My Perspective and Experience with Children Having Cell Phones

After reading the article "Preteens and cell phones: my change of heart", I wanted to commend the author's husband for helping their daughter find a constructive way of voicing her opinion and trying to persuade her parents to reconsider. Instead of whining and begging, she presented rational arguments. Even if it didn't change their mind, I think she should be encouraged and praised for behaving so maturely.

As parents of a teen, my husband and I have had to deal with this issue. We decided to get a "family" cell phone that we could allow her to take with her when she was out with friends or going to soccer practice. This solved the issue of convenience without creating a situation where she might develop the texting addiction that was already causing problems for some of the other kids in her middle school.

We didn't give her a cell phone of her own until she was in high school. My husband and I carefully selected the kind of phone and phone plan she'd have. Since my husband is a techie, he opened up her phone and disabled the camera on it. There is A LOT of pressure on girls to sext and we didn't want her to have to deal with that right away. We told her that we'd re-evaluate things in a year. If she showed that she could use her phone responsibly, then we'd consider getting her a phone with more features. We also told her that she would have to leave her cell phone in our room at night. She was so happy to finally have a phone that she didn't balk about our restrictions.

I'm proud of how she's taken on this responsibility/opportunity. She had heard friends talk about how they accidentally--a parent would probably call it carelessness--racked up huge cell phone bills from texting so much. She came to me and told me that she researched alternatives to that and she found a program she could download to her phone that would allow her to text through the internet. She said it would allow us to select a cheaper cell phone plan that doesn't include texting without losing any of the features she now had. We checked out the program and she was absolutely right. That impressed us. We're always talking to her about the importance of frugality and it was encouraging to see her making an effort to save (us) money.

Now, we've developed a sort of system where she inherits our old phone whenever my husband or I get a new one. When I got the Iphone 4. She inherited my old Iphone 3g. Even though it's not the newest one, it's not obsolete and it does everything WE need it to do for her. She's happy with our system, because by the time she gets a phone from us, there are already lots of cool applications available for them.

I'm glad that we stood our ground. I think it's good for children to learn to delay personal gratification. No child should grow up receiving everything they ask for, as soon as they ask for it. As a family that--thanks be to God--can afford to give our only child everything she needs and much of what she wants, we think it's important to prevent her from growing up to be one of those adults who were overindulged as children and walk around expecting the world to cater to their every whim. We were able to use the cell phone issue as an opportunity to reinforce that lesson, instead of trying to "keep up with the Jones" and give her something just because most of her peers already had one.

If only the rest of parenting was as easily dealt with... :)

My Daughter's Natural Hair Joys

My daughter took my phone tonight and posted this picture of herself on my facebook wall. She captioned it to show how much she loves her hair. "Oh lawd, these curls are ridiculous".

She has never had a "relaxer" in her hair. Down here, it's de rigueur for "Creole" girls to wear their hair straight and long, even if that's not how their hair is naturally. If a girl has what would be considered "light-skin", then she should have the straight(er) hair that accentuates the European part of her heritage. I can't even count how many times people have told me or my daughter that "she'd be so pretty with straight hair".

Hearing that makes me angry and disgusted, because of the implications of that assertion. It's still remarkable to me that there are so many people who ignore the way it makes little girls feel when they hear that kind of criticism disguised as a compliment. Even in 2012, Creole society reeks of so much class privilege that I refused to even refer to myself as Creole until the past couple of years.

I had to chemically alter my hair all the way until I reached college. My mother said that afros were too radical for a Christian to wear. Yes, I do realize how silly that may sound, but her reasoning was that Christians should not seek to draw attention to themselves. Trying to stand out was akin to attempting to reject and upset the purported "oneness" of the church body.

My mom finally consented to my desire for synthetic braids. After a year and a half of that, I tried wearing my hair in an afro, but it was so drastically different from how I was used to looking, I quickly got a relaxer put in my hair again. The societal messages were strong enough to make me want to relax my hair again, even though nobody was directly demanding me to do it.

I had a teeny weeny afro when I was going through chemotherapy and most of my long tresses fell out. My mom took it harder than I did. I liked it. When it grew back, I did get relaxers again. However, I've never been the kind of girl who likes fussing with my hair, so I went natural again a few years ago. It's a lot easier to deal with. I don't need to sleep with hair rollers or bother with curling irons. I can put a little pomade or mousse or hair lotion in it and I'm finished. Sometimes, I'll put a headband on it to add some color.

Before my daughter was born, I made up my mind that I wasn't going to put her through the endless routine of sitting at the hair salon for hours every week, just to make her hair conform to societal expectations. I was determined to teach her to love herself just as the Creator made her. I was often pressured to relax it, but I managed to resist it. That was probably my first real independent decision as an adult.

In elementary school, she was the only girl of color who didn't have relaxed hair. She had a few girls do cruel things like pour milk in her hair and call her "nappy-headed". It only takes a couple of bullies to make a kid's life really miserable.

During her middle school years, I remember an incident where she was at a sleep-over and called me up crying her little heart out. The girls were playing in each other's hair and one white girl who she THOUGHT was her close friend made a nasty little comment about how my daughter's hair would break her flat-iron and that it wasn't meant for "that kind of hair". Nobody stood up or voiced any problem with the comment. She was the only girl of color at the party and it made her feel really horrible and alienated from the girls. I wanted to scoop her up, immediately, but she wanted to stick it out and try to enjoy herself.

That's more than any little girl should have to endure. The teasing and bigotry that she experienced were the only things that made me question whether this endeavor was really something worth sticking with.

When my daughter got accepted to the big fancy high school here, there were about a half a dozen girls there who also wore their hair naturally. When she reached tenth grade, a bunch of other girls told my daughter that they were about to do it, too. It's now considered pretty fashionable among that hoity-toity crowd. Go figure! If you wait long enough, every style will become fashionable again.

I'm a bit of a natural hair advocate now. I feel very strongly about my decision to look like the Creator made me. It means that there are certain jobs I could never get hired to perform. White America still isn't ready to fully accept the features of people of color as a part of what's "normal". However, I think that choosing this road through life has made me stronger and helped me make my daughter stronger than most children her age.

Traveling While Black

This evening I read an article in Ebony about "Why Black Youth Must Travel". It interested me, because of how much I love studying cultures and languages from around the world.

I'm a bit disappointed that the author didn't address how the travel disparity is significantly affected by safety issues associated with being a person of color. Let's face it. If something happens while you're traveling the world and you don't look like Natalee Holloway, you can forget about contacting the consulate or your representative in Congress. You're on your own and you'd better have enough money to pay for whatever it will take to get you out of trouble and back safe at home.

We're also far more likely to receive a negative reception in many parts of the world, especially Europe. We're not exactly the desired market that tourism departments are hoping to attract.

These things can make travel a much less appealing idea for those who, though young, are already hip to the reality that the "black tax" extends beyond the borders of the USA. As a middle-class parent, I'd love to see my child travel overseas. It's not a matter of availability of funds, for us. I'm just not going to use my funds to send my precious, queer (young) woman of color alone into a world that is especially predatory towards people like her.

I like the idea of travel and do it as much as I can. However, I'm a realist and I know what a difference it makes for having a white husband by my side when I do it. My contribution to today's black youth will travel overseas when we can do it as a family

The Legacy of Black Greatness and Endurance

Photo Description: President Obama is walking down the halls of a government building wearing a suit and tie and his right hand is in his pants pocket. He is accompanied by two black male professionals who are also wearing suits. To his left, there is a balustrade. In front of the balustrade, there's a black man wearing a janitor's uniform and latex gloves as he empties and replaces the trash bags in the building. President Obama has taken a couple of steps toward the janitor and his left hand is extended as he shares a fist-bump with the janitors' gloved right hand, before he moves along. The janitor is smiling at the President. Obama's lips are slightly pursed into a serious-looking (but respectful) facial expression.

This picture affected me to my core. I'm not even sure I can articulate why that is, really.

Seeing this black man, who is now the President of one of the most powerful nations in the world, take the time to acknowledge and show this man respect in such an identifiably black manner makes my heart burst with pride. It reminds me of the pictures from the black power salute at the 1968 Olympics.

It brings tears to my eyes as I think about all of the generations of black people who have worked, doing hard labor and menial jobs for little or no pay. They endured centuries of inhumane treatment in order for us to finally have the opportunity to see black exceptionalism, black excellence, black intelligentsia on display for the world to see and be forced to recognize, even in the upper echelons of this white-dominated country.

For me, the aleatory moment captured in this photo symbolizes Obama's unabashed connectedness to the entire community of American people of color and shows an appreciation for the oft-ignored working class black people that made it possible for him to be where he is now. This photo gives me a really visceral feeling of pride in what our community has produced, despite centuries of marginalization, oppression, and--dare I say it--slavery.

Transnational/Transracial Adoption and Fetishization

On the "Yo, Is This Racist?" tumblr, someone was seeking advice about how to deal with a friend who was fetishizing the Korean child that she was getting from a transnational adoption. On Facebook, someone responded that, when the agency saw how she was acting like she was getting a new toy, they wouldn't allow her to adopt. I had to laugh at that.

These international adoption agencies wouldn't stop her from adopting. That's what they are there for: To make it possible for privileged people to buy a walking, talking toy.

I can't have any more children--I have one--so my hubby and I wanted to adopt. Our state wouldn't allow us to adopt from those in the foster system, because I have cancer, so we started looking for an international agency in order to expand our family.

The agencies that I contacted sent me packets with the estimated cost to adopt babies from different areas. Anyone who says these folks aren't selling children is either ignorant or a heartless liar. Some of them even offer a reduced cost (i.e. discounts) for adopting older kids. In the world of international adoption, any child over 4 years old is past the baby stage and, therefore, are less desirable to most potential adopters.

Once you tell them which country you want to adopt from, they send you pictures of the available children. You let them know which one you're interested in and then you start paying all the fees it will take to get you through the process.

In a few months' time, you can be the proud owner of a new and exotic toy. You can treat your new toy like a teacup poodle. Rename it. Dress it up in cute clothes. Bring it with you in stores and parks so that everyone can see how cute it is. Compare it with the ones your friends bought. If you get bored with that one, you can buy another one from the same agency at a discounted price. You can get one from the same place so that you have a matching pair or you can get one from another country to add some diversity to your collection.

I did badly want another child. I still do. However, I couldn't deny that the whole process of picking and paying for a child repulsed me. I tried to tell myself that I could minimize the harm that transnational adoptions cause. The vast majority of transnational adopters are white. Unlike the vast majority of adopters, I specifically wanted an African child (Ethiopia is where most transnational agencies get children for those who wanted one from an African country), above the baby stage. The child wouldn't be the only person of color in our family. Instead of languishing in an orphanage, I could give some child the kind of privileged life that most children around the world don't experience. I could make sure that they got to retain their religion and heritage and language, because I was just that open-minded and flexible. Wasn't that enough to justify enduring the ugly aspects of this process?

Then, I read the blogs of some transnational adoptees. Several expressed the view that they consider themselves as being kidnapped or abducted. It wasn't just a few people that could be written off as disgruntled adults. Well, some potential adopters do write them off in that way, but I just couldn't do it. Even though it wasn't what I wanted to hear, their perspectives convinced me that there was no such thing as an ethical transnational adoption.

I'd rather be satisfied with the child that I have, than to be the cause of another child's misery. I can sometimes behave selfishly, but that was beyond what I could justify doing to someone.

Please Don't Feed the Cancer Curebies

I understand that lots of folks are angry to hear that the Susan G. Komen Foundation has decided to halt grants to Planned Parenthood. As a woman with cancer, I'm actually pretty glad to hear it. Don't get me wrong. I appreciate

the outrage that many people feel. However, I'd like to explain a few things.

This has been in the works for a long time and isn't a surprise to many of us in the disability advocacy community. Many of us noticed a few years ago that, in several states, the Walks for a Cure were starting to be infiltrated by anti-reproductive justice advocates who were using it as a platform to spread the myth about abortion and breast cancer. There are several reasons why this has been effective.

A lot of it has to do with just who still supports the Walk for a Cure. The Walks are not really for people with cancer. They are for people to feel like they are supporting people with cancer, while ignoring our needs.

Ultimately, the Komen foundation is another curebie organization. Curebies DO NOT serve the interests of those with the condition. They are nothing more than panaceas for privileged people and privileged societies.

What if all of those folks who go the Walks took the time to spend a day visiting their Congress members? What if people took the money they donated to the Komen curebies and hired an office full of professional lobbyists to help persuade members of Congress to vote for universal health care? An even better question is why DOESN'T the Komen foundation lobby for universal health care? Universal health care would save more lives than these organizations have.

I used to be in academia and I was even a research assistant in a couple of top tier universities. I've experienced what it's like to be a cancer researcher, a test subject in other cancer research trials, and a recipient of cutting edge treatment for cancer.

There's a few things that I've learned through these experiences. The most significant of these is the reality that there is no reason to believe that cancer will ever be cured. It can sometimes be functionally eliminated from an individual, but that's not a cure. A cure rids the cause of the disease. The reality is that cancer is too multi-faceted for there to ever be something that cures it. Cancer is as natural as having five fingers on each hand. We could cut off a finger, but it won't stop folks from growing five fingers at some point in their development. The same is true with cancer. Any honest researcher will tell you that the most we can ever expect to achieve is better treatments for cancer.

Cancer isn't one disease. It's hundreds of diseases. Each of those diseases have their own triggers, exacerbating factors, and prognoses. To cure cancer, you'd need HUNDREDS of cures. You could walk until your legs fell off and donate your entire life's savings and you won't have done a single thing to cure cancer.

Now, if patients know that and researchers know that, would it be reasonable to believe that the Komen foundation doesn't know that? I don't think so. So *why* are they always pretending that supporting them will help make a cure possible? Well, for one thing, it's pretty damn profitable to sell ideas. You don't have to produce anything and you can sell them for as long as you can find people who want to believe in what you're offering.

The Komen foundation has figured out that you can slap a pink ribbon on ANYTHING for sale and make some people believe they should prefer that product over other comparable brands.

At this point, almost all of the organizations that are supposedly dedicated to fighting breast cancer are simply money-generators that do nothing but line the pockets of those who run them. I don't know how to make it plainer than that. Komen has been a scam for a very long time. Anything that might interfere with its publicity is simply eliminated.

Please, please, please stop supporting these groups. I say that as a woman with incurable cancer. Nobody has more skin in the game than I do. These people and organizations are profiting off of the pain and suffering and death of people like me.

If You Pay $40,000 for Your Child to Attend a Private Elementary School:

If you pay $40,000 for your child to attend a private elementary school, you're stupid and probably a bad parent. Yeah, I said it. I'll also say that I hope the median price of tuition triples next year. It's not like these stupid people won't pay it. They've already convinced themselves that this is the only way they can make sure their child receives a good education.

Look, I don't care if you have millions of dollars to spare. Some things are still wasteful. I've had plenty of years of my life where The German and I and VanGoghGirl survived quite well on half of that amount.

The argument that these tuition prices are worth it, because of the features they offer, is simply bogus. My daughter's elementary public magnet school had swimming lessons and a teacher that they paid to come over from France and teach the children French. They were able to do all of that on a state budget. All we had to provide was her swimming suit. Our taxes paid for the rest.

Even before that, my daughter was able to learn how to swim just from going to the pool at our apartment with her daddy as her "personal swimming coach". She learned elementary level Arabic from listening to cassette tapes when I was studying and she learned French from a pirated Rosetta Stone CD.

We did that while living off of a total budget that MIGHT have been close to reaching $20,000 when we were both in school, receiving financial aid and having The German working the overnight shift at The Home Depot. At $15,000, things were hard, but we still managed to live in a nice apartment complex, in a good school district, and deal with maintenance costs associated with our Honda (that I now suspect was powered by the Holy Spirit alone, because I've never seen a car as reliable as that one was). Our diet wasn't great, but that was partly because I was too proud and stuck-up to apply for food stamps.

If we could do that, you can't convince me that these folks couldn't provide their kids with an excellent education for a fraction of what they're spending.

Lemme tell ya' what I think (as if I haven't just written a diatribe doing just that).

I think that these are rich folks who are too damned lazy to engage in real parenting, so they justify their apathetic attitude towards their children by paying someone lots of money to do the job for them. That way, if their kid isn't excelling, they can blame someone else for it. They can convince themselves that it's okay for them not to spend quality time with their kids, because they're still making sure that the kid receives all of the instruction they need from the school.

Those children become the kind of kids that the student center tutors loved in college. They were more than happy to give us some of their mom and dad's money in exchange for giving them an original term paper that they could use as a "model" for how to write their own. In the real world, that translates to writing term papers for them.

I could go and on about how rich kids get through college without having to learn anything. At one of the $40,000+ a year private universities in New Orleans, all exams were proctored by graduate students. Students had to sign an honor system pledge at the beginning of semesters. They had to agree not to cheat or engage in illegal activities, while they were a student at the school. Because of their honor system policy, they didn't make students present any form of ID when turning in tests. This meant that anyone could walk in and take a test for someone. The proctors had no way of knowing whether the test-taker was the same person enrolled in the class. If you get a "nerd" from another university to take it for you, there's almost no way you could get in trouble for doing this.

Now, you can't tell me that the university didn't realize this was going on. We knew about it. The students at the school knew about it. It's still like that to this day.

There are people who go from kindergarten to your basic undergraduate degree in liberal arts without having to deal with any of the "hassles" associated with meritocracy. These are the people who grow up and go to work on Wall Street where they play with poor people's pension funds and 401Ks. Meanwhile, poor people are eating hot dogs four nights a week, because they've been led to believe that they should feel ashamed of themselves if they accept food stamps.

Why Jan Brewer's Behavior Energizes African-American Voters

To the people who said that there was no element of racism involved in Jan Brewer's behavior towards the President: you don't have the authority to decide for the rest of us what is and isn't racist. I'm not about to sit here and attempt to change the minds of those who truly don't believe that racism had anything to do with this. If you don't understand it already, you probably still wouldn't even if I did explain it to you. In this instance, it isn't even necessary to think that racism played a role in this.

I'm not sure what kind of upbringing Jan Brewer received, but my parents taught me to have enough respect (for myself and for our family) not to engage in that sort of tacky, ill-tempered behavior. It was emphasized that this was inappropriate for civilized and educated people, especially in public! If I ever found out that my child pointed her finger in any one's face, the consequences would be severe enough for her to never again make that mistake. I think that if you're a person who finds yourself pointing fingers in the faces of others, perhaps you ought to reevaluate your standards.

Even though Brewer was crass enough to behave this way, I think it would have been inexcusable for Obama to then do it back to her. My mom and dad explained to me that the behavior of others was not a valid excuse for compromising my own standards. It seems that Obama was raised the same way.

He behaved like a gentleman even as this Brewer person cackled at him. That tells me a lot about the kind of respect that he has for all women. It also shows me that he has the ability to keep a cool head, even when he is challenged by less stable people.

That is why this incident fires up many African-Americans. It's not really her finger pointing. It's his reaction to it that fires folks up. We all know that the GOP would love to be able to portray him as the stereotypical "angry negro". Heck, they already attempt it even when he does respond to them with grace! Obama seems to understand that there is an added layer of responsibility that goes along with being the nation's first black President. He has consistently shown us that he does not take this responsibility lightly.

This finger-pointing incident fires up many people, because this has been a very tiresome three years. The whining Republicans have fought every single thing that the President has tried to accomplish. Now we're waist-deep in the election cycle and the Republican nominees are all on display for the world to examine. When we look at the antics of that parade of fools and compare it to Obama's reaction to this, the contrast is so great that we can shake our malaise and do something to keep those buffoons from embarrassing us all by voting for someone who can represent us well.

Lack of Medical Treatment Leads to Another Tragedy

Charge: Babysitter poured cleaner down infant's throat

If the USA had a basic public health system, people like Williams could receive the appropriate medical care. But, because a certain political faction wants to gut any program that might provide for care of those with mental disabilities, we should expect to continue to see many, many more cases like this.

There are those who say that we should just incarcerate them even if they do have a mental condition that obviously played a significant role in whatever occurred. Ironically enough, these are usually the same folks who complain about how much they pay in taxes. Well, incarcerating millions of people is very expensive and it has to be paid for by someone, so it winds up becoming our responsibility. A public health system would also have to be paid for by the public, but it's still cheaper than the costs of maintaining and creating even more prisons.

Unfortunately, that fact is lost on many Americans. We are a notoriously short-sighted society. We refuse to learn from anyone or any country or even our own past.

What happened to this baby could have been avoided if we had learned from the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords. Gifford's tragedy could have been avoided if we had learned something from John Hinckley Jr's attempted assassination of President Reagan. I could go on and on with cases that occurred between and before this one. We're fooling ourselves if we think that not funding public health care won't have devastating consequences for us all.

Contrary to the beliefs of many Americans, history give us a good idea of what to expect in the future. It shows that there will be plenty of tragedies like the one in this article. Until we stop treating these kinds of deaths as justified collateral damage in the (trumped-up) fight to maintain "American values", we are going to see many more folks lose their lives in one way or another.

Yes, There ARE Bigots in the LGBTQIA Community

I'm just going to jump right in here and explain what's wrong with the way this supposedly liberal writer used the term "redneck". In a letter that Mitchell S. Gilbert wrote to a Tennessee politician who has been engaging in homophobia, he said,

"Why do southern red-necks open their mouths and advertise to the world how incredibly simple, bigoted and foolish they are?"

The term "redneck" is a lot like the term "cracker" or "honky". Sure, it's perfectly okay for people to use those terms about themselves, but it's certainly not okay to use them as pejoratives that are then applied to others.

My daddy is proud to refer to himself as a "black redneck". Anyone from here knows that "redneck" really describes a rather decent way of life. My daddy views it as a capitulation every time he has to buy fish from the store for dinner. My daddy saw the raccoon that got trapped in our garbage can one night as a boon from the good Lord. My daddy made sure that every girl under his roof knew how to shoot a gun, before she moved out. Like a good redneck, he thinks that women should leave the cooking to men. My momma hasn't cooked dinner in over a decade and he hates when she gets in the kitchen and moves stuff around. My daddy kept skinned rabbits in our deep freezer. He worked outdoors most of his life and when his first wife left him, he raised his eight kids all by himself for many years until he met my mother. From then on he raised his 8 plus her 4, without a single complaint about it.

Using the term "redneck" as if it's something to be ashamed of is really low and more than a little bit prejudiced. I'd like to see folks stop looking for labels that they can use to denigrate those who belong to a different way of life. I readily identify as queer. However, if I walk down the street and someone says, "Look at that queer!" you and I both know that they are using it as a slur. It's the same thing when you use the term "redneck" in the way that the author did. It's rather irritating when people in the LGBTQIA community see nothing wrong with slurring an entire group of people, just because they don't like what an individual did. It's disgustingly hypocritical.