A Q&A with Alexandre Baril

This week in North Philly Notes, an interview with Alexandre Baril, author of Undoing Suicidism, conducted by Ally Day during his recent online book launch.

 

Can you tell us about what brought you to this topic?

My desire to write a book on suicide and assisted suicide comes from both a personal and academic interest. I have been a suicidal person since the age of 12. Even though there are periods in my life when I feel better, suicidality never really disappears. Much of my work, such as my work in trans, disability/crip and Mad studies, is anchored in my marginalized identities. My writing and research help me to better understand my lived experience and to connect it to a broader sociopolitical context. My interest in suicide comes from this need to understand my own subjective experience of suicidality and to situate it in a larger sociopolitical context. In terms of my academic interests, I was astonished to learn that no concept existed to name the oppression of suicidal people until I coined the term suicidism. I was disappointed about this lack, and that was the spark for this book.

You have coined the term suicidism. Can you tell us more about suicidism?

Suicidism refers to an oppressive system functioning at the normative, medical, legal, social, political, economic, and epistemic levels, a system in which suicidal people experience forms of injustice and violence, such as discrimination, stigmatization, exclusion, pathologization, and incarceration. Many suicidal individuals face violent and inhumane treatments after revealing their suicidality. Indeed, some are hospitalized without their consent, drugged against their will, experience mistreatments by police officers, have difficulty to find new jobs or lose their current jobs or housing, have their parental rights revoked, to name only a few. Because of these suicidist consequences, suicidal people remain silent and complete their suicides without reaching out to anyone. As I always say, every single completed suicide is the proof that what we are doing currently is not working, because each of those people didn’t call for help before completing their suicides.

These stories illustrate that, despite the supportive discourses surrounding suicidality, suicidal people who call for help do not find the promised support. Worse, I contend that suicide prevention does more harm than good. This is particularly true for marginalized suicidal individuals, such as racialized, Indigenous, homeless, 2SLGBTQIA+, disabled/Mad or neurodiverse individuals, who often experience, through suicide prevention interventions, increased forms of colonialism, racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and sanism.

You are proposing some radical ideas in this book, notably a suicide-affirmative approach. Can you tell us what this approach entails?

First, I want to say that my approach to suicide and assisted suicide is not intended to encourage suicide. Second, you are right: the most controversial argument of my book is to conceptualize suicide as a positive right. This implies accompanying suicidal individuals in their possible journey toward death. This accompaniment would be provided through what I call a suicide-affirmative approach. My approach is inspired by trans-affirmative perspectives. A suicide-affirmative approach does not mean pushing suicidal people to suicide, just as the goal of the trans-affirmative approach is not to push a person to transition. Rather, it means that instead of trying to cure trans people of their transness or suicidal people of their suicidality, we develop safer spaces in which we can examine their suicidality with them and discuss a variety of options. My approach proposes to shift from a preventionist logic to a logic of accompaniment to help suicidal people to make the best-informed decision, a support that could be life-affirming and death-affirming.

Most importantly, my suicide-affirmative approach has the potential to prevent more deaths by suicide than existing prevention interventions. Indeed, rather than being forced to die in secrecy by completing their suicide without consulting anyone due to fear of experiencing suicidist consequences, suicidal people would have the chance to speak freely and to benefit from an accompaniment process to reach an informed decision.

What distinguishes your position from the extension of assisted death to people with mental/psychological suffering?

I argue that suicidism makes some people’s desire for death abnormal. In contrast, we legitimize assisted death for those cast as “unproductive” and “undesirable,” based on dominant norms, such as disabled/sick/ill/old people. In their case, their desire for death is considered normal. However, suicidal people’s desire for death is cast as “irrational,” “crazy,” “mad,” “insane,” or “alienated,” and they are stripped of their decision-making capacity. In other words, from an ableist, sanist, ageist and capitalist perspective, people who are seen as “unproductive” are supported to die, while suicidal people, who are seen as having productive futures, are excluded from these laws and forced to stay alive. My work questions why are we offering assistance in dying to disabled/sick/ill/old people who, in the vast majority of cases, don’t want to die but ask for better living conditions, while those who do want to die, such as suicidal people, are denied any assistance?

In all national contexts that allow assisted death, suicidal people are excluded; only people who are physically, or sometimes mentally, ill can have access to these procedures, and these laws specify that no suicidal person should be supported in their desire to die. My approach is therefore radically distinct from that of offering assisted death for people for whom mental illness is the sole condition of their request. I advocate for the abolition of these discriminatory laws that allow assisted suicide only for “special populations” based on dominant norms of who should live or die. I would like to see the creation of new laws and policies surrounding assisted suicide for all adults who have a stable desire to die, including suicidal people. In other words, my approach is not based on a physical/mental illness or disability diagnosis.

What would you say are the three most important messages and take-aways of your book?

I would first say that it’s important to understand that suicidal people, like all other marginalized groups, experience structural oppression. Second, it’s important to start listening to suicidal people and realize that prevention discourses and interventions, despite their best intentions, often make things worse for suicidal people, particularly those who belong to marginalized communities. A third key message is that giving positive rights to suicidal people, that is, providing them the support they need and facilitating access to a renewed form of assisted suicide, might be a much more effective way to prevent unnecessary deaths by suicide.

Regarding the concrete take-aways of my book, the first one is that if we are committed to helping suicidal people, particularly those most determined to die and who currently complete their suicide, we need to acknowledge that we do almost everything wrong. The second take-away is that suicidal people have important messages to convey. We should start paying attention to what they have to say and consider them experts regarding their needs. The last take-away is that despite multiple prevention strategies, decade after decade, despite a few ebbs and flows in suicide statistics, we don’t see a significant decrease in suicide rates. What we have been doing so far doesn’t work, and it might be time to try solutions outside the box, like the one I am proposing in this book.

A deep dive into organized taxpayer activity in the 1930s

This week in North Philly Notes, Linda Upham-Bornstein, author of “Mr. Taxpayer versus Mr. Tax Spender”, writes about what she unexpectedly discovered about the taxpayers’ associations during the Great Depression.

“Mr. Taxpayer versus Mr. Tax Spender” is, at least in part, the product of serendipity. About 25 years ago, my husband and I were reorganizing the basement of his law office in New Hampshire when I happened upon a box containing bound copies of the Coos Guardian from 1934, of which Arthur J. Bergeron, the firm’s retired senior partner, was the editor. This weekly newspaper provided contemporaneous accounts of the efforts of Arthur and the newly formed local taxpayers’ association to effectuate economic and political change in the community, region, and state. This story spurred me to investigate whether this manifestation of organized taxpayer activity was unique to northern New Hampshire or part of a broader movement during the Great Depression. In the ensuing years I identified a plethora of rich, untapped primary sources that documented the emergence of a nationwide taxpayers’ association movement in the 1930s.

A number of my findings surprised me. Among the most prominent are the magnitude of the tax revolt and the speed with which taxpayers’ groups multiplied; the attitudes of organized taxpayers toward the size and reach of government; and the distinctive form of collective tax resistance that emerged in the Reconstruction South.

The proliferation of taxpayers’ leagues in the early 1930s was remarkable. In 1928, they probably numbered fifty or so. As the domestic economy contracted, a good government professional observed in 1932, “an irresistible demand that the cost of local government be reduced” swept “across the country like a prairie fire.” By 1933 there were over four thousand taxpayers’ organizations nationwide.

The attitudes of tax resisters toward the role and reach of government in general, and toward the New Deal in particular, were also unexpected. Because much of modern tax resistance is grounded in the world view, articulated by Ronald Reagan in his first inaugural address, that “government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem,” I anticipated that Depression-era tax revolters would exhibit intense antistatism. Although some organized taxpayers sought to shrink and shackle government, most did not want smaller, more limited government but rather government that was more efficient, more effective, more progressive, and able to provide necessary services in a cost-effective manner. Nearly all taxpayers wanted the price of government to undergo the same measure of deflation as the economy, but they also wanted to maintain the government services they needed and used. What most organized taxpayers desired was less expensive state and local government so as to reduce their state and local tax burdens.

The views of organized taxpayers toward the New Deal were a complicated and sometimes incongruous mix. The feelings of most members of taxpayers’ associations about the New Deal ranged from outright support to ambivalence. Two factors account for the overall lack of opposition to the New Deal from citizens who were protesting vigorously their state and local taxes.

First and foremost, New Deal programs were conferring direct, concrete benefits on many of these taxpayers, especially the housing, agricultural, and relief initiatives. Consequently, many members of taxpayers’ groups understandably welcomed—and some expected—the federal government’s intervention in the domestic economy. Even taxpayers with an individualistic, antistatist mindset tended to have mixed feelings about the New Deal, harboring suspicions of big government but recognizing their need for assistance from the Roosevelt administration and grudgingly accepting it.

Second, the New Deal tax regime did not produce significant tax awareness among or tax resistance from the middle classes because it eschewed taxing the income of the middle classes and instead relied mainly on taxes on the wealthy and corporations, on indirect or hidden consumer taxes, and on taxes (like social security payroll taxes) that taxpayers did not think of as taxes. By and large, taxpayers who participated in collective tax resistance at the local and state levels did not perceive New Deal spending to be adding to their tax burdens.

In my investigation of the 19^th-century origins and antecedents of Depression-era taxpayers’ associations, I was struck by how different collective tax resistance in the Reconstruction South was from organized taxpayer activity elsewhere. Outside the former confederate states, the overarching goal of nearly all taxpayers’ associations in this era was to reduce taxes, though in many cases taxpayers also had a genuine interest in promoting the public’s interest in good and efficient government. In the Reconstruction South, however, tax resistance under the guise of good citizenship was merely the means to other, ulterior ends. Taxpayers in the South used collective tax resistance in an effort to weaken government authority, “redeem” state governments from Republican control, reestablish the institutions of white supremacy, and nullify in practice (if not as a matter of law) the post-Civil War amendments to the United States Constitution. Taxpayers’ groups in the South also diverged from those in the North in their methods, including extrajudicial violence, which was absent from tax protests outside the former Confederacy.

Finally, tax resistance in the South was untethered to the evolving notions of civic responsibility and good citizenship that broadly animated Northern tax resistance. Most taxpayers’ groups outside the South were interested in, and worked for, better and more efficient government. Southern taxpayers’ leagues wanted the opposite: government that was worse, small, and ineffectual. The Redeemers were highly successful in their quest for low taxes, low spending, and weak state governments after 1877. In Mississippi, for example, between 1875 and 1885, Democrats cut the state budget by more than half and slashed taxes. The connections between organized tax resistance in the South and the commitment to good citizenship, better government, and the rule of law that most Northern taxpayers’ organizations evidenced was attenuated at best and often absent altogether.

Historians strive to be objective, but they often approach the subjects of their research with certain preconceptions. My investigation of organized taxpayer activity in the 1930s reminded me of the importance of keeping an open mind, expecting to find the unexpected, and adapting one’s historical analysis accordingly.

A deep dive into the value of diversity for students

This week in North Philly Notes, Elizabeth Aries, author of The Impact of College Diversity, writes about the results of her findings about race and class issues at an elite college, the subject of three books and 12 years of study.

My 12-year interview study of affluent Black, affluent white, lower-income Black, and lower-income white students from Amherst College focuses on what students learned from engagement with racially and socio-economically diverse classmates during college. I interviewed students as entering first years, as graduating seniors, and for a final time at age 30. The age 30 interviews, described in The impact of College Diversity, reveal that 81% of Black and white Amherst graduates reported learning about race and racial inequality through peer interactions during college. The interviews also revealed how a racially diverse college provided a successful pathway to upward social mobility for lower-income Black and white students.

The data provide strong evidence of the educational benefits students derived from daily interactions with classmates whose racial and class backgrounds, experiences, and views differ greatly from their own. At a time when the Supreme Court is soon to decide whether to ban the use of race in college admission decisions, and diversity is very much the subject of heated national conversation, my research found huge financial and social benefits to affluent and low-income Black and white students interacting on our small, residential, racially diverse campus.

I began my study in 2005 at a time when Amherst College began recruiting and enrolling a more socio-economically and racially diverse of the student body. This change was motivated by the desire to promote equity and social mobility, and by a belief in the educational benefits for students of interacting daily with classmates whose experiences and views are different from their own.

As a professor of psychology, the presence of more racially and socioeconomically diverse students was enriching classroom discussions in my courses. Due to the differing backgrounds and life experiences students brought to the table, they offered more varied perspectives and insights on course readings. Their comments enabled me and their classmates to understand the texts we read in new ways. My best teachers have been my students. I could clearly see the benefits of learning from diversity that were occurring in my classroom, but wondered about the extent to which such learning from diversity was taking place through peer interactions outside the classroom as well.

Originally I set out to chronicle the nature and extent of what students had learned about race and class during the college years from engagement with racially and socioeconomically diverse classmates. I then grew interested in what the longer-term impact of being part of a diverse student body had been on them. For most college graduates the period of their twenties is marked by continued identity and job exploration; changes in intimate relationships, possible graduate school attendance, and a focus on self-development. So I waited to do a final set of follow-up interviews until my participants reached age 30.

The focus of The Impact of College Diversity is on the voices of the graduates as they report on their lived experiences and subjective understandings of race and class. The findings trace how hearing the lived experiences of their Black peers during college opened white graduates’ eyes to the harm of racism their classmates endured throughout their lives, deepened their understanding of stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination, and of their own racial privilege. Interviews with Black graduates revealed how being part of a diverse student body prepared them to become bi-cultural, gave them the skills to succeed in predominantly white settings and helped them cope with the challenges of a white-dominated work world. Lower-income graduates acquired new forms of cultural and social capital and higher aspirations during college, which led to greater upward social mobility in the future. Upward mobility did come at a cost, as lower-income graduates had changed in many ways while family and friends left behind had not. They faced the challenge of bridging two different worlds.

Several findings surprised me. When questioned as graduating seniors. just over half the participants reported learning from the racial diversity at the college. Yet looking back at age 30, this percentage rose to 81%. Thirty percent of the white graduates aspired to raise their potential children in a racially diverse environment because they believed in the importance of intergroup contact. And almost all the graduates, Black and white, strongly agreed that a diverse student body is essential to teaching skills to succeed and lead in the work environment.

I was also surprised by the extent of upward mobility of the lower-income graduates because many of them had struggled at Amherst both academically and socially. At the time they were at Amherst, many fewer resources existed than do today to help create an inclusive community and to provide the supports they needed to foster their success. Yet 65% percent of lower-income graduates had gone on to attain graduate degrees, the majority reporting being inspired by the ambitions of their classmates and having their own ambitions raised. Most had attained degrees that led to the highest earnings – an MBA, Ph.D. MD, or JD – and had attended top graduate schools in the country, or had gone into finance and worked for a prestigious investment bank.

The bottom line: A college experience at a diverse school is better for our society, and that can only happen by using race-conscious admission practices.

Honoring Kate Nichols

This week in North Philly Notes, we celebrate and congratulate Kate Nichols, who has just retired from the Press.

Kate Nichols has been a freelance designer Temple University Press for more than three decades. She has been the Press’ full-time Art Manager for the past twelve years, overseeing the production and design of all books, including jackets, covers, and interiors. On the day of Kate’s retirement last week, we chatted with her about some of her favorite interior and cover designs.

In Defense of Public Lands: The Case against Privatizing and Transfer, by Steven Davis.

The author had a genuine interest in the design and structure of the book. The photograph on the cover and those in the book were his own, and very expressive of the message. Above all, the subject matter—keeping public parks open to the public—is close to my heart.

Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans an the End of Slavery, by Deborah Willis and Barbara Krauthamer

My interior design was inspired by the jacket design done by Faceout studio which included an old daguerreotype, with a fading patterned wallpaper background. The book tells the story of Emancipation through photographs, and the combination of a delicate ornamentation juxtaposed with historic, poignant and tragic images made sense to me.

The Audacity of Hoop: Basketball and the Age of Obama, by Alexander Wolff

Faceout also did the cover for this book. I was reluctant to take on the interior at the time because of my workload, but our director pushed me to do it, and I am so glad I did. I like the design challenge, but more than that, I loved seeing all of Pete Souza’s candid photos of President Obama and his joy at playing basketball!

A Refugee’s American Dream: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to the U.S. Secret Service, by Leth Oun with Joe Samuel Starnes

Memoirs are probably my favorite genre to design. I like focusing on typography, the experience of a person’s story, their personal photographs, and the wonder of a book. The authors provided me with a cover concept by Melanie Franz from their original proposal which I happily adapted when creating the final jacket. 

Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies

My interest in Kalfouis less about the actual design. It is a project where I have tremendous respect for its “mission.” The journal includes peer-reviewed scholarship, and non-peer reviewed material, which falls into the section “Ideas, Art, and Activism.” This section features a wide range of entries from articles to poetry, visual arts, and photography.   

No More Consenting to Corruption in Philadelphia

This week in North Philly Notes, Brett Mandel, author of Philadelphia, Corrupt and Consenting, offers ideas about how to overcome the perils of public corruption.

Philadelphia is weeks away from an election that will help set a new direction for local government. Change is badly needed, given the unsatisfying state of the city. Candidates for mayor and for other offices are talking a lot about poverty, gun violence, and lack of economic opportunity. They should also be talking about public corruption, which underlies so many of Philadelphia’s problems. Today, corruption is consented to—through action and inaction by so many in our hyper-connected town—and it costs so much to run a city so poorly. To move Philadelphia into a better future, we must change a culture of corruption and implement key anticorruption reforms so we can best address the city’s challenges.

What is public corruption? It is when officials put their own private gain before the public good, abuse their public authority to advance private agendas, and pervert the work of public entities by excluding the public from official decision-making processes in order to favor private interests. Corruption increases the price of government services and reduces resources that could be used to address our many challenges. Corruption also imposes further costs in denying opportunity for those who deserve It, trampling on the values of fairness and equity, and threatening the health and safety of residents. 

Philadelphia, Corrupt and Consenting details the city’s history of corruption and show how it threatens our future. The book recounts the story of the city’s most important corruption investigation so far this century. It discusses the roots, effects, and reasons for corruption’s persistence, places our current issues into perspective, and offers recommendations to make positive change. Every candidate for office should read the book, review its recommendations, and tell voters what they will do to stop consenting to the corruption that holds Philadelphia back.

To make change for the better, we must understand certain things.

• We need to learn to recognize corruption when we see it. We are on the lookout for overt shakedowns or passing envelopes of cash to bribe seekers, but Philadelphia corruption generally consists of officials doing favors for friends and subverting the work of government to benefit special interests
• Arguing about whether corruption in Philadelphia is worse or better than it previously was is counterproductive; asserting that today’s corruption is different from that of the past does not reduce its cost or blunt its other damaging effects today
• Norms, laws, and accepted standards change; what was once an everyday practice can become stigmatized, even demonized, so we cannot count on the legal system to solve these problems
• We cannot leave the fight against corruption up to a few reform actors or a single reform moment; each of us needs to want our city to function systematically and properly for everyone more than we want to know someone who can get something done for us — and we cannot stop the fight after any small victory is won

We need a mayor and other elected officials who will confront our culture of corruption and embrace an anticorruption honor code for themselves and those they hire—to not only not engage in corruption acts, but to report instances of corruption they see. Ultimately, it is not enough to change rules or laws and we must all stop enabling corruptors with our silent consent. The defining characteristic of Philadelphia corruption is its collegiality. We are all so closely connected to each other, which makes us reluctant to call out bad behavior by anyone who is “one of us.” 

If we cannot stand against those who engage in corrupt activities because too many ties bind us together, then we need to organize a different “us” to oppose corruption. An anticorruption movement or slate of candidates, or even a formal local anticorruption political party could build a movement so we can split from those who do wrong by the city—and those who try to play both sides. If we refuse to consent to more corruption, we can create the thriving city that Philadelphians deserve.

Brett Mandel is a writer, consultant, and former city official active in reform politics in Philadelphia.

Economics for Life

This week in North Philly Notes, we showcase the latest book published by our imprint, North Broad Press.

North Broad Press, the joint Temple University Libraries and Press imprint, has published its fourth open textbook. Economics for Life: Real-World Financial Literacy, by Dr. Donald T. Wargo, is now available open access on the Press’s Manifold platform.

Wargo, Associate Professor of Economics at Temple University, has for several years taught an undergraduate course on financial literacy as part of Temple’s general education program. In the process of planning for and teaching his course, Wargo realized that not only did his students lack an understanding of financial decision making—including credit card use, making large purchases such as a car or home, and retirement planning. Opportunities for guidance on these major decisions were limited.

Wargo found that the available textbooks on the subject lacked the breadth and depth he believed was necessary to prepare students for the numerous decisions they would be facing, This, coupled with the high cost of the commercial textbook he had been using, led him to submit a proposal for an original open access textbook to North Broad Press. As he noted in his proposal, “Economics for Life: Real-World Financial Literacy is designed to help soon-to-be college graduates emerge into the start of their ‘real lives’ with better comprehension of how to analyze the financial decisions that they will soon have to make.”

With chapters on creating and living within a budget, evaluating and managing debt, and the fundamentals of investing, Economics for Life’s approachable style and accessible content make it an ideal book for anyone looking for practical guidance. Readers will learn how to use financial data to make informed personal finance decisions. The book’s Manifold site also includes a supplemental resource—an article by Wargo on the explanation and impact of the “pandemic recession,” defined as mid-February to mid-April 2020.

About the author

Dr. Donald T. Wargo is an Associate Professor of Economics at Temple University. His specializations are in Real Estate, Behavioral Economics and Neuroeconomics. Prior to his teaching career, he held executive positions in several large real estate companies in the Philadelphia area, including Vice President of Finance and President. For fifteen of those years, he ran his own development company, Wargo Properties, Inc.

About North Broad Press

North Broad Press publishes peer-reviewed open textbooks by Temple faculty and staff. It operates under the following core principles:

• We believe that the Libraries and the Press are critical resources for publishing expertise on campus.
• We believe that the unfettered flow of ideas, scholarship and knowledge is necessary to support learning, clinical practice, and research, and to stimulate creativity and the intellectual enterprise.
• We support Temple faculty, students, and staff by making their work available to audiences around the world via open access publishing.
• We believe that the scholarly ecosystem works best when creators retain their copyrights.
• We believe in experimentation and innovation in academic publishing.
• We work to decrease the cost of higher education and improve learning outcomes for students by publishing high quality open textbooks and other open educational resources.
• We believe in the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and promote these values through our publications.
• We commit to making our publications accessible to all who need to use them.
• We believe place matters. Our publications reflect Temple University and the North Philadelphia community of which we are a part.

Celebrating Women’s History Month

This week in North Philly Notes, we celebrate Women’s History Month with a selection of recent, forthcoming, and classic Women’s Studies titles. Take 20% off our Women’s Studies titles this month using the code TWHM23 at checkout! And view all of our Women’s Studies titles here.

New and recent titles

Gendered Places: The Landscape of Local Gender Norms across the United States, by William J. Scarborough

Every place has its quirky attributes, cultural reputation, and distinctive flair. But when we travel across America, do we also experience distinct gender norms and expectations? In his groundbreaking Gendered Places, William Scarborough examines metropolitan commuting zones to see how each region’s local culture reflects gender roles and gender equity.

Ethical Encounters: Transnational Feminism, Human Rights, and War Cinema in Bangladesh, by Elora Halim Chowdhury

Ethical Encounters is an exploration of the intersection of feminism, human rights, and memory to illuminate how visual practices of recollecting violent legacies in Bangladeshi cinema can conjure a global cinematic imagination for the advancement of humanity. By examining contemporary, women-centered Muktijuddho cinema—features and documentaries that focus on the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971—Elora Chowdhury shows how these films imagine, disrupt, and reinscribe a gendered nationalist landscape of trauma, freedom, and agency.

Are You Two Sisters?: The Journey of a Lesbian Couple, by Susan Krieger

Are You Two Sisters? is Susan Krieger’s candid, revealing, and engrossing memoir about the intimacies of a lesbian couple. Krieger explores how she and her partner confront both the inner challenges of their relationship and the invisibility of lesbian identity in the larger world. Using a lively novelistic and autoethnographic approach that toggles back and forth in time, Krieger reflects on the evolution of her forty-year relationship.

Feminist Reflections on Childhood: A History and Call to Action, by Penny A. Weiss

In Feminist Reflections on Childhood, Penny Weiss rediscovers the radically feminist tradition of advocating for the liberatory treatment of youth. Weiss looks at both historical and contemporary feminists to understand what issues surrounding the inequality experienced by both women and children were important to the authors as feminist activists and thinkers. She uses the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Simone de Beauvoir to show early feminist arguments for the improved status and treatment of youth. Weiss also shows how Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a socialist feminist, and Emma Goldman, an anarchist feminist, differently understood and re-visioned children’s lives, as well as how children continue to show up on feminist agendas and in manifestos that demand better conditions for children’s lives.

Women’s Empowerment and Disempowerment in Brazil The Rise and Fall of President Dilma Rousseff, by Pedro A. G. dos Santos and Farida Jalalzai

In 2010, Dilma Rousseff was the first woman to be elected President in Brazil. She was re-elected in 2014 before being impeached in 2016 for breaking budget laws. Her popularity and controversy both energized and polarized the country. In Women’s Empowerment and Disempowerment in Brazil, dos Santos and Jalalzai examine Rousseff’s presidency and what it means for a woman to hold (and lose) the country’s highest power. The authors examine the ways Rousseff exercised dominant authority and enhanced women’s political empowerment. They also investigate the extent her gender played a role in the events of her presidency, including the political and economic crises and her ensuing impeachment.

Motherlands: How States Push Mothers Out of Employment, by Leah Ruppanner

In the absence of federal legislation, each state in the United States has its own policies regarding family leave, job protection for women, and childcare. No wonder working mothers encounter such a significant disparity when it comes to childcare resources in America! Whereas conservative states like Nebraska offer affordable, readily available, and high quality childcare, progressive states that advocate for women’s economic and political power, like California, have expensive childcare, shorter school days, and mothers who are more likely to work part-time or drop out of the labor market altogether to be available for their children. In Motherlands, Leah Ruppanner cogently argues that states should look to each other to fill their policy voids. 

Good Reasons to Run: Women and Political Candidacy, edited by Shauna L. Shames, Rachel I. Bernhard, Mirya R. Holman, and Dawn Langan Teele

After the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, a large cohort of women emerged to run for office. Their efforts changed the landscape of candidates and representation. However, women are still far less likely than men to seek elective office, and face biases and obstacles in campaigns. (Women running for Congress make twice as many phone calls as men to raise the same contributions.) The editors and contributors to Good Reasons to Run, a mix of scholars and practitioners, examine the reasons why women run—and do not run—for political office. They focus on the opportunities, policies, and structures that promote women’s candidacies. How do nonprofits help recruit and finance women as candidates? And what role does money play in women’s campaigns?

Forthcoming this Spring

Political Black Girl Magic: The Elections and Governance of Black Female Mayors, edited by Sharon D. Wright Austin

Political Black Girl Magic explores black women’s experiences as mayors in American cities. The editor and contributors to this comprehensive volume examine black female mayoral campaigns and elections where race and gender are a factor—and where deracialized campaigns have garnered candidate support from white as well as Hispanic and Asian American voters. Chapters also consider how Black female mayors govern, from discussions of their pursuit of economic growth and how they use their power to enact positive reforms to the challenges they face that inhibit their abilities to cater to neglected communities.

Solidarity & Care: Domestic Worker Activism in New York City, by Alana Lee Glaser

The members of the Domestic Workers United (DWU) organization—immigrant women of color employed as nannies, caregivers, and housekeepers in New York City—formed to fight for dignity and respect and to “bring meaningful change” to their work. Alana Lee Glaser examines the process of how these domestic workers organized against precarity, isolation, and exploitation to help pass the 2010 New York State Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, the first labor law in the United States protecting in-home workers.

Classic Titles

Gross Misbehavior and Wickedness: A Notorious Divorce in Early Twentieth-Century America, by Jean Elson

The bitter and public court battle waged between Nina and James Walker of Newport, Rhode Island, from 1909 to 1916 created a sensation throughout the nation, with lurid accounts of their marital troubles fueling widespread gossip. The ordeal of this high-society couple, who wed as much for status as for love, is one of the prime examples of the growing trend of women seeking divorce during the early twentieth century. Gross Misbehavior and Wickedness—which takes its title from the charges Nina levied against James for his adultery (with the family governess) and extreme cruelty—recounts the protracted legal proceedings in juicy detail.

Fireweed: A Political Autobiography, by Gerda Lerner

In Fireweed, Gerda Lerner, a pioneer and leading scholar in women’s history, tells her story of moral courage and commitment to social change with a novelist’s skill and a historian’s command of context. Lerner’s memoir focuses on the formative experiences that made her an activist for social justice before her academic career began. Lerner insists that her decades of grassroots organizing largely account for the theoretical insights she was later able to bring to the development of women’s history.

Yes, It Was a Great Super Bowl, but…

This week in North Philly Notes, Chuck Cascio, editor of Never Ask “Why“, about the National Football League Players’ Association, reflects on Super Bowl LVII.

     Most of us will agree that Super Bowl LVII was a great game! Naturally, my many dear friends who are Eagles fans will think differently (Ed Note: We do!) Nonetheless, the game provided many memorable individual athletic performances (Hurts and Mahomes in particular) and societal impact signs (first Super Bowl ever featuring two Black starting quarterbacks; many players wearing notations on their helmets about social causes; clear attempts to draw attention to minorities in attendance; references to Black History Month). 

     But fans of this sport that attracts more attention than any other sport in America, this single game that drew approximately 113 million viewers, this unique league that grosses approximately $18 billion per year…fans of this deeply-rooted American phenomenon need to acknowledge that in order to survive, the game must evolve. And to continue to grow and adapt, NFL leaders must consistently remember the roots of the game.

     Please know: I too love the game. I played it in my youth. I have followed it closely since my boyhood days in Brooklyn through my adult life in the DC area. But it was editing Never Ask “Why”: Football Players’ Fight for Freedom in the NFL, by the late Ed Garvey (head of the National Football League Players Association from 1971-1983), that has increased my awareness of the importance of football’s ongoing need to adapt.

     The book serves as a reminder of the struggle of race, wealth, labor, and equality in this sport, and in America. Today approximately 60% of the NFL players are Black, yet it is a sport in which owners often treated Black players—and too often all players—with disdain.

     While working on Never Ask “Why”, I remembered that I always knew that those “Whites Only” signs I saw in the South on everything from restrooms and water fountains to hotels and restaurants reflected discrimination that was prevalent throughout society. And when I covered the Washington football team for various publications in the 1970s, it was evident that the same racial animus extended into every area of the sport. 

     My friend, the late Brig Owens, a Washington football Ring-of-Fame player with whom I wrote the book Over the Hill to the Super Bowl—his diary of Washington’s 1972 Super Bowl season—had been an outstanding quarterback for the University of Cincinnati in the early 1960s. However, when Brig was drafted into the NFL, he was told that he could not play quarterback because he was Black; instead, he would be moved to safety because of his speed. Yes, Brig became a great safety, but his treatment when drafted exemplified the thinking in a league that discriminated against Black players in various “key” positions.

     In the 1970s, when Ed Garvey led the NFLPA, players constantly battled with owners over what should seem like basic rights—salary negotiation, health insurance, pensions. However, during that time owners simply placed their power in the hands of NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, who had control over most decisions through something called the Rozelle Rule. Under Ed’s leadership, it took strikes, lawsuits (including one in particular by all-pro player John Mackey), protests (“No Freedom, No Football” became the slogan of striking, picketing players, and their supporters), and more than a decade of often frustrating negotiations with owners to eventually reach some areas of compromise.

     Today, there is a tendency to assume that football players “have it made” given the publicity around major contracts, the average salary of approximately $2.7 million, and the median salary of approximately $870,000.  In addition, today’s players receive health insurance (with some limitations) and retirement (with other limitations) so it is often assumed that players are more than comfortable. 

      However, fans often miss that the average career of a professional football player is just a little over three years and that the extremely high salaries we hear about raise the overall average disproportionately. Also often lost in the excitement of the games, especially the super-hyped Super Bowl, is that the game is increasingly dangerous. 

       It is necessary for the NFL to continue to make adjustments for the safety of players, who are the actual performers and are bigger, faster, and stronger than ever. Their strength and aggressiveness often attract the most attention from fans, coaches, and media. That is all fine as long as the game adapts to these factors, but adaptation is an ongoing process.

     As we reflect on this past season and await the next, let’s continue to admire the physicality of the game and respect the many exciting elements of each play—the coordination, timing, speed, strength, teamwork, and fortitude that players exhibit. But let’s also recognize that the players are the performers, the entertainers, the ones taking risks on every play, so the game needs constant upgrading to support them.  

     As Hall of Fame NFL player Judge Alan Page writes, in part, in his foreword for Ed Garvey’s book Never Ask “Why”

     “These pages show Ed’s passion and commitment to the belief that players were workers whose performance was integral to the success of the business of football and who were due appropriate compensation, health protection, a pension, and other benefits. The goal he pursued was for players to receive a fair share of the wealth they were an integral part of creating…He believed that by sharing the wealth in an equitable manner, players would become true professionals and the game itself would be better. Ed was correct…”

(C) 2023 Chuck Cascio, all rights reserved.

Thoughts? Email chuckwrites@yahoo.com

Announcing the new issue of Kalfou

This week in North Philly Notes, we present the new issue of our journal, Kalfou.

Vol. 9 No. 2 (2022): Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies

Published: 2023-01-05

Symposium on The Race of Sound, by Nina Sun Eidsheim

• The Race of Sound, by Nina Sun Eidsheim: What Good Work Does and Why It Matters by George Lipsitz
  
• Making a Space for Epistemology and Aesthetics in Voice Studies by Marit J. MacArthur
  
• Listening to Listening: A Response to Nina Sun Eidsheim’s The Race of Sound by Ellie M. Hisama
  
• The Acousmatic Question and the Will to Datafy: Otter.ai, Low-Resource Languages, and the Politics of Machine Listening by Jonathan Sterne , Mehak Sawhney
  
• Listening Practice and History: Sound, Erasure by Nancy Yunhwa Rao
  
• Do Vibrations Make Decisions? by Brian Kane
  
• Hearing Timbre at the Crossroads by Landon Morrison
  
• Who Is Speaking? An Empirical Perspective on the Acousmatic Question by Jody Kreiman
  
• Exceeding the Visual, Eluding the Textual by Dorinne Kondo
  
• No Conclusions: Response to Symposium, August 16, 2021by Nina Sun Eidsheim, Daniel Walden

Feature Articles

• Mapping Complicities in Brahmin Supremacy to White Supremacy: An Unsettling of South Asia and South Asian America by sahiba
  
• Boxing Ring Entrances as Insubordinate Spaces: A Disruptive Oral Herstory by Rudy Mondragón
  
• “Did He Ever Hear of Egypt or Carthage?” Moses Roper’s Literary and Oratorical Activism in the British Isles by Hannah-Rose Murra
  
• A Different Way of Working: The Insurgent Sociology of Shana M. griffin by Nia Flowers, George Lipsitz

La Mesa Popular

• Unsettling Complicities: An Autoethnographic Mapping by sahiba

Mobilized 4 Movement

• The Grace of Black Folk: Notes on Ubuntu Democracy by Johari Jabir

Review

• Artificial Whiteness: Politics and Ideology in Artificial Intelligence, by Yarden Katz by Ethan Chang

Teaching Fear

This week in North Philly Notes, Nicole Rader, author of Teaching Fear explains how parents’ fear of crime influences how they (think they) protect their children.

Parents who watch the news regularly see images of kidnapping and homicide victims and hear about school and mass shootings. Most recently, parents were bombarded with images of four young college students at the University of Idaho who were brutally murdered while sleeping.  These horrific and fear-producing crimes make parents think twice about sending their children to school, activities outside the home, or anywhere. Parents teach kids how to protect themselves from crime when they are away from home and provide a variety of lessons about stranger danger. Studies have found that up to 70% of parents are afraid of crime for their children. A recent Gallup poll study found that one in three parents recently said that they were worried about their children being a victim of a school shooting. Fear of crime is high on the list of things parents worry about for their children.

Parents may be surprised to hear that most of their fears for their children are based on myths passed down from generation to generation and reinforced by the media. These myths emphasize a fear of strangers, a fear for young, white girls, and a belief that if one tries hard enough, victimization can be prevented.

Most parents are surprised to learn that strangers rarely hurt children. When children are victimized, they are typically victimized by a family member. 

Parents are also surprised to hear that children are rarely kidnapped, and a known offender typically takes those children who are kidnapped.

Finally, research has found that school shootings are sporadic and that children are actually safer at school than almost anywhere else, including the home.  

In other words, the reality of crimes against children looks quite different from what most parents have been taught to believe about crime and victimization. What this means for parents is that they often worry about the wrong types of crimes, people, and locations of crimes happening to their children. Crime myths, then, fuel fears of strangers, fears of kidnapping, fears of school shootings, and fears of public spaces, but, ultimately, when children are kidnapped or hurt by others, it is almost always a known person in a private location (like a home). 

Parents operating with misinformation make choices on keeping children safe by taking a litany of precautions that will have little payoff in protecting children from crime. Because of fears related to stranger danger, parents avoid public locations, restrict children from being alone outside (even in the front yard), track children on their phones, and expect constant communication with their children when they are unsupervised. This exhaustive list becomes the gold standard for protecting our children. 

What this list does not include are actionable items parents can take to arm their children with accurate knowledge about crime and victimization.  The conversations with children about how to talk to others if someone they know hurts them or how to seek help when they know about friends who are being hurt by loved ones are lacking by most parents. These conversations seem harder to most parents than talking about stranger danger.  

Teaching Fear examines where parents learn crime myths—from socialization agents like parents to school, and the media—and how these agents influence what parents teach their own children. I spent 20 years researching fear of crime and safety precautions, and did a deep dive into other research, public policy, and public opinion on crime to not only outline the problem of how we teach fear to children today, but also provides parents with the tools to “teach fear better.”