Not-so-live blogging the 12th Annual AWID forum

This month, representing both my day job and WHAN, I'm off to the AWID (Association for Women’s Rights in Development) International Forum on Women’s Rights and Development in Istanbul, Turkey to present as part of a panel with other Caribbean women. This year's theme is Transforming Economic Power to Advance Women's Rights and Justice, and my segment will look at enhancing opportunities for women's economic participation, particularly in emerging and own industries. Happily, the conference also brings together some of my homies from another network of which I'm a member, The International Working Group on Gender, Macroeconomics and International Economics, which will be presenting special, toolbox sessions on gender and economics. Reunions everywhere! A reuniopalooza. I just made that up.

So a few of us are blogging the 4-day meeting. I'm sure some of the others will be live-blogging. I can make no such commitment. But I will be covering the sessions I attend, and sharing some of the emerging research and ideas, as well as linking to the other blogs. I'm excited! Are you? Yes. Yes you are.

Weight-loss surgery for all!

Dr. Super is loving this.

Usually reserved for the most obese people, weight-loss surgery is unlikely to be a last-ditch option much longer. Technological advancements are turning it into a one-hour, incisionless procedure -- making it more attractive to moderately overweight adults [...]; overweight and obese teenagers; and normal-weight people with difficult-to-control diabetes. Several new procedures are already in human clinical trials.

I think we're all getting a little carried away and assuming that just because a procedure is easy to accomplish, its effects are also easy to live with after the fact. As many have discovered, and as this same article notes, even though the already low morbidity rates for this type of procedure continue to decline and operation recovery times become shorter, patients still have to contend with medium- to long-term problems, including "nutritional deficiencies, diarrhea, regurgitation and bowel obstructions."

According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 19% of patients experience dumping syndrome, which is involuntary vomiting or defecation. Complication rates involving ulcers, wound problems, hemorrhage, deep-vein thrombosis, heart attacks and strokes range from 2.4% to 0.1%.

And where do we draw the line regarding preemptive surgery? One surgeon notes that "[p]eople 50 pounds overweight are the ones we should treat, before the problem gets worse," but isn't that number quite arbitrary? Unless we ascertain that at 50 lbs overweight (as opposed to 40 or 30), people start to see marked deteriorations in their overall health (in fact, we've been told that every 10 lbs packs its own share of doom), then the benchmark at which surgery becomes an option can arguably continue to shift downwards.

I suppose weight-loss surgery is now poised to enter the realm of cosmetic procedures, where if people opt to risk their lives and health in order to try and feel better about themselves, then they have that right. The rub lies in the fact that most elective cosmetic surgery is not covered by the majority of insurance plans or universal health care systems. And so it will be interesting to see - especially in the context of the raging US health care debate - how this particular argument evolves.

Can we be clear once and for all on who suffers most and worst from intimate-partner violence? Please?

I wasn't going to write about this, because this type of argument exhausts me, but here it is, stuck in my craw, and it doesn't seem to be moving. So onward.

Any discussion encompassing gender in Barbados seems to be permanently stuck on the old "but it happens to men too!" or "men suffer worse!" refrain. And the media seems quite happy to play that tit-for-tat game: every issue must be highlighted as having equal effects and repercussions for men and women, whether this be the case or not; and - I suppose through some naïve interpretation of equality - both 'perspectives' must be given equal column inches and presented with like gravity. Intimate partner violence has become chief among these.

Last week, the Nation devoted pages of coverage to the silent but apparently common scourge of woman-on-man intimate partner violence. Chairman of the Men's Educational Support Association, Ralph Boyce, who has become the self-appointed spokesperson for men's rights, was quoted heavily in one of several articles on the issue:

THERE ARE A LOT OF WEAK MEN IN BARBADOS.

That's the conclusion of the chairman of the Men's Education Support Association (MESA) about men who stay in relationships where they are verbally, physically or psychologically abused by their girlfriends or spouses.

First off, I would venture that further denigrating the character of victims of abuse by publicly classifying them as 'weak' is the wrong tack to take in offering them help. But further, if feels to me as if Boyce is conflating his outrage at violence against men with his general indignation that women should dare to speak on behalf of their male partners:

"In MESA, we have some cases, luckily not too many, where men say they can't come to meetings because their wives say they can't come.

"Or, it is a case where I call a man's home to invite him to a meeting and his wife or woman says he can't come and starts giving me reasons," Boyce disclosed, adding:

"We have some surprisingly weak men in Barbados and the women hate them for it. They call them 'twerps' and twits.

Controlling behaviour is often a serious indicator of systemic violence in a relationship, but I would hesitate to categorize the declining of an invitation on a partner's behalf as psychologically abusive. One gets the sense that Boyce is really saying "listen, man up and put your foot down, and no woman will overstep her place long enough to knock you around." This is clearly an oversimplification of the dynamic of intimate partner abuse. While Boyce asserts that the problem of female violence against men has gone unaddressed because "[w]hat prevented victims from coming forward was the perceived ridicule", he ironically spends much of the article ridiculing men who have been abused, while tossing out vague generalizations like "women like men who are strong."

And he also seems to confuse anecdotal evidence with data:

"One of our members who was doing some research into physical violence told me that a man told him his wife slapped him inside the supermarket in front of everybody and the member asked him what he did, and his response was that he went outside the supermarket and cried. This is a real case," he said.

I'm not sure what to do with that. Are we to be awed by the fact that a man might suffer physical abuse at the hands of his wife? Or that he cried? Or that he didn't retaliate with 'strength', however Boyce might define this. Because for all Boyce's purported rejection of "[t]he traditional belief [...] that the man is not supposed to show any kind of emotion", he seems to subscribe to it himself. Or is this merely meant to serve as evidence that such violence exists? In which case, I, for one, don't need much convincing. I saw one such case, in fact. That is, (and since we're basing conclusions on observed evidence) one case in my entire lifetime as against oh, say, a couple hundred involving women as victims. Boyce, though, is not convinced that the problem is so uncommon:

The verbal and physical abuse is very common. A lot of the time, women initiate the violence against men.

I would love to have that 'a lot of the time' qualified (in a lot of the cases involving male victims, or the DV cases in general?), and this is a huge part of my problem with this kind of irresponsible reporting on the part of people who should know better: a respected and recognizable public figure stands up and, speaking with seeming authority and one would assume the benefit of research, claims that "a lot of the time, women initiate the violence against men", and people run off convinced that not only is violence against women not the immense public health problem it actually is, but that women actually initiate this and other types of violence, and conversely, it is violence against men that constitutes the real danger in the Caribbean.

We know that there is likely to be chronic underreporting of all types of domestic violence cases, among both men and women, but this is not a sufficient condition to deduce that men are being abused as much as women, and it's just that they're not telling anyone because people, ironically like the MESA Chairman, will call them weak. And it isn't even necessary to prove that the abuse is as widespread as that against women in order for it to be flagged as a problem: no one should have to endure abuse, and if we can provide unique support for these men that they might not get from a regular victims'/survivors of violent crime support service, then we should (although I would suggest that given his tenuous grasp of the intimate partner abuse dynamic, Mr. Boyce not be the one to offer such support).

But let us not present violence against women, as the Nation has done by first telling the stories of men who have been abused and then in a subsequent issue those of women (the latter notably in fewer pages), as on equal footing with that against men. It simply is not true, and I'm not sure what purpose it is meant to serve. It has been a hard struggle in the Caribbean, this business of eliminating violence against women, and it seems very little headway is being made. For years, activists and Ministers alike have been highlighting the grossly exceeded capacity of shelters for women and children here in Barbados, while in Jamaica, domestic-related murders jumped 20 per cent between 2005 and the end of 2006 and continue to rise, with women and girls constituting (at least) over 70% of the victims in each year of reporting.*

It would be misguided to allocate public resources meant to reduce domestic violence equally (that is, equally; that is not to say no resources should be allocated to DV against men at all) along the violence against women/violence against men divide, and to lump them together both in our discussion and treatment of the issue is also a mistake. They are simply not the same: the persistent dynamic that keeps women in abusive situations both in homes and communities; its coexistence with sexual violence and women's exercise of their sexual decision-making and rights; the higher HIV infection rate of women which operates alongside a higher care-taking burden than that of men; all these things and more separate violence against women from violence against men. I am all for public resources being allocated to the elimination of all forms of violence against our citizens, but let's keep in perspective who the most emergent victims are, and stay focused in our advocacy to save women's lives.

*Jamaica Constabulary Statistics Department Report 2007

Researching attitudes about mothering and feminism

Researchers Mindy Erchull and Miriam Liss at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia are engaged in a study examining attitudes about mothering and feminism. They've developed a survey to collect data from women over the age of 18, including "feminists, non-feminists, mothers, and non-mothers", and are asking our help in gathering information.

You can find the survey here:
http://ff5umw.com/motherconsent.html

It takes about 15 minutes, and you can repost the link anywhere you like. Wear it on a t-shirt, leave it in a fogged-up mirror in an airport bathroom, you know, spread the word however you wish. Given the number of surveys I've asked poor, unsuspecting strangers to complete, I always like to help people out. (Who knows - maybe Miriam and Mindy will shed some light on the whole feminist, baby-hating movement that apparently exists.)

We're all in IDAHO now

Today is IDAHO: International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia, and being from the Caribbean, boy am I glad this day exists as an internationally-recognized occasion around which we can advocate for people to stop the hateful nonsense that is homophobia and transphobia. From the IDAHO UK website:

[IDAHO] was founded by Louis Georges Tin in 2005. Campaigns and Initi[a]tives take place on or around May 17th every year to combat prejudice against LGBT people. May 17th is chosen because it marks the anniversary of the day in 1990 when the World Health Organisation removed homosexuality from its list of mental diseases.

IDAHO is needed because: 86 member states of the United Nations still criminalise consensual same sex among adults. Among these 7 have legal provisions with the death penalty as punishment. In addition, there are 6 provinces or territorial units which also punish hom[o]sexuality with imprisonment.

IDAHO day can also be celebratory because all over the world people are fighting against the persecution of LGBT people and are involved in positive initiatives and campaigns which can be celebrated and give hope for the future.

[...]

This year the IDAHO theme is "End Transphobia: Respect Gender Identity". Please sign the petition to support this campaign.

In December 2008 a declaration against homophobia and gender identity discrimination was finally heard at the General Assembly of the United Nations.

http://ukgaynews.org.uk/Archive/08/Dec/1802.htm

The website also lists IDAHO events in the UK by region, and you can see what else is going on worldwide here.

Amid growing calls in the international activist community to boycott tourism and products that would benefit 'homophobic countries' - on the list of which Jamaica features high - Barbados too has been censured in a recent shadow report "for its criminalisation of same-sex sexual activity and the violation of the rights of lesbian[s], gay[s], bisexual[s] and transgender[ed people] (LGBT)." While I think that the types of boycotts mentioned are often ill-conceived and counter-productive (if you want to change public attitudes towards the LGBT community, maintaining the already poor in poverty is not the way to do it), and based on the absurd notion that for example Jamaica is one homogeneous society thinking and acting as one, I do believe that properly-implemented action by the international community is one of the ways to develop political will among these countries' own governments to effect change from within. Tying development aid or representation on certain international bodies to the proven enforcement of human rights conventions is one place to start, and while it is not the place of the US or any other country to wholly dictate cultural values to another country, it is certainly the place of all of us to expose institutionalized bigotry and hate in countries that claim to promote human freedoms for all.

And positive momentum is already building. Barbados, with a highly-educated young population who acknowledge the value of complete civil freedoms, is fully engaged in a discussion on LGBT rights. While there is a significant, religion-led voice that would seek to withhold these rights - as there is in the US (let us acknowledge that this is not some purely 'third world' scourge as some would represent), there is also a progressive, politically savvy community that is becoming less afraid to support the LGBT struggle for equality. And this community is growing, and becoming more equipped to expose the insularity and fear that are at the root of most of the anti-gay arguments.

So on this IDAHO, I feel hopeful and encouraged to continue to advocate alongside and in support of LGBT individuals, especially in my corner of the world, one of the places it is most needed. I think that with our commitment, truth, justice and - let's face it - plain common sense and decency will win.

Crime, justice and policing: some mongoose updates

Here are some updates on stories we've covered here in the Chronicles in the last few weeks, brought to you by the gloriousness that is Benicio del Toro as he keeps my company on this Friday night in the crappiness that is The Hunted.







Back in February, I commented on the sloppy and purposely inflammatory reporting on the I'Akobi Maloney inquest. Three weeks ago, a verdict returned concerning the young man's death determined 'death by misadventure' as the cause, absolving local police of any wrongdoing.

A verdict of misadventure, as distinct from one of accidental death, indicates some "deliberate but lawful human act which has unexpectedly taken a turn that leads to death".

Interestingly, the coroner found that "Rastafrians [were] being profiled by the police, and [...] that the Royal Barbados Police Force needed to examine this problem". She also found that "Maloney did not commit suicide and that he was not engaged in any homosexual activities". Because clearly, the idea that he may have been gay is as important as whether his death was a result of foul play. The fact is, as ridiculous as this sounds as a finding of a coroner's inquest, it was probably declared in good faith as a way of 'preserving the memory' of the deceased. Such is the state of homophobia in Barbados, that an official inquiry feels compelled to clear victims of accusations of homosexuality.

Maloney's family remains unsatisfied with the verdict, and issued a written statement to that effect.

But the family said they were satisfied that the coroner had cleared I'Akobi's name from being associated with any homosexual activity.

So there's that.

__________________________________

In more news of possible police misconduct, this time here in London, there has been no loss of momentum concerning the Ian Tomlinson G20 protest incident. Since then, we've learnt that members of the Met police may have embedded themselves within the group of penned in G20 protesters in order to incite them to violence. In the meantime, the Tomlinson inquiry gets underway by examining claims that the Met police deliberately misled the public over the events surrounding Tomlinson's death - charges which, if proven, could bring sanctions separate from those associated with the death itself.

Scotland Yard, in reviewing its policing of demonstrations following the G20 protests, is therefore questioning whether "London needs harsher, European-style methods that could include the use of water cannon. " So after a man has died, a woman has been attacked by a police officer and thousands have been left feeling dissatisfied and exploited by police conduct during the protests, we're considering whether we should blast people away with water cannons in future demonstrations. Do you see how that makes perfect sense? Because it does.

More on the Tomlinson case

__________________________________

And finally, following new research suggesting that Britain has the lowest rape conviction rate in Europe, a statistic reported here in discussing police handling of the Worboys and Reid rape cases, a policing standards watchdog has undertaken an initiative consulting rape victims on why they feel that they are being failed by the criminal justice system.

The study’s author, Liz Kelly, an expert on sexual violence who has advised senior police and the Home Office, criticises a “culture of scepticism” among officers and prosecutors and says that too many people are wedded to the stereotype of the rapist as a violent stranger.

The project to ask victims about their own experiences will be conducted next year and is part of a nationwide audit of police forces and Crown Prosecution Service performance. It is a significant departure for HMIC, which has focused previously on policing procedures and performance. In another joint initiative by the Home Office and Association of Chief Police Officers, a group known as the rape support programme will begin touring the country this month advising police forces on how to implement the latest guidance on rape investigations.

Dave Gee, the former detective chief superintendent who heads the programme, said that Britain’s low conviction rates were partly due to poor evidence gathering and “indifferent attitudes” towards rape by police. “Too often, because of the negative mind at the outset, the case is undermined rather than built up,” he said.

I'm encouraged by this step. I'm anxious to see how it will be implemented and utilized, and what kinds of trends it will uncover.

How male is the recession?

One of the most common statistics emerging during this recession, in various incarnations, describes the extent to which men are disproportionately suffering from resulting job losses. A month ago, the NY Times speculated that women may begin to outnumber men in employment figures as layoffs rise, and Spiegel's Susanne Armann last week deemed the crisis "a very male recession".

But these kinds of articles that take aggregate layoff numbers, line them up and declare men the losers in a global recession are missing several issues. Take for example Armann's article, which deduces that men are worse off while acknowledging the following [emphasis mine]:

..a significantly higher number of men work than women. According to the Federal Employment Agency, male employment is currently 81.6 percent while female employment is only 69.2 percent. Those who work more are more likely, therefore, to lose their job.

In addition it is mostly full-time positions that are being cut -- and many women do not work a full 40-hour week. Around a third of employed women work part-time, while only 5.5 percent of working men are employed on a part-time basis.

That means that women are more likely to work in low-paid jobs. The Federal Employment Agency says that 67.4 percent of those in low-paid jobs are women, who often work as carers in retirement homes, supermarket cashiers, childminders or cleaners. These jobs may not be well paid but they are still required even in times of economic crisis.

So just to be clear: we're neatly bypassing the facts that more men than women work, that women's work tends to be part-time, and that it also tends to be lower-paid, and surmising that women are coming out on top in this economic crisis because fewer of them are losing their part-time/occasional, low-paying jobs.

However, better-paid women are also doing well, such as those working in traditionally more female spheres like education or health. The major industries like construction, manufacturing or even the financial services industry have always been more vulnerable to economic cycles and therefore suffer when the economy dips.

"Women are also more flexible when it comes to location or type of job and they adapt more quickly," says Falk of the DGB. "If a woman realizes that she hasn't got any more prospects somewhere then she tries to go somewhere else.

And once again, the old 'women are tough, they can handle it' argument. We seem to assume that women's response to economic hardship (moving or changing to find work) has little or no cost, whereas men's reality (lost employment) does. There is a cost associated with this perceived flexibility, that may involve education, transportation, shifts in family care arrangements, or increased care burdens within the home. If anything, women in some countries are less flexible because of a gendered division of labour which often sees their lives tied to those of their children. But they adapt in what is perceived as a cost-free shift, but may in fact carry several costs to the household. They adapt because women's incomes are still overwhelmingly skewed towards the health, education and well-being of their households, as against men's.

We also have to be careful not to ascribe the same economic behaviours and consequences to all men and women everywhere. In countries, especially in Europe, where there have been historically higher levels of state investment in the household economy, towards universal day care for example, there tends to be a lower cost associated with labour shifts. And while the recession began in developed nations, it certainly did not end there. Developing nations with large export markets are also being hit hard by reduced demand from the global North, and those markets often employ far more women than men.

And if the response is to invest in those industries with the highest losses, where men are more heavily concentrated, then at best, the post-recession economy will position men and women exactly where they were before: with women earning much less. What is required is not just worker protection laws to eliminate discrimination and create equal employment in those sectors without regard to sex, but also more jobs in women-dominated sectors, with higher, living wages and increased benefits.

So given all this, and while we observe all kinds of gendered job-loss phenomena, like positive correlations between male unemployment and incidences of intimate partner violence against women; a slow supply response to domestic care demand by newly-unemployed men (that means that apparently some men pretty much sit around and do nothing - for a really long time - as they adjust to their new situation, increasing the care burden for those who already provide it rather than lightening it. Don't eyeball me. I'm just reporting it); and increased anxiety among women regarding the economy (although this same writer says that women are more worried but men are more likely to just pretend not to be worried and freak out anyway), I wouldn't be so quick to summarily declare women the 'winners' here. There's a little more to the story than that. And while we do need to address men's overwhelming job losses where they exist, and their psychological responses to the recession, we also need to go a little deeper on both sides in order to gauge the real costs and risks, and shape adequate policy responses.

It's all those imaginary Black people

Via Jose at ThickCulture, I noticed Byron York's piece in the Washington Examiner in which he claims to be analyzing "The black-white divide in Obama's popularity", which apparently means "Black people are only capable of voting by skin colour, rather than critically examining policy decisions like White people do, so Black people don't matter." The sentence that rose my ire, and the ire of many of his commenters, was this [emphasis mine]:

But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.

Because, you know, only White people are actual. Black Americans are more imaginary: nominal if you will. We have to include them because they're here and all, but everyone knows they don't count. As Jose points out, African Americans tend to be Democrats, and last time I checked, Obama was a Democrat. And one of our readers here at the Chronicles, Markaman - who was first offering York the benefit of the doubt by suggesting that he might be describing a respondent sample skewed towards Black Americans - later read the article in its entirety, as well as York's weak defense to the subsequent allegations of racism. Below is the response that Markaman left in the comment section of York's second piece, which I'm sharing with you because I agree, because I'm too lazy to write my own, and because it's awesome in its simple clarity. Perhaps even an entitled, racist lunkhead like York will get it:

So far as I can see, the statement: "[S]ky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of [Obama's] positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are" can mean one of 2 things:

1. Black people, who tend to favour Obama, are disproportionately represented in the poll. Therefore they skew the results.
2. Black peoples' opinions should not be counted towards the "actual" opinions of the US population.

You have not presented any evidence, either in your original post or this one, for position #1. The comment about "5 guys and Bill Gates" in a bar is not even response-worthy, but here is a reply that could be given by a high-school math student: This analogy is false. A poll of average net worth in the US would be ridiculous if it were constructed out of 6 people. Properly weighted and sized, such a poll could (and would) include high net worth individuals and still yield an accurate result.

Position #2 is a racist one. It doesn't take someone "on the left" to see that.

Higher education in the US and a different kind of anti-immigrant sentiment

In an article at The Root last week, Keith Adkins, quoting the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE), highlighted a new study published by the journal Sociology of Education. The study finds that Black immigrants to the US and their children are "significantly more likely to enroll at highly selective colleges and universities than blacks who are descendants of African slaves." Their data suggest that 75 percent of first- or second-generation Black immigrants enrolled in university after high school, versus 72 percent for White students and 60 percent of Black students whose families had been resident in the US beyond two generations. A similar trend holds for enrolment at the country's most selective universities.

Both the Root and the JBHE article then question

..whether immigrant blacks should benefit from the race-based affirmative action admissions programs at these selective colleges. A few years ago Harvard Law School professor Lani Guinier questioned whether “in the name of affirmative action we should be admitting people because they look like us and then they don’t identify with us.”

There are several problems with this discussion. First, according to the JBHE article, the study makes a distinction between African and Caribbean students (and a note to Adkins at the Root and others: I have never in my life heard a person from the Caribbean refer to herself as "a Caribbean". So just stop that.) and "blacks who are descendants of African slaves", which makes me wonder who, according to them, are the forefathers of Caribbean Black people. The US doesn't have the only legacy of slavery. There are descendants of slaves all over the world, and the Caribbean has large numbers. Furthermore, the African continent and its people are still suffering the effects of the slave trade; many of them may not be descendants of slaves, but they are descendants of slavery, and have inherited a land and culture that was repeatedly plundered in order to build and sustain the United States and other White empires. The Caribbean was also used as a stopover for slaves who were later transported to other colonies, including the US. So it is certainly possible that my grandmother then went on to be owned by an American landowner. So while the US may arguably not have an identical duty to these immigrants as it does to Black Americans, the labour of whose forefathers directly built the country, it does have some responsibility to make restitution for the global effects of the slave trade, which didn't have such neatly drawn geographical and other lines as these articles are suggesting.

Second, the argument that "many of these immigrant and "second-generationers" are not interested in identifying with "African-Americans" yet continue to benefit from affirmative action" smacks terribly of regular, White mainstream anti-immigrant sentiment, which purports that once someone lands on the shores of the United States, he must immediately renounce his own heritage and culture and run gleefully into the arms of American culture. That argument applied to Black immigrants with regard to African-American culture is just as xenophobic and presumptuous as it is when made of Asian, Hispanic and other immigrants with respect to White American culture. There is no difference. Caribbean people have a culture of which we are proud, and a history that has made us who we are today. Your history of slavery and freedom does not trump our history of slavery and freedom. Because some of us may identify more with calypso and reggae than with hip-hop does not mean that we do no also acknowledge the shared struggle of all descendants of slavery. When I write about the Obama era (scroll down for all posts), Haiti's violation of women and Zimbabwe's fall under a despotic leader, it is because I consider these all my issues as a Black woman. I identify with you on my own terms, thanks. Not on yours. I already have an identity, and I have my own struggle, parts of which we share as Black people, but other parts of which we do not.

And as is true of other groups of immigrants, African and Caribbean immigrants are also subject to the process of acclimatization which might maintain them in their own groups for a period of time while they come to terms with their new situation. Or they may simply feel more secure in their own communities, because as some African Americans may not appreciate, it's often no fun out there for an immigrant. But even so, I'm not sure how much credit I give this argument of non-integration, particularly with Caribbean people. While there are Caribbean associations on American campuses, as there should be, the majority of Caribbean people I know who have attended university in the US do become involved in the shared issues of Black Americans. But the fact is, not all issues are shared, and you cannot assume that we will cast off all our struggles simply to fight only yours. That then becomes a new form of appropriation and colonization in which Black Americans are the new masters and Black immigrants are the owned. And we will not allow that.

All this said, there are certain parts of this argument, obnoxious though it may appear, that I understand. Any system that is meant to benefit Black Americans but maintains them in a similar position to that which obtained before that system existed needs to be examined. (Although I'm not sure that this is the case. Those interpreting the study seem to suggest that in absolute terms, it is unacceptable that a group of Black people other than Black Americans achieve higher rates of matriculation, rather than holding Afr. Am. matriculation against a historical benchmark.) And it is true that certainly in the case of the Caribbean, those who migrate for academic purposes are not the poorest in those countries. They are not the poorest, but in many cases they are also not the wealthiest. Certainly in the case of Barbados, many people from very humble beginnings are able to access education abroad based on their own achievement at home. But I see no value in pointing fingers at groups of people who are taking advantage of opportunities provided them, especially opportunities that are arguably due them, though perhaps not on the same scale as they are due Americans. If the system of affirmative action is failing Black Americans, it should not be remedied at the expense of other Black descendants of slavery, some of whom are incidentally also Black Americans. It should be addressed so as to envelop the still marginalized without disenfranchising a second time the (in this context at least) previously marginalized.

The ghosts are coming!

Quick! Someone skip around in a circle while saying "Bailey!" three times or whatever you need to do to call Jennifer Love Hewitt! As Maya would say, we've got ghosts all up and through.

The majority of Britons believe in heaven and life after death, new research suggests.

The survey of 2,060 people showed 55% believe in heaven, while 53% believe in life after death and 70% believe in the human soul.

The study was carried out between October and November last year for the public theology think tank Theos.

It also suggested that nearly four in 10 people, 39%, believe in ghosts and 27% believe in reincarnation.

A further 22% believe in astrology or horoscopes and 15% believe in fortune telling or Tarot.

The think tank said the findings were "especially striking" when compared to the 1950s.

Then only 10% of the public told Gallup that they believed in ghosts and just 2% thought they had seen one.

I tend not to rule out supernatural encounters. Life is weird and mysterious, and just because we have not yet come to terms with something doesn't mean it's not going to jump out and yell at us sometimes.

I feel less certain, if that's possible, about heaven and hell. (The study, though, seems not to reflect the "if there's a heaven, surely there must be the opposite" belief of Christian religion.) Surely, even the most evil could be made infinitely more productive if they didn't just stand around permanently engulfed in flames wailing, moaning, gnashing teeth and whatnot. And if this is in fact just a metaphor, and we'll each experience our own personal hells, then mine would be a permanent loop of Samuel L Jackson films, Celine Dion and Enrique Iglesias duets on the radio and only celery and yogurt to eat. Just thinking about it is making me want to pray to someone.

Offset the effects of your strained marriage with power-walking and celery

As those of us working within feminist economics have been saying for some time now, the economic work of reproducing and sustaining the population from within the domestic economy is not an inelastic, constantly renewable input. That is to say, women, who are in general tasked more than men with unpaid care work* in the home, cannot, unsupported, continue performing this work indefinitely and not have it adversely affect their health and well-being. And such negative effects mean that women's unpaid work will not necessarily be there no matter what, as policymakers often take for granted.

Add to this a strained marital relationship, and the prognosis looks even worse. That is, at least, according to a study presented to the American Psychosomatic Society, which finds that

Women are more likely than men to suffer damage to their health from being in a strained marriage.

US psychologists found wives in tense marriages were prone to risk factors for heart disease, stroke and diabetes. In comparison, husbands seemed relatively immune from such problems.

The factors the study sought to assess were those related to metabolic syndrome, a cluster of related risk factors for heart disease, diabetes and other health issues.

But the researchers are of course not suggesting that those in poorly functioning marriages seek to lower these risk factors by working on their marriages or dumping their husbands. Because that would be absurd! Their suggested fix? It will look familiar: diet and exercise.

Professor Tim Smith, who co-led the research, said there was good evidence that a healthy diet and regular exercise could reduce a woman's risk of metabolic syndrome.

However, he said: "It's a little premature to say they would lower their risk of heart disease if they improved the tone and quality of their marriages - or dumped their husbands.

So, following their interpretation of the findings, if your bad marriage is killing you, trying to fix it or getting the hell out is not necessarily as indicated as say, going for a run and eating a salad. Treat the symptoms and not the cause, people. You heard it here first.

* "I'm not reading all that crap". Of course you're not. Just scroll down to the graphic on Page 6 and you'll notice the 'depletion of human capabilities' from the domestic economy, i.e. the household.

Listen to soca? Congrats, you're a moron

CalTech graduate student Virgil Griffith has come up with the very poorly conceptualized Music That Makes You Dumb, which, using SAT scores as a proxy, correlates music tastes with intelligence. His methodology is to compare test results with people's favourite bands as declared via social networking sites, and the result is, as would be expected, absurd. Griffith calls them 'hilarity incarnate': apparently, suggesting that listeners of non-American/non-White forms of music (who are themselves often non-American and/or non-White) are intellectually inferior is pure, knee-slapping fun. I would normally not comment on this kind of pseudo-intellectual, self-congratulatory nonsense, but I wanted to show my readers this: cast your glance towards the 'painfully stupid' end of the scale. Recognize that four-letter word? Yep. I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but if you listen to soca music, you are stupid, stupid, stupid.

Now I'm going to ignore most of the problems with this analysis - which are many - as I'm sure you guys, soca-loving though you may be, can figure them out straightaway. They have to do with definitions, the problems of using self-declared data, sample sizes, assumptions, lion and tigers and bears. Oh my.

But even accepting the widely-contested notion that SAT scores are a decent indicator of intelligence, the fact is that most of the Caribbean students I know who took the SATs (and these were many, since I used to teach secondary school) enjoy soca, and they all basically dispensed with the SATs as if they were a word search puzzle. With very little preparation, they took the test, scored high (anecdotally, almost everyone I knew scored above 1250), and got on with life. One might argue that were greater percentages of Caribbean students to take the SATs - if it were to be considered an academic rite of passage there as it is in the US - the results would be different, since those who do seek the test out are already the academically-minded ones who plan to obtain advanced degrees. Perhaps so, but the numbers who do take it still represent enough of a sample to make Griffith's findings bullshitary.

And notice where reggae falls? And jazz? The boy done lost his mind. If you want to take an unscientifically-rendered piece of research, declare it as such, and then have a laugh about it in the proper context, great. But don't present it as science. That just makes you dumb.