The Cost of Unfair Bail Costs

The shocking class and racial disparities in the justice system in the United States have been well documented; the fact that a Black man has a 16% chance of being imprisoned during his lifetime while a white man has a 2% chance is a pretty stark illustration of the way that the deck is stacked against minorities when it comes to going to prison in this country.

But the disparities actually start long before a trial and sentencing. I’m going to take a look today at an issue which is not nearly as widely covered as it should be: Bail.

A quick thumbnail view, for people who are not familiar with the concept or who are a little bit fuzzy on how bail works. When someone is arrested and charged with a crime, ou may be offered the option to pay bail, a sum of money which can be paid in order to be released from jail to await trial. Within 48 hours of being arrested and charged, the accused attends a hearing in which a judge weighs the facts of the accusation and the character of the accused and then decides whether or not to offer bail. Additional conditions may be imposed as well, such as not leaving the area or not associating with certain people. If the accused does not attend court for the trial, the bail amount is forfeit and a warrant for arrest will be issued.

The idea behind bail is that people should not languish in jail while they are awaiting trial. This contributes to overcrowding, a very serious problem in a number of jails and prisons in the United States, and it can cause psychological stress and anguish. Jail is not a pleasant place. Paying bail allows people to live their lives while they await trial, something which is especially critical when a trial may be six months or more in the future.

Under the Eighth Amendment, ‘Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.’ However, it turns out that ‘excessive bail’ is in the eye of the beholder.

It is important to note from the very start that more people of colour are going to end up in a situation where they will need to pay bail. White people are less likely to be stopped and they are also less likely to be taken to jail. Speaking from personal experience, I have received fingerwagging warnings from police officers for offenses which would result in an arrest if I was a person of colour. And it’s also important to note that people of colour also experience economic disparities which put them at a disadvantage when it comes to making bail. I would highly recommend the ‘Women of Color and Wealth‘ series at Racialicious for more information on economic disparities.

Thus, from the very start, minorities are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to a bail hearing: They are more likely to need the hearing in the first place and they are less likely to be able to afford whatever amount is set. This disadvantage is compounded by the fact that there are profound racial disparities in bail assignments, as documented in studies like ‘Go Directly To Jail: Racial Disparities in Felony Bail Decisions‘ and ‘A Market Test for Race Discrimination in Bail Setting.’

Why are there such disparities?

Because bail is at the discretion of the judge. While many regions have guidelines which the judge is supposed to use when making a bail determination, ultimately, the judge gets to decide the amount of the bail. Thanks to widespread beliefs about criminality and minorities, many judges believe that simply being a minority makes someone more of a risk, and thus higher bail is assigned. This may not occur on an entirely conscious level, either. Judges, like everyone else, have internalized racism from the society they live in. And thus, when faced with a young white man and a young Hispanic man with identical offenses and profiles, a judge will still issue two different bail decisions and can come up with justifications for them even though racial discrimination is clearly involved.

The amount of bail deemed ‘excessive’ is also highly variable, depending on where one is. For example, if someone’s bail is set at $300,00o in one area of the country, that amount might be deemed reasonable in another. Even if it is considered excessive bail and reduced to $100,000, that amount might still be out of reach for the accused; ‘excessive’ is very much dependent on one’s own economic situation.

And when you don’t make bail, you stay in jail.

Why can’t people make bail? Can’t they just call a bail bondsperson?

It’s not that simple. It’s true that some people can make contact with a bondsperson and make arrangements to have bail paid that way. But an upfront payment to the bondsperson is still required, and that may be out of reach. Some people do not have money, usually a percentage of the overall bail and also nonrefundable, to put down as a deposit. And they may not have friends or family who do, either. Guess who is most likely to be in this situation? An accused who is a member of a racial minority. Some people in the United States have no cash, no assets, and no one to call upon for assistance. This means that they have no realistic way of making bail. Bail of $100 might as well be excessive for them.

For undocumented immigrants, the bail situation becomes even more complicated. They may be afraid to disclose their immigration status, and they certainly don’t want to call fellow undocumented immigrants for help, out of fear that they will be arrested as well. Family members may not find out about a loved one in prison for an extended period of time, as it is dependent on the accused having access to a trustworthy person to relay that information. Not only that, but in many regions, higher bail rates are allowed for undocumented immigrants, because they are deemed a risk.

Bail is applied unequally. And it has unequal results. Wealthy individuals can pay bail. Disadvantaged individuals cannot. These class disparities run throughout the justice system; wealthy people can pay for a defense. Disadvantaged people cannot. As do the racial disparities: White people are more likely to receive light sentences. They are more likely to be sent to minimum security prisons, where they are less likely to be exposed to dangerous rioting.

Bail disparities are one small piece of a much larger puzzle, all of which is in urgent need of reform.

30 April, 2010 – 10:35 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in politics | Tagged , , , , |

Smoky Lemmings

I cannot stop watching this ‘Telephone’ remake produced by US Soldiers in Afghanistan.

Amanda Hess at The Sexist interviews C.L. Minou in ‘C.L. Minou on Boobs, Beauty, and Being Trans‘

At the same time, I can’t pretend that all of those actions, down to the whole “look more like a (cis) woman” isn’t strongly controlled by societal expectations of what a woman looks like.

Christopher Twarowski at the Long Island Press: Nassau’s Cedar Creek Sewage Plant is a Time Bomb

A series of tours and visits to the plant, interviews with watchdogs, county legislators, residents, union officials, current and former plant employees, and analysis of reams and reams of documents—including e-mails, memos, staff meeting minutes and purchase orders—paint a picture of a facility in disastrous condition that is nearing its breaking point.

Jonathan Alter at Newsweek: An Advocate for the Average Citizen: A Case for Elizabeth Warren on the Supreme Court

She would hardly be a shrinking violet when it came to advocating for the interests of the middle class and the poor against the wealthy interests that have time and again won favor with the Roberts Court.

Pacific Coast Inlander: Eureka!

As soil scientists, they were searching for any earthworms — but always hoping to spot a rare Giant Palouse Earthworm: the fabled three-foot, lily-scented, pale white worm that The Inlander reported on in November.

Catherine Krug at dig: Waste Not, Want Not

“The leftover food that’s still high quality and edible … can become something of substance … to help people in need, rather than end up in Dumpsters.”

Nathaniel Hoffman at Boise Weekly: Personnel Recovery

Several military spokespeople in Boise, Washington, D.C., and Kabul declined to comment on the apparent offers for a prisoner exchange.

Goldy at HorsesAss.Org: Could the Mariners exit the Cactus League over Arizona’s bush league immigration laws?

…setting up MLB as the national organization that in both visibility and economic impact, could perhaps play the biggest role in pressuring the state to repeal its repressive, unconstitutional and un-American new immigration law.

30 April, 2010 – 10:15 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in interesting | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , |

Language Matters: ‘Undocumented’ versus ‘Illegal’

Immigration has been a simmering issue in the United States for a long time, and I suspect that it is about to explode in the very near future. Tensions are building and the economy is crumbling, and that’s going to lead to, well, problems. Problems like the horrific law recently passed in Arizona mandating that police officers check everyone’s immigration status. This means that I’m going to be talking more about immigration policy and related issues, which brings me to the subject of this Language Matters post: the terminology we use to talk about people who have immigrated to the United States, because I want there to be no confusion on this point.

I use ‘undocumented immigrant’ to talk about a person who has not entered the United States by legal means, or who has entered by legal means, but has overstayed a visa or other travel document. An undocumented immigrant is a person who lacks legal immigration status, for whatever reasons. Undocumented immigrants may have immigration paperwork, but it is outdated, they may lack paperwork altogether, or they may have forged or falsified documents.

I do not say ‘illegal immigrant.’

There are a number of reasons for this.

The first, and what I think is the most critical, is that ‘illegal immigrant’ is incredibly dehumanising.

An immigrant is a person who has moved from one country to another. People? Cannot be illegal. A person. Cannot. Be. ‘Illegal.’ When you say ‘illegal immigrant,’ you are literally saying ‘illegal person,’ because you are using ‘illegal’ as an adjective to describe a human being. A person can, however, be undocumented. As an adjective, ‘undocumented’ suggests that someone lacks paperwork. It is not a strike against someone’s very humanity and right to exist.

You also won’t see me using ‘illegal’ or ‘illegals’ to describe an undocumented immigrant or group of undocumented immigrants. These terms are even more dehumanising than ‘illegal immigrant’ and I actually cringe when I encounter them. I encounter them a lot more often than I would like to, including from people whom I would like to think know better.

I’ve seen anti-immigration rhetoric suggesting that ‘undocumented immigrant’ is a contradiction in terms because these people mistakenly believe that the word ‘immigrant’ conveys some kind of information about immigration status; that ‘immigrant’ means that someone has immigration documents and thus ‘undocumented immigrant’ is a contradiction in terms. That’s not true. The word ‘immigrant’ provides absolutely no information about someone’s immigration status. It just means that someone has migrated from one country to another. Used alone, it has come to suggest that someone has immigration paperwork which is in order, but that’s not actually what this word means.

People aren’t illegal. Someone’s immigration status can be illegal. But a person can’t actually be illegal. ‘Illegal immigrant’ reinforces ideas about immigrants and immigration with which I am deeply uncomfortable. I have no doubt that many people with anti-immigration beliefs actually think that undocumented immigrants should be ‘illegal’ and I see no reason to reinforce or tacitly support that idea with my language use. As this law in Arizona shows, this country has no problem with making it very clear that some people are not welcome and that they will be ejected by any means possible.

I, as should come as no surprise, am not very impressed with the state of immigration law in this country right now. And I think it’s worth exploring the history of attitudes about immigration in this country. At various times in our history, different groups have been barred from entry or subjected to entirely legal discrimination by virtue of their nations of origin, religious background, or skin colour. Here in the Great State of California, people from Asia were barred from owning property until surprisingly recently. In New York, ‘No Irish Allowed’ signs decorated businesses large and small at the turn of the last century.

All of these debates, of course, ignore a fundamental issue which is rarely discussed in the immigration debate: The fact that people were already here when Europeans arrived. The Native Americans who inhabited North America when Europeans started colonising it certainly didn’t pass any immigration laws to bar Europeans from entering. Europeans took over their lands, killed them, and forced them onto reservations. Once the continent had been colonised, steps began to be taken to prevent ‘the wrong types of people’ from immigrating.

There were quotas. Inspections at Ellis and Angel Islands to keep ‘the wrong people,’ including people with disabilities, out. Discriminatory immigration  policy continues to this day as people are kept out or removed from the United States for being ‘the wrong sort.’ And all of this debate conveniently glosses over the fact that we, people of European extraction1, are policing who ‘gets’ to be in the United States while ignoring the fact that we are the descendants of immigrants.

And that some of our ancestors were, in fact, illegal. On my father’s side, we are relatively recent arrivals in the United States, and reviewing family paperwork, I can determine that at least one of my great grandparents was an undocumented immigrant to the United States. That person evaded detection and deportation by virtue of being ‘the right sort’ of immigrant at the time, thus ensuring that law enforcement never investigated, let alone initiated deportation proceedings.

There’s a lot of inflammatory rhetoric surrounding immigration into this country. I’m not going to participate in it, because I’m interested in actually discussing immigration, rather than reinforcing preformed opinions.

  1. I also have Native American ancestors, a not uncommon situation for many people in the United States, and while it’s actually a substantial percentage of my genetic heritage, I am not culturally Native and would not claim to be. ↩
29 April, 2010 – 10:33 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in politics | Tagged , , , , |

Feathery Lambs

resistance at Resist Racism: Internet racism (via Racialicious)

Maybe the open racism on the internet is a wake-up call to all of us.  We thought it was about those trolls who hid in dark places.  But instead we find out it’s everybody.

Cara at The Curvature: Court Gives Women the Right to Sue Wal-Mart for Gender Discrimination

Personally, I’m just bemused that they say that as though holding the rich and powerful responsible for their discrimination against the vulnerable and oppressed is a bad and scary thing.

John Nova Lomax at Houston Press: The Man Who Sued the Pope

In fact, Shea believes that what he started with the lawsuit may eventually result in the destruction of the entire Roman Catholic Church.

Eric S. Petersen at City Weekly: Utah ACLU: All Bark

That lack of legal action has local civil-rights attorneys asking: Who muzzled the watchdog?

Kimberly B. George at the New Haven Advocate: The Power and the Pain

How is it that adults — especially trusted spiritual leaders — could so profoundly fail to protect the children in their care?

29 April, 2010 – 10:03 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in interesting | Tagged , , , , , , , |

Glee: Home

This week on Glee: Alcoholism, coping with loss, and…body positivity?

I’ve kind of given up on discussing a lot of the problematic aspects of the show; you either think that, say, alcoholism is an acceptable subject for joking, or you don’t. You either find this kind of humour appealing, as many critics do, or you don’t. And I don’t really feel the need to pick through every single Glee episode pointing out all the problems. You either saw them or you didn’t. Ultimately, it’s a matter of taste.

And you either think that people internalise harmful things from Glee, or you don’t. I do think it’s worth exploring why some viewers are so resistant to criticisms of Glee. I, for example, really don’t give a fig if people like or don’t like the show. I have no interest vested either way and, as I’ve said repeatedly, I don’t think that people who like the show are terrible people who are clearly not sensitive at all to social justice issues. Or even that their reading of the show is invalidated by my own. But I do think it’s interesting that so many people who love the show seem to have such an intense need to prove people like me wrong. We’re ‘wrong’ because we don’t like the show. Our relation of the show to our lived experiences is ‘wrong’ because it doesn’t match their own lived experiences. It’s not enough to recognise that, hey, Glee is not for everyone.

No. The critique needs to be invalidated. I cannot believe the amount of pushback I have gotten which basically amounts to ‘you’re wrong for not liking the show.’ I think that, if you’re one of those people who insists that people who dislike Glee (for whatever reason they dislike it) are wrong, you need to do some self examination. (And not in my comments section, please.)

So. This week we have Kurt and his unrequited love for Finn, Kurt trying to fix up his dad and Finn’s mom to further that, Finn finding a father figure, and Kurt being filled with bitterness. I can’t say I was a huge fan of this subplot. Finn, as usual, came off like a self absorbed butthat, and Kurt quite frankly came across as deeply creepy. ‘We’ll share a room,’ he says, leering. Uh, I don’t know about you, but when people are obviously not into me and especially when their attraction orientation makes them specifically not attracted to people like me, I really don’t see the need to force the point. You’re either into me…or you’re not.

And, you know, way to make Finn’s mom seem, basically, like an object. She’s a thing that inhabits the house and has no feelings or sexual desires, existing solely to keep her son happy. At least Kurt’s dad is allowed to be a person who, you know, runs a business and does things.

On to the body positivity, which I’ve seen a lot of people mentioning.

In a show which relies on hipster -isms as much as Glee does, moments like the scene between Mercedes and Quinn just end up feeling really clumsy, fake, and forced. Which is a pity, because I really wanted to like that scene. Quinn talks about perceiving Mercedes as someone who ‘always seems really at home’ in her body, which I think is true. Her character does seem really at home in her body, filled with confidence, and happy to be who she is. This episode gave us a little glimpse into how fragile that can be, and the price that people have to pay for that confidence. On a show that’s not Glee I think that scene would have really resonated, but the show feels so one note most of the time that this was just jarring.

In the context of this show, it just felt so…saccharine. Cloying. Painfully earnest. Glee is a show that is based on a brand of humour which revolves around belittling people, making fun of them, and using people in marginalised bodies as objects and plot devices. We’re supposed to laugh at it because we’re supposed to view these acts as ludicrous, but how are we supposed to respond to Mercedes singing ‘I Am Beautiful’ from within the context of a show which repeatedly tells us just the opposite? That she’s a figure of mockery because of her colour and size, that she belongs on the margins because of who she is? I know that some viewers read the show’s brand of humour as breaking down these beliefs, but I don’t read it that way and I haven’t encountered a lot of people outside social justice communities who read it that way.

The solo ends with all the odd ones out in the middle of the floor with Mercedes, which to me seems to underscore that they are the other. I would have been more impressed with the ‘inclusive’ nature of a solo which ended with the entire school there in solidarity, rather than the ‘weird’ people on display for everyone to goggle at. And the reporter’s praise at the end read like Glee patting itself on the back. ‘You’ve got every shape and size!’

Oh, Glee, could you be any more smug and self-congratulatory? Oh, yes, I suppose you can and will be, in the very next Very Special Disability Episode. Which is ‘Dream On,’ coming up in three weeks, and, yes, it will be directed by Joss Whedon.

Synopsis:

Mr. Schuester’s former high school nemesis (guest star Neil Patrick Harris) causes trouble for the glee club. Rachel struggles with a life-long personal issue, and Artie struggles with his desire to walk, imagining himself dancing with the rest of the Glee club. Artie’s dreams take him on an adventure.

I used to have nightmares about Joss Whedon directing a Very Special Disability Episode of Glee, and now they are coming true. Normally Whedon’s dream-state episodes are my all time faves (thinking of ‘Restless’ and ‘The Attic,’ although ‘The Attic’ was actually directed by Jed and Maurissa, Joss clearly had a hand in it), but I suspect that this one may actually cause me physical pain.

Remind me not to talk about any of my other nightmares publicly because I’m pretty sure that the world is not yet ready to handle the one with the…thing. *shudders*

28 April, 2010 – 2:37 pm | By s.e. smith | Posted in size, television | Tagged |

Social Justice Matters: Predatory Lending

While the legislative news of late has primarily focused on the health insurance law, there’s another issue which is being wrangled over in Congress at the moment which is of particular interest to me; the bill which is designed to create more consumer protections for borrowers, with a particular eye toward abusive lending. It’s pretty demonstrably true that unfair lending practices were certainly a contributing factor in the economic meltdown, and that consumers deserve more protections from predatory lenders just in general, not just because of the fact that it hurts the economy.

Making it all the more unfortunate that the bill appears to be headed for a watered down compromise which absolves some of the worst offenders1. There hasn’t been a lot of coverage not just of this bill, but of predatory lending in general, in discussions about social justice issues, so I thought I would take a moment to talk about why predatory lending is a social justice issue, which I think will illustrate why it is something which you should care about if you do not already.

The definition of ‘predatory lending’ is a bit nebulous. It’s generally defined as unfair and abusive lending practices. These include broker kickbacks on loans, excessive fees (including interest and origination fees), prepayment penalties, and contracts which are structured in a way which make the loans functionally impossible to pay back. For example, one might have a minimum payment which would pay off a balance of $5,000 in hundreds of years. It bears noting that lenders also flat out lie about the terms of loans or swap paperwork on unwary borrowers, thus forcing people into loan agreements they were not fully informed about.

The terms of the loan are just one facet of the issue. Predatory lenders have a preselected body of potential customers and they use steering and targeting techniques to force these customers into their fold. People are informed that they can only get a loan through the predatory lender, that they must act now or lose their chance, that they can take out loans much higher than they can afford, that loans will persist through bankruptcy, that debtor’s prison still exists. The end result is that the borrower becomes trapped in a loan which cannot be repaid, and often ends up in a cycle of increasing debt; as loan payments eat up monthly income, more debt is incurred, making it extremely difficult to get ahead. This in the mythical land of opportunity.

This alone should be reason enough to care about predatory lending. It is a grossly unfair practice which hurts consumers and also hurts the larger economy as a whole by creating a heavily indebted consumer class.

But there’s more. Victims of predatory lending fall into some familiar demographics. They tend to be disproportionately poor, for a number of reasons including the fact that people who are living from paycheck to paycheck do not have the time to do lots of research before taking on debt, and are most likely to be in need of emergency funds for things like medical expenses. They are also disproportionately of lower education; predatory lenders target people who are less likely to be aware of their rights and who are less likely to be able to evaluate loan terms with a critical eye. Someone who has not attended high school may not have the capacity to fully understand the terms of a confusingly-worded lending contract.

And they are also more likely to be people of colour, in no small part because people of colour are more likely to be living in poverty and to have limited access to higher education. What predatory lending does is prey on an underclass of marginalised people, thus ensuring that this underclass stays marginalised. And that is most definitely a social justice issue.

These borrowers are demonized by the media and financial critics. They are called stupid, mocked and belittled for not understanding the loans they entered into, treated like garbage when they default on loans they had no realistic expectation of repaying. Choosing to focus on the borrowers rather than the lenders allows the media to ignore the problematic social implications of predatory lending; that it is exclusively focused on some of the most vulnerable members of society, the people most in need of assistance, and that it is perpetrated by some of the most powerful members of society.

Attitudes towards people abused by predatory lenders reflects general social attitudes about people in oppressed classes; attitudes which suggest that these people remain in such classes by choice or misdeed, rather than as a result of social structures. To blame the single mother with three children for getting a payday loan with 40% interest is to ignore the circumstances which forced her to take out that loan in the first place. It’s easier to blame her with the personal responsibility argument than it is to examine social complicity and how we all contribute to the persistence of predatory lending.

There seems to be some hesitance to connect class issues and social justice issues in some corners of the social justice world; to talk about issues like personal finances, to discuss the social implications of lending practices, to examine the gap between rich and poor and the way it intersects with issues like race and education. This in turn means that people may not be aware of the scope of issues like predatory lending.

And it means that we do not see the same mobilisation against predatory lending tactics that we see for issues deemed of importance in social justice communities, like reproductive rights, even though there are intersections even here; one of the barriers to accessing a safe abortion, for example, is money, and people can and do take out payday loans to pay for abortions. Class issues are a vital component of many of the social issues we confront and discuss, which means that we need to be raising consciousness about them as well. All of the pieces of the puzzle need to be addressed to effect change.

  1. This seems to be a bit of a theme with Congress this year, does it not? ↩
28 April, 2010 – 10:53 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in economy | Tagged , , , , |

Slippery Sandstone

Jason Whited at Las Vegas Citylife: The truth about D.A.R.E.

Powerful program, sure, but national and local drug experts say D.A.R.E. shouldn’t be the only solution cops, educators and parents turn to for keeping kids away from drugs.

BBC News: Men with sexist views ‘earn more’

“It could be that more traditionally-minded men are interested in power, both in terms of access to resources – money in this case – and also in terms of a woman who is submissive.”

Autumn Sandeen at Pam’s House Blend: President Obama: A Transgender Veteran Is Not An ”Impersonator,” ”It,” Or ”Shim”

I believe the behavior of your U.S. Marshal’s sent the message to the prisoners that your representatives wouldn’t protect me if these prisoners had sought to physically harm me — because I was a less than human, a “shim.”

Anna at Jezebel: In Living Color: Commenting About Race

…readers should approach the comment threads on posts about complicated issues – whether about race, gender politics, body image, etc. – as introductions, and take it upon themselves to seek out resources if they want more information.

Annah Sidigu at The Double Standard: 2010’s Top 10 Excuses for Racism: How to Decode the New Sophisticated Lingo

The reality is that many people who defend and perpetuate this kind of racism, do not even recognize it as such.

28 April, 2010 – 10:03 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in interesting | Tagged , , , , , , , |

Book Review: Guardian of the Dead, by Karen Healey

Content note: I’ve tried to keep this post relatively free of spoilers for the benefit of readers who haven’t read the book yet.

Guardian of the Dead is a young adult novel set in New Zealand which has a delicious social justice flavour. For that last reason alone, I’d recommend it, but the thing is that it’s also really good. I know that a lot of my readers like YA fiction and I think y’all would enjoy it, and several of you probably have some YA consumers in your lives who might enjoy a book that’s, well, it’s fresh. That’s what I said about it when I finished it. Guardian of the Dead is really different.

I haven’t read a lot of literature coming out of New Zealand and one of the things I really liked about Guardian of the Dead was that it gave me a little peep into New Zealand; the book was seeped also not just in the Anglo culture of New Zealand, but also Maori traditions and myths, which played a big role in the story. I thought that Healey did a really good job of integrating them into the story without making it feel forced or stagy, right down to the subtle mockery of white appropriations of Maori traditions.

In ‘Cover Talk,’ Healey talked about the casual appropriation of indigenous culture which her publisher tried to pull off when the book cover for the New Zealand edition was being designed. The original cover featured a white person covered in ta moko. Rightly so, she was pissed, and sent a polite email suggesting that her publisher come up with a better idea, tout de suite. I was thinking about that while I read the book, about how people don’t even think that it would be at all problematic to do things like throwing a college play in which people wear bodysuits decorated with traditional designs, one of the plot elements in the book. As she pointed out when talking about her cover, resisting these things is hard; her publisher could have told her to get stuffed and she would have had to tolerate it, and it would have been especially sad, given the content of the book. I’m really glad that she pushed back against that cover and I wish that all authors were able to do that1.

The cover for the edition I picked up here in the United States happily evaded a similarly appropriative fate, instead including a representation of a mask, another plot element.

But enough about the cover already. What happens in the book, and what makes it so great? Well, I can’t tell you too  much about what happens because I don’t want to spoil you, but I will say that some magical entities and magic in general are involved. I got to learn a bit about some different origin myths, and I think that the book had a really fun and interesting take on an alternate world which, again, I do not want to spoil for you, but it is supercool.

From a social justice perspective, the thing that I really loved is that all of these neat things were embedded. Stereotypes got turned on their heads. A character openly acknowledged that something she was doing was racist and not very cool right at the start of the book, getting us off on the right foot in social justice terms, I thought. In another scene, she was excluded from a conversation and she got all huffy about it and another character basically said ‘this is about this person’s traditions; it’s up to him to  invite you to participate’ and it was a nice little slap on the wrist and reminder that, yeah, some conversations are actually not group events open to all.

It’s a book which is racially diverse, without shoving it in your face. It’s not safe to assume that all of the characters are white, even if other characters identify them as such, and Healey did a good job of not sticking people into boxes. I didn’t feel like any characters were included as tokens, but were included as people who were integral to the story. There are also queer characters, and asexual characters, and even as other characters struggle with their identities, they are not trivialised or turned into teachable moments. They just are; it’s up to the other characters to figure out how to relate to them.

The book also touches upon mental illness, and what it can be like for family members of people with mental illness. I don’t want to get into too much detail, again, because of spoilage issues, but I think that the struggles that the characters have reflect things which happen in the real world and that Healey explored some of the complexities of having a family member with mental illness. She didn’t make anyone into a saint or a caricature, and I appreciate that, because too often mental illness is depicted as an object of amusement or as a tremendous and insurmountable burden. It can be a hard line to walk, between honest depiction of something and something which not only doesn’t ring true, but feels dirty and unpleasant.

I think that for some readers, Guardian of the Dead may challenge some held assumptions, in a quiet way which worms into the brain of the reader and manifests later. I suspect that some readers may be mulling bits over and thinking about things in new ways after reading it.

It’s a story which makes me want to know more about the characters and what happens next and where they go from here. I felt a certain amount of kinship with the main character, although she did harp on her body a bit more than strictly necessary, and I felt like she’s someone I’d like to see in other books, doing other things, because she’s got interesting things to say.

In case it’s not evident from everything I’ve said here, I really would highly recommend Guardian of the Dead, and I’d be curious to know what other folks thought about it.

Related reading: Karen Healey’s LiveJournal, Attention Rebellious Jezebels

  1. Sometimes authors are literally not able, as in they are not informed about their covers at all until it’s too late. ↩
27 April, 2010 – 10:39 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in reviews | Tagged , , |

Familial Spots

I want to lead by reminding everyone that Blogging Against Disablism Day 2010 is coming up on 1 May!

This is the day where all around the world, disabled and non-disabled people will blog about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination.

Head over to comments to sign up if you’re participating, and be sure to check back at Diary of a Goldfish to see all the participants.

Nina Shapiro at Seattle Weekly: Downed by Law

Salazar is emblematic of a subset of immigration attorneys who are negligent, incompetent, predatory, or all three.

Will Ferguson at Tucson Weekly: Harnessing the Sun

Solar research at the UA could soon redefine how Americans power their homes, cars, personal computers and iPods.

Tasha Fierce at I Fry Mine In Butter: The Kate Hudson Debacle, or Why Feminism is for White Women Again

Perhaps because the meaning of feminist — and in turn, the meaning of feminism — is in flux, a disturbing slant towards a kind of “selective feminism” has emerged.

Charlotte Allen at in character: Not Really Simple (via Annaham)

But it has been only in the last decade or so that the simplicity movement has come into its own, aligning itself not only with aesthetic style but also with power.

27 April, 2010 – 10:06 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in interesting | Tagged , , , , , , , , |

The Cruelest Cuts

The rumblings have been present for a considerable length of time. Two years ago, it was already evident that California was about to experience some monetary woes, and the situation has only grown worse since then. The state is in dire financial straits. Foreclosure rates are extremely high across California communities. Our unemployment rate is high. As a state we are facing the very real possibility of becoming insolvent, which raises some interesting questions about what, exactly, happens when a state becomes utterly insolvent. Are states too big to fail? If we aren’t, what happens when we do fail?

Some very difficult budgetary decisions have been made and we are going to be facing even more difficult ones in the not too distant future. It’s a direct consequence of fiscal mismanagement in California which has been occurring for decades, regardless as to the political orientation of the governor. There are all kinds of reasons for it, but a lot of it seems to come down to the idea that California has largely regarded itself as untouchable, and it’s consumed itself in the process.

Not for nothing do we call ourselves the Golden State. Oh, certainly, it’s a reference to the Gold Rush, but it’s also a reference to the idea that California has been regarded as the land of opportunity for a very long time. As a state where anyone with a little initiative can make it and where dreams come true, where gold is always within reach for those who are just willing to grasp for it. California is the maker of dreams, not just on Hollywood lots but in the way we market and advertise ourselves and the way we think about ourselves in relation to the rest of the country. California prides itself on what it is.

We’re on the sacred ‘coast,’ not the dreaded ‘flyover states,’ which must make us progressive, of course. And must make us innovative. And must mean that there is only one way for California to go, and that is up. There’s a reason that the tech bubble fell out the way it did, and California Dreams are a big part of it. It’s not surprising that some of the most expensive real estate in the country is located in California, that California wants to present itself as bigger and better than everywhere else. As special.

How the mighty are fallen. California got a little bit too big for its britches, evidently.

And the people who are going to pay for that are not the people who created the problem in the first place. There’s an interesting pattern which can be seen in boom and bust cycles. People who start out wealthy tend to stay wealthy and can in fact grow wealth in many cases because they can work the market coming and going. They understand on a deep and visceral level how the markets work and they are in positions of privilege and they, like many people would do in the same situation, use that to get ahead.

Meanwhile, people who are poor tend to become poorer. Because the limited safety net vanishes entirely. Social services are often among the first things to be cut. After all, we need to pay police officers and firefighters and thus if it’s a choice between keeping the library open and funding salaries for the Sheriff’s department, the Sheriff wins. When people are probably most in need of social services and any kind of available assistance, the system fails them. Unlike the wealthy, they have no reserves. They were against the wall when the crisis started and there is nowhere to go from there. There are no savings, no chances at over jobs, no back up training which can be used to build a new career.

It’s starting to seem like every single week, I read yet another headline about cutting social services in California. Eliminating community health clinics, for example. Cutting programs which provide services to people with AIDS. Keeping the food stamp allowance static even as food prices are on the rise. Limiting access to housing vouchers because there is no more money left in the program. Cutting funding to hospitals which see low income patients because those hospitals are not bringing in any money and consequently there is nothing left. Reducing funding to public education.

The disparities in California are growing increasingly grim. And I’ll tell you something else about them: They are going to endure. Another pattern we see with recessions and depressions is that once people tumble low enough, they tend to stay where they fall. And so do their families and children. We are creating a generation of people in California who are being fed the bitter dregs of the California Dream and know firsthand exactly how hollow it is.

That sort of thing tends to build unrest. When you are living somewhere with gross income disparities, where it is made clear that people like you can never get ahead, it does contribute to resentment. As well it should. What these cuts tell the citizens of California is that the state does not care about its most needy; while we slash funding to social services, state administrators are still being highly paid. The Regents and Chancellors in the UC system are making absurd amounts plus benefits like being provided with cars, housing, and health care. The state wants to expend absurd amounts of money on a monitoring system to trap people who are committing disability fraud even though the cost of such a system would outweigh the potential savings in finding people who are using disability payments fraudulently.

I can’t help but think that some of this allocation of funds stems for a very real fear among the wealthy of this state. Not just the fear that people might actually have a chance to get ahead if our social services system was not so very dysfunctional, but the fear that Californians might be about to get very angry.

War to the mansion, peace to the cottage, right?

26 April, 2010 – 10:31 am | By s.e. smith | Posted in economy, politics | Tagged , , |