What if Pregnant Teen Bristol Palin Were Black?

Young black women in Chicago address the racial double standard surrounding teen pregnancy. Global Girls, a group for promoting young black women's self-esteem, makes performance art out of this particularly painful more-than-a-bit of racism:

"Oh, let my black momma be the candidate for VP And the unwed teen be a nappy head girl like me Wonder how the headlines would have read then Another at-risk child about to begin and another year the party won’t win"

Writer Jessica Young muses whether right to lifers would be so quick to make a "poster child" of Bristol Palin if she were African American.

These are all excellent points, especially considering the dearth of people of color in the prolife movement as such. A single-issue focus on opposing abortion, detached from a comprehensive vision for affirming life after as well as before birth, apparently does not resonate with many people of color. Not that the prochoice movement resonates much, either, from what I can see.

And there is another matter I wonder about that I haven't heard anyone discuss yet (though maybe I'm not listening in the proper places). Through her father's side, Bristol Palin, and thus her unborn child, are part Yupik (a Native Alaskan group). I don't know how much or little, and I have no idea how she self-identifies. But technically, even by some definitions that come from within communities of color instead of being imposed on them, they are people of color. Yet they are perceived as white. Once again in America, the full, complex story of multiracial identity goes underground.

Wish the Earth a Happy Day--and Happy Ever After, Especially for Her Poor & People of Color

Please join the billion-plus humans celebrating Earth Today. The theme for this year's Earth Day is "Break the Addiction to Carbon."

This theme is principally targeted at the wealthiest, predominantly white Earth citizens--especially my fellow Americans, who amount to only 7% of the human population but singlehandedly produce 25% of total greenhouse gas emissions.

And as with most destructive things the wealthiest people do, it's poor people and people of color worldwide who suffer the brunt of the environmental damage--whether it's:

• The African American kids in my neighboorhood afflicted with lead poisoning.
• Subsistence farmers in India whose land and water are stolen out from under them by large corporations.
• Those starving and malnourished in the Sahel region of Africa because of desertification and global warming.
• Native Americans consigned to barren reservations with minimal to nonexistent economies that are sometimes threatened with chemical or nuclear waste dumps.
• Among, sadly, others.......
  
  Environmentalism isn't all about the whitefolks. It does call for major-league individual and collective responsibility from whitefolks..At the same time, although it gets little attention, people of color and the global poor are taking tremendous action too, and no wonder, because it's in their dearest interests.
  
  I won't say "kill two birds with one stone" because that's not a nonviolent, eco-friendly metaphor--but there are a couple of simple steps you can take to stand up for the environment, the global poor and people of color all in the same action step.
  
  
• Go to the Nonviolent Choice Directory's resources on Eco-Friendly Living and click on Carbon Offsets from Native Energy . Calculate your CO2 emissions and purchase offsets--a little $USD goes a long way here. The proceeds go to develop wind energy projects for Native Americans and Alaska Natives. These projects create truly life-affirming economic prospects.

• Please, once again, endorse Pro Every Life, Pro Woman, Pro Reproductive Justice for All: A Manifesto. The full text (click on "letter") addresses the links among various injustices, including racism, economic imbalances of power, and environmental destruction, that threaten life and reproductive justice for all, born and unborn.

Thank you.

"Not Traditional"

Sacred Circle, a national resource center for healing violence against Native women, often insists:


Violence Against Native Women Is Not Traditional.


Indeed, though few Euro-American feminists realize it today, the women's rights movement in this country, including the struggle to abolish and heal violence against women, has direct roots in at least one group of First Nations, the Haudenosaunee ("People of the Long House") Six Nations Confederacy of Upstate New York (the Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, and Tuscarora).

Anglo early feminists like Matilda Joslyn Gage and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were both astounded and inspired by the much greater freedoms that Haudenosaunee women enjoyed within their own cultures, not the least of which was freedom from sexual coercion.

To learn more about Native American beliefs in everyone's right to bodily integrity, and about this underrecognized origin of US feminism, you can:

--Read ProLife Feminism Yesterday and Today, Second Expanded Edition, which thoroughly documents these matters.

--Visit the website of Sacred Circle and order from their publications catalog, which offers educational materials for both Native and non-Native people who want to both understand and take action on the current horrific problems of violence against Native women.

Violence Against Native American Women

The freedom to live without sexual assault is one of the most basic nonviolent choice rights.

Amnesty International USA recently published the report Maze of Injustice--the Failure to Protect Indigenous Women Against Sexual Violence in the USA. It found that Native American women were 2.5 times more likely than other American women to have sexual violence inflicted on them. Yet perpetrators of violence against Native women were far less likely to be brought to justice.

Why is this so? Along with the pervasive denial in Anglo-dominant US culture that women are human, Native American women are struggling with the fallout from centuries of colonial occupation and racism.

To read the Amnesty report and take action:

http://www.amnestyusa.org/Womens_Human_Rights/Join_Voices_with_Native_American_and_Alaska_Native_Women/page.do?id=1021163&n1=3&n2=39&n3=1410

The Amnesty materials include links to Native American shelters and efforts to end violence against women. Here are two ways you can aid their work most effectively:

1. Donate generously and regularly to one or more of these courageous but chronically underfunded organizations.
2. Write your representatives (Amnesty has a sample letter) to demand an increase in funds under the federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).