1.21 Jiggawhats?!

Hi, I am not sure how to even do this these days, but there is something naggingly nostalgiac about listening to Built to Spill records on vinyl...takes me back to some fuzzy warm place.

I saved a life yesterday...I literally prevented a paranoidly delusional and manicly depressed woman from killing herself...it felt good. Many of my friends have been curious as to why I have all but dropped from the face of the social earth (aka downtown) and I suppose this is why. I am not one of those people who will flout my occupation around to somehow belittle what everyone else is doing. In fact I would warn against my new "lifestyle" unless you want to work 50 hours and only bill 35, see horrible horrible things on a continual basis and make less money than a shift manager at McDonalds. You have to be somewhat mentally ill to work in my field. You have to be a somewhat bi-polar, narcissistic and OCD person to not lose yourself in the daily madness that you put yourself hip deep into every morning. While you might be stepping into a prep kitchen, cubicle or desk- I am usually walking into a homeless shelter or mentally ill persons' place of residence (if they have one). I have recently taken on a Case Manager position at a local homeless shelter and also do crisis interventions on a somewhat regular basis...I lovingly refer to these as 'grab bags' because you have no idea who you are going to go see and what is happening in their own world (usually it is safe to assume you are having a REAL bad day if I am being called to come down and assess the situation).

Paradigms...it feels like years since I used to throw that word around. Sometimes I miss the intellectual stimuli and relative safety of the 'ivory tower'...I miss the professors and the debates primarily. Most of all I guess I just miss being around like minded people. People that don't even waste their time arguing within useless archaic paradigms held down by oppressive media, religions, and other close-minded faculties. The ability to look at things unobjectively (as much as possible) and to realize that everyone's view of the world is for all intents and purposes is 'real' and subsequently tangible to them...you want to argue that point with me? Go down to corpus christi (homeless day center by the skate park) and just sit in the middle of the crowd for half an hour...I dare you...when you have done this; come back and tell me how poor people are milking the system and need to 'pull themselves up from their bootstraps' or whatever other horatio alger/neo-liberal rhetoric the hand puppets have indoctrinated you into spilling from your ann coulter/glenn beck regurgitating mouthes...

I am getting off topic. The point I am making here is that I have no intent to get back on my life trajectory that I was on two years ago. I will probably go back to school just to bang out an MSW and subsequently gain access to more of the 'machine' and cause more good from within the system than I ever could railing against it with a purple mohawk and a shitty guitar.

That and I want to start a folk and indie band...weird...but I feel it calling...anyways hopefully it won't be another six months before I post again. Last year was one of the strangest in my life and not all of it was negative (at least I was fully in love with someone for a chunk of it and even though it didn't work out; angst for the memories)...at least now I have a general direction to begin walking towards and for the first time in a decade I am not staring in my rear view mirror and aimlessly driving around the mindless doldrums of "shoulda, coulda, woulda"

Night pep-peps

State of the Onion

Hi...remember me? According to my login, it has been almost three months since I was on here and posted anything. Lots of things have happened since then, way too much to encapsulate in one blog but since I am sporadic at best; I will touch on some milestones...

First and foremost; I am done with school (until I go back for my master's and doctorate someday) and I think I have found where I need to be...

Second-I will never have to set foot in macaroni grill after five years to cook again...fuck yes

Third- I think I have found what I have been looking for with my new job/career

Fourth- For a brief time my heart was working again, but do not fret it limps on...


So yeah, I am done with school (for a while at least) no more randumb regurgitations of archaic social philosophies, no more three hour night classes railing against misogynistic social structures, and sadly no more open debate between my peers and professors...damn I like debating. As you can ascertain, this is a bitterweet passage for me. I sometimes worry that my mental capacities will slowly deteriorate like a steel boat hull rusting a shallow pond, but at the same time I do not miss filling my time doing remedial tasks to validate paying an institution $4000 a semester. I would be lying if I said that I would miss the encouragement of my professors, Dr. Husting, Dr. Tafoya-Estrada, and Dr. Romero changed my life in their own ways and I will miss such amazingly intellectual people telling ME that I was gifted in sociology. It was nice after spending so many years living in stoner pads and living in a prolonged imitation of a hunter thompson novel for ten years. That being said I learned alot through my internship at BSU and realize that the very idea of upper level education requires me to play ball with the ivory tower syndrome I have grown to loath about college systems...that distance created between those "we" as academics are "studying to help" connotates the same problem I have with anthropologists usually, it is hard to study something and not feel above them in some social or power level....I don't want to get into this now; so moving on...

Macaroni Grill...how I love/loathe thee. I hated the frenetic workpace and machiavellian management tactics. That being said I met so many amazing friends and people there. I will always love some of these people, I met Raach, Liz, Smeags, Chels, Calhound, Kenny, Sammy, Remi, Sam, Elias, Chad, Jake, Dev, Creeps, Sierra, Kristen, and so many others I can't remember right now that I will always treasure...with that being said though; fuck that place...I hated that goddamn job hahaha

With a little luck, social charm and a $30,000 piece of paper I now have a career begining. It is not a job most would glorify or even want but I love it already. I can also already tell that there will be days that will make me smile and days that will make me cry. This job will fulfill me and destroy me at times. As of next week I will be flying solo as a PSR (psycho social rehabilitationalist) and I will be work predominantly with children that come from situations that make most of our childhoods look like leave it beaver. The money is ok and the stress will be high, but I am so excited to be somewhere I can make a difference, even if it is a slow one. If can truly help someone advance their life from this experience then I can sleep easy knowing that I am one of those people actually out their working and helping those in need; instead of sitting in a library writing about something I will never truly face or understand.

Speaking of hearts, I have spent the last couple months seeing an amazing girl. She has restored my faith in women to some extent haha. Unfortunately life is not nearly as amazing as we were and I think that we have had to part ways to some extent. I am not going to lie it sucks terribly but I have never had that much faith in life dealing fair cards anyways. Still it was nice to experience something so beautiful even if it was fleeting and after the trainwreck of the last few years it feels nice to have remembered the joys another person can bring when you actually let them within your walls that your mind and heart build sometimes...

Anyways...it is summer and I refuse to sit in here typing and listening to okkervil river all day, so I am off into the sun with my friends and am going to swim the rest of the day away...maybe I will have some deep metaphysical message next time or some fart jokes...regardless I just wanted to post that I am still here and I am still standing...

Why I don't say "Faggot"

Defining what it means to be a man within our current American Social Paradigm is a fairly insurmountable task. The social indoctrinations begin at such an early age that it is almost impossible to imagine a youth spent androgynistically and able to develop outside of the gender binaries established between man and woman. They are currently reinforced through institutional social structures, families, media, literature, and almost every other facet in our society and are set to a solely dichotomous divide between men and women (which in turn defines gender identities used for discrimination and horrendous inequities). One of the most efficient tools in ‘policing’ reinforcements as to how men are expected to play their social roles is masculinity. Masculinity is commonly defined as a measurement of ‘manliness’ and is a thinly veiled allusion toward who is deemed more powerful, dominant, or superior (within the context of man to man comparison). Tools like Hegemonic Masculinity and Androcentrism are essential to maintaining parameters of masculinity (and subsequently femininity) within our society. The only way to begin to deconstruct such powerful structures of ‘measurement’ in our society it that we must first realize the need for a more androgynistic and less categorical system and subsequently release our seemingly obsessive need to reinforce ideologies that maintain sexism, racism and homophobia within our social structures, ideologies, and symbolisms.

           

The oppositional pairing of men and women show evidence in American Society’s belief or need for inherent behavioral patterns and societal role norms. False ideologies like biological essentialism or universal truths are caustic and essential to maintaining discriminatory practices that further perpetuate social inequalities. Biological essentialism (for intents and purposes in The United States of America and its past history) has been used as a scapegoating tactic to further create inequalities in ‘validating’ ideologies of genetic predispositions and subsequent social inequities within the boundaries of race/ethnicity and gender. Biological essentialism has been utilized to validate slavery and other racial discriminatory practices  (through ‘science’ and legal systems) for centuries and has also been utilized to perpetuate ideologies of women needing to ‘know their place’ within a ‘man’s world.’ When researching biological essentialism and its ramifications, author Sandra Bem wrote, “No matter how many subtle biological differences between the sexes there may someday prove to be, both the size and significance of those biological differences will depend, in every single instance, on the situational context in which women and men live their lives” (Bem 1993 pp. 38).

I believe that that biological essentialism has been utilized, adversely, towards ideologies of masculinities (this is in no way to infer that the inequalities suffered by women in our society are anywhere near rivaled by ‘less masculine-men’). I also believe that this idea of universal truth as to genetic predispositions and acceptable social norms/roles has allotted for many opportunities to discriminate against one’s sexuality, masculinity, femininity, etc. within our society. Ideologies like ‘Social Darwinism’ infers that the socially strongest men will succeed and those that are less powerful (less masculine) were meant to have a lower social standing. This is reinforced daily in the movies we watch, the advertisements we see, and the roles we interact with in our daily social lives. Whether it is a hyper-masculine hero gunning down middle-eastern terrorists in front of cowardly (less masculine) men and women or the full facial haired cowboy propped up against a manly fence he had just built lighting up a cigarette; it is readily apparent what our society expects from a “real man.”

I mentioned sexuality earlier and it is worth defining the differences between the uses of homophobic or sexist slurs and phrases solely within the context of policing masculinities of men by others (as opposed to being used solely against non-heterosexuals). In her research of masculinity within American High Schools, C.J. Pascoe made a very clear distinction stating, “Becoming a fag has as much to do with failing at the masculine task of competence, heterosexual prowess, and strength or in any way revealing weakness or femininity as it does with a sexual identity. This fluidity of the fag identity is what makes the specter of the fag such a powerful disciplinary mechanism. It is fluid enough that boys police their behaviors out of fear of having the fag identity permanently adhere and definitive enough so that boys recognize a fag behavior and strive to avoid it” (pg. 55). This statement is laden with aforementioned masculinity based problems. It denotes the importance and fear based on maintaining one’s masculinity, the policing of external influences, the internalization of identifying “wrong” behaviors, and the importance of semiotic control (masculinity equaling power, fag equaling femininity, etc.).

Hegemonic masculinity is a terminology often used to describe the roles, actions, and ideologies (internally and externally pressurized) that maintain men’s dominance over women in a society. R.W. Connel (while defending his theory) once wrote, “Hegemonic masculinity was understood as the pattern of practice (i.e., things done, not just a set of role expectations or identity) that allotted men’s dominance over women to continue” (2005, pp 832). Connel’s theory was applied by researchers worldwide in studies ranging from bullying and teacher strategies to criminology. It has also been used to study internalizations and external pressurizing of masculine norms within groups of adolescents. The interesting dynamic of hegemonic masculinity is that it is not a solely external dominating force; rather it is internalized as a norm (in this case men and women). Adolescent boys and adult men constantly police themselves in regards to how they are representing themselves around other men to avoid being labeled less masculine. This is essential to maintaining social dichotomies and inequities (in regards to sexism, racism, etc.) and, combined with America’s extremely neo-liberal ethos, it is a real danger to hindering social progress and understanding for more androgynous societal structures.

Perhaps understanding a theory like hegemonic masculinity can be further extrapolated by acknowledging America’s past and current androcentric social views. Author Sandra Bem defined androcentrism as, “the privileging of male experience and the “otherizing” of female experience; that is, males and male experience are treated as a neutral standard or norm for the culture of the species as a whole, and females and female experience are treated as a sex-specific deviation from the that allegedly universal standard” (bem 1993 pp. 41). This statement is of course used regarding gender inequalities between men and women in regards to our society and its power structures, but I believe androcentrism reflects a comparable paradigm to that of hegemonic masculinity.

According to the tenets of androcentrism, everything ranging from past historical narratives, power structures, media, church (bible), and family is viewed through an internalized masculine lens. Over generalizing terminologies (like mankind, freshman, etc.) set precedence for the male to be the norm and the female to be an oppositional paired deviation from the set regular. This theory too can be used as a comparative paradigm examining masculinity identities and their subsequent inequalities. When we have a media that indoctrinates our youth and sets standards of normality; what message does it send when we are bombarded with hyper-masculine imagery? It infers that this is the norm and subsequently the lens in which we should view ourselves and others. It becomes even more abhorrent in terms of examining femininity for men and women. The connotations of having a masculine centric viewpoint allude to warped self view in men and women.

When examining the importance of sexist language and androcentrism, author Sherryl Kleinman wrote, “Words are tools of thought. We can use words to maintain the status quo or to think in new ways-which in turn creates the possibility of a new reality” (Kleinman 2002 pp. 300). This same line of thought would appear to be applicable towards almost all of the objects, symbols, language, etc. that reinforce masculinity in this society. If we begin to reject dichotomous comparisons as to what is masculine and what is not; we can begin to deconstruct these archaic (and to some unachievable) norms of masculinity that have been pushed upon us.

Much like deconstructing semiotic control mechanisms, in regards to feminism and gender issues, masculinity is falsely labeled as a biologically or naturally occurring phenomenon. It must be reanalyzed (on an approachable non-academic macro-level) and denoted as a by-product of social inequalities and archaic patriarchal historical narratives. Labeling levels of masculinity as physical or scientific occurrence is a dangerous falsehood, and it must be understood as a social act/label imparted primarily by external representations of norms and external policing forces (that are later internalized). Even the biological correlation between testosterone and aggression was disproved in an article written by Robert Sapolsky I which he stated, “And “testosterone equals aggression” is inadequate for those who would offer the simple excuse that boys will be boys. Violence is more complex than a single hormone, and it is supremely rare that any of our behaviors can be reduced to genetic destiny” (Sapolsky 1997 pp. 32).

 Real change could occur if public sentiment sent a strong message to our media and advertising conglomerates that this current model of judgmental (sometimes violence inducing) categorization is no longer desired within our society. A true shift in masculinity definitions would be possible in our era if we could find a way to unify collective action. A message must be sent to those choosing our media representations in our daily life. It seems that more and more people are beginning to feel this way as studies of adolescent bullying are broadcast as a more prevalent concern than the old time tested boys will be boys ethos. It seems that more people are beginning to voice concerns over the repercussions that our hyper-masculine society has over our future generations. Moreover, change can occur on a much more micro-level and implemented daily. Simple things like refusing to use terminologies like fag, homo, or any other homophobic slur can begin to spread through social osmosis. I have noticed this in my personal life. Since I have made a conscious decision to cease in using sexist, racist, or homophobic ‘banter’ around my friends, I have noticed a change in their dialogue around me (and hopefully around others). The awkward social situation of telling someone that you are uncomfortable with their language is sometimes enough to spur attention towards things we blow off as being humorous or normal. R.W. Connell also wrote once that, “there could be a struggle for hegemony, and older forms of masculinity might be displaced by new ones” (Connell 2005 pp. 833).  I choose to find Connell’s optimism (within a theory many deem as pessimistic) inspiring in this statement and regardless who chooses to follow; I will walk a path of life encouraging this type of thinking.

Love or Something Like It...

I think I am a fairly knowledgable man. I am smarter than your average bear. I have went from living in my car to leaving college with a 3.4 gpa and potential for graduate school. I have been living on my own since I was a junior in high school. My advice seems to help alot of my friends in turbulent times. That being said, I have never been in love and therefore find myself fairly devoid of essential knowledge in this particular aspect of human existence...

Perhaps I could phrase that better as I have never been in love with someone who was in love with me. I have loved a couple people that for their own reasons did not love me back in the same way and I am painfully aware that some women have loved me when I did not love them. It seems to always be a mixture of luck, bravery and timing that I will probably never master. I am aware that I do not have some essentially developed skills of making my intentions well known to parties included and it is no one's fault but my own. I have also became painfully aware of how many people in my life profess to loving me (as opposed to being in love with me) and I see now that it is an important dichotomy to realize and clarify. That being said, I am steadfast in some of my idiosyncracies. I still believe that truly getting to know someone before taking a plunge is prudent, I still believe that basing a real relationship based solely on physical attraction is begging for failure, and I still believe that deep down I could make someone happy if they had the time and patience to work with my fucked up walls I have developed.

I have to admit that after a certain amount of time being single begins to take it's toll on oneself. You begin to wonder just what it is about you that is so deterrent to other people. In other words, you begin to wonder just exactly what is fundamentally 'wrong' with yourself that you can't seem to love or inspire love with someone else. Your expressive skills in loving begin to wane after not being used for long enough. Moreover you begin to lose that trust, it begins to feel like nothing is more important than never putting yourself in a situation again where you can be hurt by showing your cards too much. To never feel that deep sharp pain of rejection. To never feel that cold awkward absence after finding out that your love was countered by an oppositional "like a friend" kind of love offered up by that significant other.

I used to be bitter about this...I used to write songs about this...I used to let this mentality run my life. I made a conscious decision to no longer let this type of thinking dictate my life. Because at the end of the day, this is it. This is life and life is finite. I could die in a multitude of fashions or freak accidents tomorrow and if I did I wouldn't want to spend my last few minutes thinking about how smugly bitter I was or how well I protected my heart from ever being hurt again. Maybe I hear my chronological life clock counting down harder than I used to, but I want to try at something again. Even if I fail I will know that I no longer stood like an awestruck bystander watching my own life progress through stages of infinite solitude. I take the same approach to love as I do to friendship; I would remove 95% of the 'friends' in my life for the 5% that truly love and understand me. I am what I am, and if it is not good enough then I really have no cause to include you in my life...that is not meant to be callous or hurtful to others but positive for myself because, no matter how I try; I will always be deeply affected by those I wish to surround myself with.

I was going to wrap this up into a neat little positivistic package and draw some attempt at a metaphorical euphimism for people to use but I have been distracted by getting into a million debates about our apparent "victory" in finally killing one man in iraq...to be continued I suppose

My Day Job...Not for the Sociologically Faint at Heart

So I will be presenting this paper today and I think that this is my favorite academic paper I have ever written...I doubt anyone will read it all but it gives you taste of what I have to do with my Mulligan's hangover at school the next day, this is the rough draft....

U.S. Sentiment Towards Mexican-Americans in the 21^st Century: Progress Towards Equality? Or Progress Towards a More Hybrid Racist Paradigm?

I have a few central goals in writing this paper. First, I theorize racism towards Mexican-Americans, in America, has not diminished in many ways, but rather become a hybrid form of past discriminatory practices. I will be examining the social implications of this type of racism by viewing race and subsequent discriminatory laws as a racialized social system, defined by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. I propose that the passing of SB 1070 merely perpetuates the theory of viewing racism through the lens of being a product of a racialized social system; such is the case in Arizona. Further, laws like SB 1070 and Proposition 187 are destined to fail at resolving issues of immigration or creating ethnic unity. I plan to illustrate parallels between the recently passed Arizona Law, SB 1070, to “Operation Wetback.” After noting similarities, I will show that little has been accomplished towards dissuading illegal immigration, and that laws such as these have had a devastating impact upon Mexican-Americans and their ethnic integration in America.

            I will first address the Immigration law in question here, Arizona Immigration Law SB 1070, also known as “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act”, and what it entails. The main controversy of SB 1070 is the part of the bill where state officials are able to inquire about one’s immigration status by subjectively judging with “reasonable suspicion” as to whether the person “appears” to be an illegal immigrant. It is stated more specifically as,

“For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person (SB 1070)

Other controversial components in SB 1070 include the newly imposed clauses, which state illegal immigrants are considered to be in direct violation of federal immigration laws if they are found on public or private land and are to be processed immediately. Continuing, no suspension of sentencing is available until a sentencing is imposed. In sum, there is no release time before processing or sentencing once one is deemed “illegal”. There is also a clause within the bill meant to discourage the hiring of day labor within the illegal immigrant community, for example, the line outside of Home Depot. For the interest of this paper I will deal more directly with the “reasonable suspicion” part of SB 1070.

When writing “Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Interpretation”, Bonilla-Silva defined the term racialized social system as, “societies in which economic, political, social, and ideological levels are partially structured by the placement of actors in racial categories or races” (Bonilla-Silva, 96). He renounced the idea of race as being a difference of biological phenotypes and explains that race is divided socially, and subsequently, that racism is a term that should be studied solely as a “viewpoint of racialization”, not as an ideology that creates societal racial phenomena. He also stated that, “In all racialized social systems the placement of people in racial categories involves some form of hierarchy” (Bonilla-Silva, 96). I propose that the example of SB 1070 fits all the criteria in both of these aforementioned quotes. It seemingly fits perfect into the format of creating an extension of an economic, political, social and ideological form of structural racism. A bill like this is surely cannon fodder for even more racial profiling by state officials and police officers, thus counterproductive towards reaching a multi-ethnic society. In turn, this creates more fear and doubt among the populace, much like California’s passing of Proposition 187 in 1994 by, then governor, Pete Wilson.

Proposition 187 was a bill aimed towards illegal immigrants and moved to bar them from receiving various social services, like public schooling. There seems to be a mirroring effect of Proposition 187 to SB 1070. Kitty Calavita believes that, in regards towards Proposition 187, voters chose to pass such a bill to “send a message” partly due to economic frustrations. According to Calavita, “Proposition 187 is neither simply an instrumental response to economic conditions, nor a purely symbolic measure meant only to declare the cultural or political dominance of the majority. Rather, it can be best understood as a particular type of symbolic statement, the content of which and motivation for which are grounded in prevailing economic conditions” (Calavita, 96). 

I think that the passing of SB 1070 shows some of the general populace’s malcontent with our current economic crisis and the subsequent scapegoating of immigrants. Currently, our country is in the second greatest recession in its history. People are angry and likely looking for outlets to displace their resentment. In some ways, illegal immigrants are a more readily tangible target to point economic siphoning at rather than at governmentally backed banking and credit institutions. I maintain that Calavita has validity in her argument and that the current recession could have a great deal in validating a public tool of discrimination to “punish” such economic “drains” on society. This idea seems to dovetail into Bonilla-Silvas’s idea of racialized social systems being economic, political, social and ideological. Perhaps this also denotes that banking and credit institutions are in the highest class of the American hierarchy and immigrant workers, consequently at the bottom. Coincidentally, Proposition 187 was determined unconstitutional in 1997 by the Supreme Court and later abolished in 1999 by Governor Gray Davis.

Tying into this idea of creating a symbolic message, perhaps in a different power role, are the social ideologies created by mass media conglomerates when dealing with the issue of immigration. In an article written by Brader, et al, the authors address the effects of social opinion on immigration through skewed portrayals in the media. When dealing with the issue of media stereotyping, they wrote: “Group cues might alter public perceptions about the severity of the problem. Negative stereotypes about Latinos in particular might boost concerns about cultural assimilation, consumption of scarce public resources, crime and so on” (Brader, 2008). They state that when the white populace views portrayals such as this, it creates feelings of resentment towards certain ethnic groups of immigrants. Further, other “white” ethnic immigrants do not face the same issues and that due to inaccurate media portrayal, voters often become emotional over issues not pertaining to the immigration patterns themselves.

When one considers all the elements that come together around something like immigration, especially immigration from Mexico, Bonilla-Silva’s theory of race being a racialized social structure really begins to hold merit. The opinions of the public could not be formed in such symbolically angry ways just off of the old ideologies of racism. The mass conglomerate media would not be portraying such abysmal pictures of immigration simply because they felt racist. The Governor of Arizona and the other public representatives that drafted SB 1070 could not have all been blatant racists and nor could the entire state of California been full of racists when it passed Proposition 187 in the 1990’s. Bonilla-Silva’s ideas suggest that this is a way of dealing with a situation using our racialized social structure. When discussing the involvement of whites in a racialized social system, Amanda E. Lewis stated, “The importance of studying the role of whites as racial actors cannot be measured by the level of whites’ felt racial identities or explicitly felt groupness but rather stems from their racialized social location and their status within the racial hierarchy” (Lewis, 2004). The implication of this is such that racialized social systems predominantly deal with various ethnic groups. These minority groups are then dominated, thus lower in the racial hierarchy that is ruled by whites. In a sense, there is no “race” in the whites’ part of a racialized social system, merely a roost of dominance in status.

I have established forms of the racialized social system and the white hierarchy that controls sentiment through scapegoating and media exploitation, I will delve into 1954’s “Operation Wetback”. “Operation Wetback” was a program passed as a response to illegal immigration during the years of the Bracero Program. The Bracero Program was a created to help fill a need for agricultural labor and railroad construction during World War II in America. This program was formed by political leaders in America and Mexico to grant temporary work visas to Mexican citizens. Exploitation occurred within both governments; the affluent upper class in Mexico and business “leaders” in America. One example included the exclusion of the elderly, sick, and women from emigrating to partake in the Bracero Program (due greatly to the desire for workers to stay fluid and not settle down to live in the U.S.). Estimates of migrant workers are up to 75,000 workers on the railroad systems and nearly 50,000 working in agriculture until the end of the war. At the end of WWII, the railroad exchange system ended, but leaders in the agricultural industries decried a need for labor so the Bracero program continued on until 1965.

As a result of denying many Mexican citizens in the Bracero Program and the continued need for cheap agricultural workers, many emigrated illegally to America. After the end of WWII, many Americans began to fear an “invasion” of illegal immigrants, and this led to task forces being created to “combat” illegal immigration. General Joseph Swing was elected the Commissioner of the INS and set up some small teams to start roadblocks and deportation methods in border areas. These roadblocks had great “success” in deporting undocumented workers and soon led to the passing of “Operation Wetback”. Essentially, it was a large-scale version of deportation tactics. In his historical analysis of “Operation Wetback”, author Kelly Lytle Hernández wrote that General Swing claimed to have deported 1,089,583 persons during the year of 1954 (Hernández, 2006). This number sounded impressive and lead to public sentiment shifting in regards to stopping illegal immigration and the government’s effectiveness in dealing with the issue.

However, the whole point to Hernández’s article, “The Crimes and Consequences of Illegal Immigration: A Cross-Border Examination of Operation Wetback, 1943-1954” stated that the success of this program was due to 10 years of prior deportation tactics. These tactics, in which America and Mexico had already perfected, and the number of deportations in 1954, were falsified and showcased as a “publicity campaign.” In this article Hernández writes, “The over one million deportations recorded for 1954 cannot be attributed to that summer’s campaign because FY year 1954 closed on 30 June 1954, just two weeks into the summer campaign.” (Hernández, 2006). He also notes that these numbers were drawn from the year before the project was officially created as “Operation Wetback.” One more integral part to the success of this program was the cohesion between the Mexican and American governments allowing for many of the deported to be detained in central Mexico in detention camps. This would therefore “solve” the prior problem of deportees simply crossing a border town the day after deportation. The significance of these distorted numbers allowed for public sentiment to shift towards believing in the efficiency of border patrol tactics in the U.S. It also furthers the importance of controlling the flow of media information, or disinformation, in this country with issues dealing in immigration (very much akin to Proposition 187 and SB 1070). I draw parallels to SB 1070 and the aforementioned programs because, in essence, the tactics remain the same. During “Operation Wetback” citizens were stopped solely based on their physical appearance, ethnicity, or occupation, and were demanded to show their papers or risk immediate detention and deportation. This is in essence the same paradigm under which SB 1070 operates, though not yet on such a macro level.

Earlier in this essay, I discussed California’s Proposition 187 and why the public would pass such a bill to send a message to the immigrant populace, likely due to economic strain and the need for a scapegoat. However, I did not delve into why there is such a large illegal immigrant population, why they would endure such blatant racism, and the psycho-social effects of such “language” being used by the state and media. In his article, “California Dreaming: Proposistion 187 and the Cultural Psychology of Racial and Ethnic Exclusion,” author Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco discusses the hypocrisy of the Californian Politicians. He points out the irony of one time senator, and later Proposition 187 supporter, Governor Pete Wilson’s decision to encourage workers to fill the need of California’s big time “agribusiness” during the 1980’s and his role reversal ten years later when pushing for immigration reform. This is an example of the dichotomous “push and pull” factors facing American Immigrants. In one message, the governments and large business leaders encourage immigration to support exploitative manual labor needs, and subsequent sub-par wages, while at the same time decry the need to “close our borders” and protect American jobs and services. Suárez-Orozco writes, “On February 6, 1995, less than three months after the passage of Propostion 187, California Attorney General Don Lungren called for a new guest-worker program to bring temporary agricultural workers to the state” (Suárez-Orozco, 1996).

What message does this send to immigrant workers? That it is okay for you to come to our country and work manual labor for exploitative wages, but it is not okay for your children to attend our public school systems? All this while big time American transnational businesses set “free” many third world countries in South and Central America through programs like the North America Free Trade Agreement. The programs merely ensure that the wealthy and powerful business partners in these countries will continually push poor landowners and agricultural workers off of their land. The only natural thing for these poor, exploited, and often homeless people to do is gravitate and emigrate towards the most affluent settings visible to them, America. This is the same America where agricultural and work force owners are always in need of cheap exploitative labor to maintain the current market.

 The central point of this paper to illustrate that while many Americans feel that this country is rapidly becoming an egalitarian racially harmonized society (after all; there are no more distinct Jim Crow laws, legalized segregation, slavery, and various forms of racial inequalities that have been major issues in the past few centuries), there seems to be a sense of Neo-Liberal ideologies in that racial inequalities exist solely due to apathy or lack of effort in minorities. I believe that laws like SB 1070 exemplify that this is not the case in America. The idea of racial profiling people, even if one were to ascribe to the idea of police being able to differentiate immigrants from citizens using “reasonable suspicion”, through legal and governmental agencies, holds horrifying implications of racial prejudice.

This type of blatant political, economic, social and ideological racism seems as if it could only be reasonably spawned in a society set upon the parameters of being a racialized social system. How else can one explain there not being riots in the streets or civil uprisings, at least in politically substantial amounts? Not unless one starts to view this country’s views and actions towards race as being grounded in and nurtured by a racialized social system. How else can one rationalize the forms of accusatory neo-liberalism, discriminatory laws, indirect racial rule and segregation? When a society has been set up to believe that occurrences such as these are not actually racist in formation; there is a need to examine the foundation upon which it is built. I leave you now with a quote from Howard Winant discussing race theory,

“Now racial theory finds itself in a new quandary. Empires have been ended and Jim Crow and apartheid abolished (at least officially). How then is continuing racial inequality and bias to be explained?” (Winant, 2000). This writer asks, “How indeed?” Perhaps it is time to look for alternate explanations towards structural racism towards Mexican- Americans and  immigrants.

Feel Beautiful

hmm here we are again...for the sake of my final semester's GPA I have once again ventured off of my anti-depressants (and subsequently am writing my second blog in what feels like forever). Not dissing my meds (believe me they are a godsend at times) but I can't create whatsoever when on them, no outpouring of sarcastic pop punk songs, no epic ten pages sociological rants, no online blogs, no crappy art projects and sometimes no emotional candor. I realize that my friend was right when she told me that she deals with her bi-polarity by having to cycle being on and off of her meds sporadically. Whatever...this is not what I wanted to write about.

I wanted to write about beauty today. True beauty. Not sheer dumb physical attraction. I mean total beauty. The kind that emanates from one's inner being and shines through the sparkle in their eyes or the curvature of a truly honest smile. The kind shown through obnoxious laughter, uncomfortable amounts of eye contact, mutually awkward physical contact, and other charming life idiosyncrasies. I find all of these things to be utterly charming and beautiful in their own ways, maybe that is because I have an obsessive attraction to things that are legitmately honest and genuine (whether it be music, art, writing or women).

Most of you that read these know by now that I have been going to the gym alot lately and cutting out most of the poisons I used to drink, snort, smoke, etc. I have been doing this for myself, because for the first time in a long time I am interested in preserving my health. This is not just a ploy to lose weight, as a matter of fact I have lost little these last few weeks because I spend 80% of my workout lifting weights. The point I was going to make with this is that I am not trying to "get skinny" I am trying to get healthy. Maybe it is the inner resentment of a fatty that used to be a skinny but I have my own issues with basing relationships purely around physicallity...they don't last.

The facts of life are simple, we get old, we get saggy, we get flabby and we get cold and dead. So if you have something based solely on sex and drunken arguing I always want to ask, "what do you do with your time when the fucking is over?" I am intrigued by many people in my life who fumble from one drunk fuckfest to the next...maybe I am just strange in the fact that I have never been able to take the emotional aspect away from sex...to me they are intertwined. Subsequently this has led me down a strange life path (as I don't emotionally connect on a deep level with many people) because to be completely honest; for a fatty I get offered a fair amount of sex. I am not sure if it is because of my bands, my intelligence levels, my sarcasm, or if my body type just reminds some girls of their damaged paternal relationship. Whatever it is I choose my path based on tenets instilled in me at a young age; treating people as I wish to be treated...I wouldn't want to be emotionally used and cast aside (again haha).

The interesting juxtaposition that this type of thinking leads to after awhile is truly problematic at times though. When one casts themselves in a 'tower of isolation' for a long enough time period; one begins to forget how to connect to others. This often gets chalked up to being classified as 'confidence' and I concur to an extent. However it is more than that, human beings are social creatures and simply cannot live alone. That being said when one has lived alone (metaphorically speaking, I am not even going to launch a diatribe into the societal pressures in america when not being into their idea of a cookie-cutter relationship) they begin to forget what it was like to function in a pair. Whether you attribute this to sleeping on both sides of a bed or any other literal example; the fact remains that you have learned to live life without a romantic other. I have learned to do this fairly well...but there is a definitive difference between 'fairly well' and 'well.'

Sigh...I always feel ridiculously narcissistic when I write these, but I guess it is a blog and we write about what we know and subsequently I know me. Ok, now that we have covered the me aspect of this blog I want to get back to beauty. I know some beautiful people in my life, some of the most nakedly honest and genuine people one could ever imagine. Maybe I am just getting older and stranger but I think that instead of developing relationships based purely off of the pre-establised courtship steps established by our media and societal 'norms' we should all just go with what feels right as opposed to what is 'expected.' In my case I actually enjoy getting to truly know someone before I decide to try and merge our little worlds. Maybe it is a strange concept to some...maybe not...at this point I really don't care.

I just wanted to clarify to some that even though I am horribly devoid of the ability to express my inner emotions sometimes that does not mean that I don't love/care/or have an attraction to you. I am just a 28 year old dude that has some serious walls that I need to deconstruct. I am working on that because for the first time in a long time I find myself thinking about tearing down protective barriers I have built to survive life the last decade. I am out of time and didn't get to say most of what I wanted to say, but I will leave you with one of my favorite musical lines ever written and even though I think this song is inspired by a blowjob given to leanord cohen by janis joplin; it is a multi-tiered song encapsulating some of my sentiments expressed today...if you are curious go to youtube or my facebook page and listen to "Chelsea Hotel Number 2"

"You told me again you preferred handsome men
but for me you would make an exception.
And clenching your fist for the ones like us
who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
you fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind,
we are ugly but we have the music."

Alive with the Glory of Love...aka don't blog when listening to Say Anything

I was thinking about death today...
not in the semi-typical emo-esque glorified manor (as per many blogging ventures), but rather as an ending. Moreover, it seems that the dichotomous relationship of life-death only seems more vivid when they are brushed within close proximity of each other. That elated feeling of a near-death experience...that rush of over-engulfing endorphines saturating your brain with that almost sexually-ecstatic feeling of joy. THAT feeling. This put me on a weird tangent thinking about feelings...in life we are always told that basic feelings are akin to: happy, sad, mad, tired, hungry, horny, jealous, etc. To me this seems to trivialize the entire human experience in the same way that an artist would probably feel after being asked to paint masterpieces for the rest of her/his life using only un-mixed primary colors...somehow that led to me thinking about eulogies and how strange they really are in a way.

Eulogies seem so ironic to me because they are everything nice other people can remember and speak about you...when you can't fucking hear them. How funny that so many people can always seem to say what is in their hearts after the aforementioned 'person of interest' has left this life. I try really hard to let the important people in my life know how much they mean to me as much as possible (because let's face it, people in our crowd live a life that can abruptly end sometimes). Eulogies...still stuck on that idea, I think it would be interesting to perform your own eulogy. After the obligatory thank you's and love doling, shit would probably get pretty interesting. That being said I think I would want to expand on some of the aforementioned feelings of life that I would miss...so here is a list of things I will miss when I die (outside of those boring 'primary' emotions I mentioned earlier).

- The amazing scent of rain hitting desert dirt and sagebrush...since childhood this has been one of my favorite smells in this existence...I wish I could bottle it up and wear it

-The immediate feeling of relief when you dive into a REAL lake in the middle of a hot july day...

-The little tugging bite some girls give your bottom lip when kissing goodbye

-The sound of a distorted guitar ringing out an E power chord through a powerful marshall stack and house sytem

-That feeling of hugging someone in a way that can only imply that for a moment in time everything will truly be 'ok'

-That awesome smell that books have when they have been printed 50 years ago or longer

- The feeling of telling a boss at some shit job to "go fuck themselves" and walking out. I have done this three times in my life and if you haven't done it; you should try...it is quite liberating and enpowering

-The memory of eating mushrooms with your best friend and doing absolutely nothing but laying in the city park grass watching the moon rise and set...try it someday

- The feeling you get in your stomach the first time you hear your stupid band being played on fm radio

-That awesome scratchy sound of listening to a really old vinyl on a record player...preferably neil young or beatles

-That reassuring hug that only a mother can give when your life is so fucked up that you don't know what to do

- Laughing so hard that you begin to gag and almost vomit

- Arguing crazy philosophical and social theories with other people that can hold a rational debate

- Beating Mario Brothers 2 in twenty minutes (I would miss that)

- Seeing 1,000 people cheering and dancing to music that you wrote and created. It is an ethereal feeling to see people connect to such a private form of self expression...it still gives me chills

- That look of trust that your dog gives you, ensuring that you are indeed the number one priority in it's eyes

- Not to be crass but let's be honest...unprotected sex feels pretty fucking awesome...don't lie

- Watching a sun rise after having a completely crazy night that you won't ever forget (or in some cases remember)


anyways...those are some of the things I would miss in this life...maybe it's time to think about these things and try to incorporate more of them in our day to day life?