the king and emperor

President-elect Donald Trump met with the Prime Minister of Japan in Trump Tower on Thursday Nov. 17. Commentators have focused on the fact that Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner were part of the meeting. Their presence would indicate a blurring of the line between Mr. Trump’s business interests and his job as the president of the United States.

Having seen the photos distributed by the Japanese guests (especially this one) something else bothers me. The picture of Ivanka, her father, and the Japanese group shows Ivanka sitting on one side of a coffee table, with the men lined up on the other side.

I think it’s pretty clear that the ideal Mr. Trump is trying to emulate is not that of president, but that of king. Writers have described his penthouse as “Versailles-like” and the whole thing is not a coincidence. The queen (Trump’s wife Melania) was absent from most of the election campaign, and she’s absent here. But Ivanka is there, blonde, pretty, and on display. The heiress, a princess.

Louis XIV was the French king who built the Versailles. Skip forward less than 100 years, and Louis XVI was killed during the French Revolution.

When I became an American citizen I learned that in the US no royal titles are given merit. They just don’t count. Having grown up in a modern monarchy (Sweden) I found this refreshing. The fact that the president-elect now tries to back-paddle a few hundred years is sickening. I hope no one is impressed by the gold and fancy fabrics. They don’t mean a thing.

48 things about me

I was going for 100 things, but 48 isn’t bad either.

  1. I love classic cars and every day I am sad I had to sell my 1972 Karmann Ghia convertible.
  2. I have no business owning classic cars that need work.
  3. I love steak tartar.
  4. My goal is to do a two hour hike five days a week but I usually end up with four.
  5. Oppression makes me very, very, angry.
  6. I love color.
  7. I’m borrowing a quote from Swedish painter Ivan Ivarson: “I could eat color.”
  8. I also love photography. Photography is painting for the lazy.
  9. I’ve lived in California since July 12, 1995.
  10. Before then I lived in Sweden, where I was born.
  11. I teach at a Catholic school, but I am not a member of any religious organization.
  12. I think I’m becoming more interesting as I get older, but I realize that as an aging woman in the eyes of the world I am getting less interesting as I get older.
  13. I am a cancer survivor.
  14. Speaking English as a second language has given me plenty of new words and concepts to make visible things that are kept invisible in Swedish. One example: #13.
  15. People who rely on hierarchies (and their positions in hierarchies) are boring to me.
  16. This is a Scandinavian cultural trait (#15).
  17. I like people.
  18. I like flowers.
  19. I like sunshine and when it’s warm.
  20. Growing up my favorite month was July.
  21. My favorite number is 7.
  22. I like people who are funny.
  23. Very few students incorporate humor into their papers, essays, or exams. This is a pity.
  24. Shout-out to Justin Canel. (Also a test to see if he’ll ever read this.)
  25. My hairdresser likes to make my hair partly purple, but purple hair makes me nervous.
  26. I feel at home in large cities.
  27. I live in a small town.
  28. I don’t have favorite movies or books or songs.
  29. I drink a lot of coffee but no alcohol (because of the cancer).
  30. My left foot is larger than my right foot (maybe that’s normal).
  31. I don’t remember numbers.
  32. I remember personal details and stories people tell me to an embarrassing degree.
  33. I just deleted “I am more competitive than I’d like to admit.”.
  34. I need time by myself everyday.
  35. I have a very, very, poor sense of direction.
  36. I love cheese.
  37. I like leather shoes and bags. Not vegan.
  38. Not a vegetarian either.
  39. I’ve never wanted kids.
  40. I’m afraid of heights.
  41. I think men get away with stuff and women are held to higher standards. (As in, it’s easier to criticize a woman’s performance.)
  42. One of the nicest compliments I’ve received was when one of my nephews was 2 years old and he told his dad, “Lotta knows how to play in the sandbox”.
  43. Also: An African-American college senior (that is, a young woman around 22 years old) told me that I was the first white person she’d been able to trust.
  44. I told a white colleague that story, and her first comment was “no”, as if it couldn’t be true.
  45. I will never, ever, understand American race relations.
  46. I love spicy food.
  47. I’m private. There are lots of things I’d never put on this list.
  48. I can hold a grudge.

finally

Earlier this summer I spent a few days in Ann Arbor, Michigan, attending University of Michigan’s National Intergroup Dialogue Institute. It’s an intense program, focused on some hard-to-tackle issues: Social justice, social differences, oppression, and on how to bring about dialogue. The time is about equally divided between workshops and big hall lectures/discussions. The workshop time was spent in smaller groups that stayed the same through the conference, so there was enough time to start getting to know the other participants a little bit.

We left California just as spring quarter was ending, and right before summer school was about to start. I was tired from a long stressful school year. I was tired of people, and I was definitely tired of people telling me what to do. And, having spent the past 15 years teaching about social justice, inequality, and prejudice, gaining plenty of experience guiding groups through difficult conversations in the process,  I overlooked the (obvious) need to prepare mentally for the four-day institute.

The first few meetings in our smaller group were interesting, and it was obvious that people came from very different backgrounds. I listened more than I spoke. Partially out of teacher-habit (the worst thing an instructor can do is talk too much when you want a group to share experiences), and partially because I know that my own white, educated, middle class, northern European, background is one where structures have granted me privilege, rather than caused me to struggle.

Over the few days the institute lasted, I grew increasingly frustrated. I’m writing this on August 9 – about a month and a half after we returned from Michigan. Today a couple of the pieces finally fell into place.

The first piece is something I once learned from a gay student. Having come out some time earlier, and agonized over the decision, he realized one day that the coming out process was never going to be over. As a gay man, he would have to keep coming out for the rest of his life. To new friends, new colleagues, maybe to their friends. He told me that he had gone to a gay professor for advice, and she had told him that he was right. It would never end. Exhausting, right?

I walked into the small group discussions in Michigan with a lot of experience from similar situations. But I failed to realize that no one knew that about me. No one knew me at all, as a matter of fact. What I was doing was assuming that everyone would take one look at me and automatically know that I was one of the “good” white people. And that is, to be honest, exceptionally annoying behavior. It’s self-important, and egocentric. And as a white, privileged, person you really don’t need to be egocentric in discussions about social justice and racism. When I see such attitudes in my students I call them on it. Yet I was blind to it in myself.

The second piece was a comment Tim Wise made today about the #blacklivesmatter protest at a Bernie Sanders rally in Seattle yesterday. Wise’s point is that racism upholds class differences in the US. So, when white leftists (like Sanders) want to deal with class issues first, and assume that after that racism will take care of itself, they are seriously missing the point. That’s the reason, Wise says, that “white leftists have to EARN the votes of people of color and white antiracists”.

And that’s when it dawned on me. At the conference in Ann Arbor I grew increasingly tired, irritated, and cranky, because I felt pushed to prove myself (AGAIN! the unfairness!) to people of color. And in that, I was so wrong. The truth is that I will have to prove myself, over and over again, to everyone around me, and to myself, for the rest of my life.

And the exhaustion I felt, and have been feeling since I came back from Michigan, that’s just how it is. As a white person I have the privilege of being able to take a break. But, there is no turning off injustices. There are no breaks for anyone suffering from oppression.

My exhaustion actually brings me closer to others. For once I too felt boxed in, judged, and limited. And I didn’t like it one bit.

artsy dot net

I got an email from the people running Artsy.net, a site that “strives to make all of the world’s art accessible to anyone.”

The artsy.net people had found me through my post about Vivian Maier, where I’m mildly critical of those who have tried to make money from the art made by the reclusive ms. Maier. In contrast, artsy.net makes Maier’s art available for free: “Our Vivian Maier page includes her bio, over 110 of her works, exclusive articles about Vivian Maier, as well as her exhibitions.”

Artsy.net sounds like an awesome project.

the mystery of the mexican soda

I am a big fan of Jarritos, a Mexican soft drink. The bottles are pretty, the soda has real sugar instead of corn syrup, and, best of all, there is a pineapple flavored Jarritos.

My local Safeway carries Jarritos, but they rarely have any pineapple flavored ones. Safeway keeps the Jarritos on one of the bottom shelves in the non-white people food aisle, the aisle that has “Hispanic” food next to “Asian” food and the Kosher items.

The Target closest to my house also carry Jarritos. They too keep them among the Hispanic food.

Yesterday Dan and I were across town in the southeastern part of San Jose. We were in Target, and I remembered to look for the Jarritos. In the Hispanic aisle they were not. Instead, I found them among the soda, in the drinks aisle.

So, in neighborhoods where mostly white people live, Mexican soda is categorized as “Hispanic food”. In a neighborhood where more Mexicans shop, Mexican soda is a soft drink.

I can’t help thinking about what would happen if the Jarritos where to live next to the Pepsi in my uppity small town Safeway.