggles of black students to achieve academic success demonstrates. Being told that you are inferior to white folks, within the place that you built to get away from such constant rejection? That cuts deep.
An academic I know bristles whenever teaching positions in minority literature go to white academics. Can white academics teach minority lit? I’m sure they can. But can they get jobs in every other lit position? Yes. Is it harder for academics of colour to get, say, Victorian Lit positions? Yes it is. So until that difference is rectified, the few positions of honour that can go to people of colour, should go to people of colour.
I went to the sold-out semifinals of the Sprite Step-Off at Texas Southern University in Houston, where Zeta Tau Alpha went on to qualify for the finals* in Atlanta. It was a great night. The crowd was deliriously happy. And most of the night was spent executing Texas hip hop dance crazes, like the Mr Hit Dat, the Flex and the Halle Berry. These dances may be redonculous, but they are also cultural rituals that above all express proud membership and belonging. In other words, it was clear to me that part of the joy of that night derived from the chance for these black college students to be together, and celebrate each other and the culture they and their elders had built together. There are so few spaces for young people of colour to do that.
When the entire college experience is a space for all kinds of youth to celebrate their personness, then it will be racist to complain when a white team like Zeta Tau Alpha wins a step competition. But black president or no, that day is a long way away. I look forward to it – even though it means I will be out of a job.
–
*Alas I actually missed their performance – I left in the middle of Lupe Fiasco’s number. I just don’t care for him. I did however, get to see Latoya Luckett, which was just delightful.
Those who are familiar with my comments on this site will know that I am highly critical of religion. This is mainly due to a lack of evidence for a god or gods. However, the misogyny contained within most holy texts, which I feel is endemic in the three major monotheistic creeds, is one of the reasons why I am so vocal in this criticism.
Today, though, I’m posting about the opposite problem: misogyny and sexism within the atheist community. I wish it didn’t exist, but it does, and I want to add my voice to that of Skeptifem, who flagged up this issue in November last year.
Atheism, as a movement, prides itself on being freethinking, educated and enlightened; however some of the most vocal proponents of this white male-dominated scene display disgraceful misogynist attitudes which are rarely publicly criticised by other atheists. Christopher Hitchens, a man who was recently very eloquent in his criticism of the Catholic Church at a recent televised debate, also wrote this Vanity Fair article - a ridiculous woman-hating salvo containing some disturbingly predatory language - and has referred to comedian Wanda Sykes as "the black dyke". Bill Maher, star of the film ‘Religulous’, has also made plenty of nasty sexist comments, including "jokes" about domestic violence.
It doesn’t stop with the ‘famous’ atheists. Like any person subscribing to a particular worldview, I seek like-minded people. This is why I joined the forum at RichardDawkins.net*. I was open about my feminism, thinking it wouldn’t be a big deal within a community of enlightened freethinkers; this was a mistake.
Last year, I started a thread asking users whether they had experienced sexism on the forum or within the atheist community generally. It was a simple enough question, and boy was I unprepared for the torrent of vitriol that was about to flow my way. I was told that I had a chip on my shoulder; I was pointedly asked, apropos of nothing, what I planned to do about the lack of male primary school teachers (?!); I was told I was oversensitive and overreacting, that if I found anything offensive on the forum then that was my problem, and that as I was openly feminist my posts couldn’t possibly be ‘innocent’ (!) and I should expect a hostile response (asking for it, perhaps?); I was also targeted by some female users who said that they weren’t offended, so I obviously needed to ‘lighten up’. Put simply, most of the replies I got wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Daily Mail or on an MRA website.
Eventually, drained by constant arguing, I ditched the thread and left the forum. Interestingly, I received a few private messages from female members who said that they had also experienced sexism, but didn’t want to post publicly about it for fear of the hostility turning on them. Some freethinking community, eh?
The presence of misogyny, sexism-apologia and anti-feminism within atheist circles makes me feel very let down and disillusioned. I feel that to be a sexist atheist is to be a hypocrite; as far as I am concerned, belief in the inferiority of women is as much a faith position as belief in all-powerful supernatural entities. It seems to me that while all atheists are happy to apply rationality to the idea of a god, some can’t - or won’t - turn the spotlight of reason onto their own presumptions and prejudices about our human life on Earth. That, in my opinion, shows weakness, cowardice and selfishness. How many people are being put off joining the atheist community by attitudes such as these?
For me, freethought is about questioning all assumptions about our world. I would like to see more women rise to greater prominence within the atheist community (such as Ophelia Benson, editor of Butterflies and Wheels, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Annie Laurie Gaylor, for example), I would like to see well-known atheists who do not make a habit of spewing misogyny, such as Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers, be more openly critical of those who do, and fundamentally I would like to see debunking of all prejudices as standard within sceptical thinking.
The evidence for this happening is not encouraging at present - perhaps I will just have to ‘have faith’?
*I should point out that Richard Dawkins himself does not moderate or endorse any of the comments on the forum, and that RD.net is actually in the process of closing the forum I am referring to, in order to replace it with a more editorially-controlled version.
I love nothing better than a good "what if?"
So when I saw this news about Facebook patenting the news feed, I couldn't help but think of the movie I'm now obsessed with, Food, Inc. Specifically, the part about my worst nightmare company, Monsanto, and how they are systematically suing farmers who don't use their genetically-modified--and patented--soy beans.
If you haven't seen the movie, you need to--if for no other reason than so you can tell me if I'm crazy for thinking that there's nothing stopping Facebook from doing the same thing to rival social networking sites that Monsanto is doing to hard-working farmers. Basically, Monsanto has huge pockets and can afford to sue small farmers who are then forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend themselves, even if they've done nothing wrong. I've personally never seen a more horrific example of greed or soul-less-ness, and it makes me question what kind of world we live in that they can get away with what they're doing.
Facebook has money and a patent. Let's hope they have more of a conscience than Monsanto--otherwise, looks like we can all kiss Twitter and other social networking sites goodbye. Seriously--if you don't think it could happen, watch Food, Inc.
Thanks to a post by Augustine Fou, I came across this chart that breaks down which mobile platforms are being used by people of different ages.
Amazing to see that over 6 out of 10 iPod Touch users are 17 years old or younger. And only 2 out of 10 are over the age of 25. Talk about a strong statement for the iPod Touch being a targeted way to reach teens and tweens.
by Latoya Peterson
These are the notes for “Gaming Masculinity: Video games as a reflection on masculinity in Computer Science and African American Culture.” The notes are from a paper by Betsy James DiSalvo, presented at the Texas A & M University Race and Ethnic Studies Institute’s Symposium exploring Race, Ethnicity and (New) Media.
The abstract to the paper reads:
There are a number of efforts to broaden participation in computing to include underrepresented groups. However, few of these efforts have identified African American males as a population with cultural and gendered values that may inhibit them from entering Computer Science (CS). In this paper we will explore masculine identities within computer culture and African American culture by using video games as an object of inquiry. We hypotheses that the technological agency exhibited with video games is based upon cultural and gender practices; and by exploring video game play practices we can better understand how to increase the technological agency of African American males and broadening their participation in CS.
The paper/project was funded to help increase participation in the computer sciences, with a particular focus on underrepresented groups.
The research (hosted at the Georgia Institute for Technology) began by examining video game use by African American males, sparked by an exchange with a student. The student lamented:
Me and some of my black friends were talking about the other guys in CS. Some of them have been programming since they were eight. We can’t compete with that. Now, the only thing that I have been doing since I was eight is playing basketball. I would own them on the court. I mean it wouldn’t be fair, they would just stand there and I would dominate. It is sort of like that in CS.
– Undergraduate CS Major
This led to the researchers (Betsy James DiSalvo, Sybrina Y. Atwaters, Jill Dimond, and Dr. Amy Bruckman) to re-examine the assumptions around what makes for a successful computer science graduate. They decided to take a closer look at play practices. Play practices of being outside are the norm in many communities, but are not conducive to computers/gaming which require long amounts of indoors/solo time to become proficient.
The researches also examined the dominant environment in CS programs. Hacker culture is privileged in the CS learning environment, meaning that many students are drawn to the program because of their existing skills. This marginalizes many students who decide to enter at the college level, and do not have years of experience experimenting with programs on their own. CS programs also tend to trend toward the strongest programmers in the class, encouraging a DIY approach to learning, and leaving behind students who are new to the discipline.
DiSalvo and the other researches created a model for the “Idealized CS Masculinity.” The researchers were looking at cultural influences and how our presentations shape our interactions with our peers. For those in the CS community, the norms there rejects the body. There is not a premium placed physical performance, personal appearance, or even in some cases, hygienic personal care. Instead, the community values technological agency and proficiency above all. Competitiveness is encouraged. This type of person is also heavily attracted to technology, computer parts, and the latest gadgets and inventions.
In contrast, the researchers noted Idealized African American Masculinity was very different than computer science norms. For one, feedback from respondents noted that there was a body centric emphasis. A premium was placed on athleticism, physical power, appearance, and physical performance. There was little value placed on technological agency. So, from the beginning, the divergence in values could contribute to why there are less African American males in computer science programs.
However, there was a strange quirk in the research: Young black males may play video games more than most other groups. However, DiSalvo notes this data is not statistically significant – with gaming becoming a ubiquitous activity, there is only a slight increase over other groups with reported play rates.
Connections between video games and CS have been documented, but not qualitatively, meaning there isn’t a definitive connection between a heavy interest in games and an interest in working with computers. “Hardcore” gaming also does not have a consistent connection between hours played and the interest in CS Major. However, research has shown that gaming practices can be leveraged into CS Interest – and since video games are a cultural touchstone for the Millennial generation, it makes sense to pursue that link.
Looking at the data also revealed more trends: young black males often participated in community of practice, where video game competition was also a form of bonding. Sportmanship was emphasized. From a tech standpoint, African American males are more likely to playing on consoles instead of PCs, which limited opportunities for hacking, cheating, and modifying. However, they did play console games online with using digital cable. In contrast to the CS respondents, they did not consider online gaming to be a social activity, preferring in person play.
Family members were considered important in game play, and game time was often multi-generational. Their gaming experiences were also heavily gendered, playing mostly with male friends. Solo play is considered practice time for family events.
With these differences in mind, Georgia Tech created the Glitch Video Game Testers program to introduce more technical concepts into gaming and to encourage more African American youth to enter computer science programs by demystifying the field.
Latoya’s Note: Clearly, Betsy and I had a lot to discuss with reference to her research. I am fascinated by the paper she and her co-authors produced, and the interesting potential to increase the ranks of blacks in tech through gaming outreach. However, post presentation, one factor stood out to me in particular as needing further exploration. The paper examines the role of race, but not class in the development of skills – and, just speaking from personal experience, class heavily influenced my gaming experience. We discussed the divides around the ability to deconstruct technological items in the home, and how for some families, there would not have been the opportunity to experiment with the family computer by taking it apart. The console vs. PC divide is also, in some ways, a matter of class – to purchase a game console means that the owners will be able to play all the games issued for that console for the next 3 – 5 years, if not more. If a new version comes out of a system comes out, the system will not become obsolete. However, in the 1990s in particular, there was a constant need to upgrade your computer to keep pace with the changing technology. This dynamic was not present with a console – though the desire for new games would be there, older games could still be obtained and played. I am interested to see how discussions of social issues and technology continue to develop.
Related: Can Video Game Testing Spark Interest in Computing Among Black Youth?
