<a href="http://educationinthestreets.blogspot.com">Education In The Streets</a>

Friday, April 02, 2004

Response to Phoebe's response: I definitely agree that the ownership of speech can't easily be quantified, that it's "problematic to draw lines and create categories regarding people's linguistic identities and who "does use" and "doesn't use" or "can use" and "can't use" certain expressions." I think the point I was trying to make with hizzouse (definitely applicable to 'crunk' as well) is that people from communities historically (and currently) marginalized within the ivory tower - people from working class backgrounds and people of color are often under a tremendous amount of pressure to perform bourgeois respectability not only as a self-defense mechanism against the class and racial logics of academe, but also because if they don't, they often have to contend with police harassment and discrimination from faculty, administrators and fellow students. So one of the sites where white privilege enters into this for me is that the students who are using this language often are not in a position where they will be mistaken for an outsider to Yale's social structure - Adams among them, and thus they can expropriate what others can't use 'safely.' Maybe this is a problematic analysis.

The Domestic Partnership push in New Haven is now turning towards a statewide same-sex marriage focus, the ydn reports and applauds. (And so do I, of course - but it's ironic and telling that the YDN's commitment "to the essential cause of ensuring that every citizen in this country is assured of the same basic civil rights" doesn't include a voice on the job. Not to claim that class trumps sexual orientation or anything like that. My problem is more with extremely conservative organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and they ways in which they isolate and atomize social movements rather than building connections and solidarities.)

Currently listening to:
Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Blackstar
Miles Davis: On the Corner
The Replacements: Tim
Jay-Z: The Blueprint (yeah, I know, I suck.)
John Lennon: Imagine

¶ 12:52 PM

Smash Yale-[ comments.]

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