Weekend Reading: Race, Education, and Privilege

I've read a lot of posts and articles that touch on race and class privilege this week. I can't quite believe that I am tackling such weighty topics this week, when I'm not sleeping well (thanks, Petunia) and super busy at work... but that's what has been on my mind and computer screen this week, so here I go.

It all started with a post from my friend Stevil about his reaction to a recent poll showing that 46% of respondants in Mississippi think that inter-racial marriage should be illegal. I share his dumbfounded response... sort of. I guess the fact that the silly Birther nonsense is still going on had already reminded me that I live in a bit of a bubble when it comes to opinions about race, equality, and related things. Because let's face it- the Birther nonsense is racism, pure and simple.

One of the bubbles Stevil and I both inhabit is science. In his post, he mentions how science is a very multi-cultural place. He's right. For the most part, I haven't heard much racism from my fellow scientists. The chemists might laugh at the biologists, and the academics might look down their noses at those of us in industry (and vice versa), but racist comments are rare. There can be some ugly xenophobia that comes up when jobs are being lost to outsourcing to China or India, but those sort of comments are usually argued down by other scientists.

He also mentions the racial mix in California as a whole, and how that diversity is generally embraced and not rejected. Again, I mostly agree... but here, my experience has diverged a bit from his. Now, I know Stevil well enough to know that he's not saying California is some sort of post-racial utopia- in fact he makes a point of saying that in his post. He is well aware of the lingering racism here. But I've recently had experiences that bring that lingering racism into the forefront.  We'll be picking a school for Pumpkin relatively soon, so I've been talking to people about education and public schools a lot, and in those conversations, people seem less accepting of diversity, particularly if you understand the standard code: "That school is a bit rough" translates to "That school has a lot of kids who aren't white." "You might find that Pumpkin doesn't really fit in at that school" translates to "She won't be in the majority race there." When I mention some of the schools we're considering, some other parents have a hard time hiding their disbelief that Hubby and I, seemingly loving parents, would consider sending our precious little girls there. Haven't we seen the school ranking data????

And there's the rub. The school ranking data provides a nice, safe veneer behind which to hide any ugly racism. Of course, it is reasonable to want to compare schools and pick the best for your child. That is exactly what I'm doing, in fact. But test scores are the most common thing to use when we want to compare schools, and there is a pretty solid consensus that the test scores- or at least how they are getting used to report on our schools- really report on family income and parental education, and not school quality. Bad Mom, Good Mom has a recent post with an excellent explanation of how misleading test scores can be.

It is a difficult topic, but I think the code that gets used when discussing schools does a great deal of harm. There are schools that are rough and have gang problems, but my local school isn't one of them, and neither are any of the magnet schools I've mentioned that I'm considering. I don't fault parents at all for looking at a school with genuine issues and deciding that they need to find another place to send their kids. Actually, I don't fault parents for choosing private schools for their kids for any reason. We all want to do what is best for our kids, and no one should be judged for trying to do that.  But when we talk about the schools with real issues in the same way as we talk about schools that just happen to have a lot of non-white kids, then we obscure our real problems.

I have no idea how we'll actually pick Pumpkin's school. We can't even register a choice until November, and don't have to do so until February of 2012, so we have some time to figure that out. We'll probably look at the numbers, take the tours, and then go with our gut feeling. Luckily, neither my husband nor I are scared by true diversity. We both went to schools that would be called "rough" in the modern code. Mine, in suburban Phoenix, AZ, had a lot of hispanic kids because we didn't live in the wealthier, predominately white part of town. Hubby's, in Auckland, NZ, had a lot of Pacific Islanders and Maori kids, because he chose to go to the one school that had Macs in the computer lab and that school also happened to be one that was in a poorer part of town and had a marae on campus.  (That this is how he chose his high school is so typically him that it cracks me up, particularly because he now prefers Linux, works under Windows 90% of the time, and ridicules the Mac I use at home.)

We both came out of our experiences thinking that the diversity in and of itself was valuable, and that our education, while not perfect, was certainly sufficient to set us up to succeed in life. Our schools weren't flashy, but they had the funds to do their job, some really good teachers (and of course, some not so good teachers, too), and kids from a range of backgrounds so that they felt representative of the world for which they were supposedly preparing us.

And that is the real tragedy of how our education system seems to be evolving now, with so many parents not even considering public schools: it is no longer safe to assume that most schools will meet those criteria, given the funding cuts and general nasty climate around public education these days. I worry for our future, because if all of the people like us buy our way out of the system, then what incentive do we have to advocate for changes that would make that system better? Because really, my kids will do just fine no matter where I end up sending them to school. They have all of the advantages and subtle privileges of our society lined up in their favor. (Except gender, of course. If they decide to go into a STEM field, they will probably be told by some asshat that they are biologically inferior to their male colleagues. In fact, they'll probably get told this by at least one asshat per year. But I digress.)

It is the kids that don't come from such privilege that suffer when the people like me start turning our backs on public schools. I'm sure most people don't intentionally decide that since their kids are in private schools, the public schools don't matter. But without the personal connection, it is easier to vote against that tax increase, to shrug your shoulders when the latest round of draconian cuts happen. Then our public schools will slowly decay, and will create a system in which kids from poorer families get an education that is not even on par with the education the wealthier kids are getting. When this happens, we will ossify our society, making it ever harder for people to rise to the levels of their natural talents and efforts.

This matters, because as much as we like to tell ourselves that America is a true meritocracy, it is not. This week, I also came across several posts about the subtle (and not so subtle) privileges that come from being white. The first is a short story from a white man, about the conversation he had in a college class that made him understand "privilege", which I found via a comment on OneTiredEma's thoughtful post about her discomfort reading the Little House books. Then the excellent Blue Milk blog led me to two more interesting posts on the topic: a thought-provoking post from Fugitvus about the accommodations white parents must be willing to make when contemplating interracial adoption, and then, in the comments on the post linking to that post, a meditation from Peggy McIntosh about "unpacking the invisible backpack" that is white privilege.

It has been interesting reading so many posts on race and privilege. I find myself thinking about the topic more deeply than I have since college. I've been thinking about why people in privileged groups will often fight recognizing their privilege. I think part of it stems from defensiveness, which I have certainly felt. When you post or talk about some problem you're having and get a dismissive "that's a white woman's problem" reply, it stings. You think "well, yes, because I am a white woman." And even a problem that is somehow a "nicer" problem to have than those faced by other people is still a problem that you might want to solve. I often think back to a documentary I watched many years ago, in a hotel room while on a business trip, about the children of the very wealthy and how they often struggle to build meaningful lives. Most of us would look at these kids born into the epitome of privilege and dismiss their problems as trivial. But the documentary did a really good job of taking us into their world, and making us see the very real problem of how hard it is to define a meaningful life when you actually don't need to do anything at all.

Along those lines, I think that it is easy to forget that being born into a certain level of privilege does not guarantee success. We all know the smart kid from a good home who could just never get his act together and ended up having a miserable life. Even with a head start, you still have to work- it is the classic tortoise and hare scenario. So being told that you are a beneficiary of privilege does not negate the fact that you probably worked very hard to achieve success. It just highlights the fact that some other person who happened to have been born into a less privileged group could have worked just as hard and not succeeded.

Then, while I was thinking all of these rather abstract things about race and privilege, I heard a story on NPR about the death rate from pregnancy complications in California, and how it is four times higher for black women than white women.  That just blew me away, because really, I hadn't put "I can expect to live through the birth of my children" in the bucket of privileges that attach to me via my race- my nationality, maybe, but not my race. And yet, clearly it is.

Updated to add: I finally read some of last week's Economist, which has a special feature on how screwed up California is. There is an article about what has gone wrong in the financing of public education here, which might help people who don't live in California understand why (1) complaints about our public education system are not necessarily racist or alarmist, and (2) why I think we need to keep a critical mass of people invested in finding a solution for the mess we've created.

In Which the Gods of Family Outings Smile Upon Us

It has pretty hectic here lately. Petunia's still pretty congested, possibly due to the last cold she had, and her sleep is therefore all screwed up. Hubby and I both have deadlines coming up soon at work, so we're both a little stressed and a lot busy, and needing to log in at night and do some work. My usual 40-45 hour work week is creeping up towards 50 hours, and I'm still feeling behind... blah, blah, blah.

Borrrrring.

I don't want to write about that. I want to write about our fun outing on Sunday- we went to Legoland! Legoland is in Carlsbad, which is about 40 minutes north of where I live. We went once before, when Pumpkin was about 2.5 years old. It was fun, but nowhere near as much fun as this visit was. I think Pumpkin is at the age when Legoland really starts to be fun, and Petunia had fun playing in "Duplotown", which is a playground with several different play houses. She seemed to like the jail best. I wonder if that should tell us something?

She was pretty fascinated by the toenails on this Lego dude, too.

However, Petunia's real favorite thing at Legoland was the bag her lunch came in. It provided an excellent prop for a game of peek-a-boo.

Pumpkin's favorite thing was the horse ride. It is very tame, but it involved being out of sight from us for a while, which, to our great relief, did not involve any tears. In fact, she had a huge smile on her face anytime we saw her. Really. She just turned her head right before Hubby took the picture. (Isn't it great that this blog provides us a use for our failed pictures?)

Pumpkin also liked Miniland, although not quite as much as her Daddy does. I'll spare you the gazillion photos he took, which look eerily similar to the gazillion photos he took last time, except this set also includes photos of the new Star Wars miniland.

Pumpkin liked steering the toy boats... but again, not quite as much as Daddy did.

The highlight of miniland for her, though, was catching sight of the castle she stayed in when we went to Las Vegas.

By this point, Petunia was napping. She followed our plan exactly, and fell asleep in her stroller after lunch. Amazing.

All in all, it was a really good outing. I had to write it up so that I can come back and read about it the next time one of our family outings goes all pear-shaped and ends with tears and tantrums!

Newbie in the Garden

One of the things I've done with some of the time I've bought is start a small vegetable and herb garden. I have never thought of myself as a particularly capable gardener. My herbs usually die. And the spot we have available right now for a vegetable garden is not optimal- it is on our south fence, and doesn't get much sun.

Between my conviction of my own gardening ineptitude and the overly shady plot available, I've always been able to talk myself out of starting a garden. But for some reason, a couple of months ago I just decided to plant some things. So I bought some herbs and some vegetable seeds. I always try to grow cilantro and basil, because those are the two herbs I'm always buying at the store, using a small portion of, and then letting go slimy in my fridge. I added some parsley and chives. For vegetables, I selected green onions (because the ones I buy at the store suffer the same fate as my cilantro), arugula (because I actually like it and it is stupidly expensive), and carrots (because... I don't know why. Probably because I saw some multi-colored carrot seeds and thought they looked fun).

Pumpkin and I planted everything one afternoon, and then we watered and weeded (OK, I weeded while the kids played in the backyard) and waited. An lo and behold, things grew. And grew. And grew.

We had a lot of rain this spring, interspersed with a lot of sun. My theory is that, combined with the fact that the dirt I planted in was heavily enriched from our compost pile, led to my unexpected success as a gardener. Suddenly, I had more arugula than I knew what to do with- because I am a complete newbie, and I made the classic newbie mistake of planting all at once, instead of staggering.

My cilantro grew to be a huge bush, and then did what my cilantro always does: it bolted.

I know from past experience that it is still edible.  But I also know from past experience that this plant will continue to bolt, and never settle back to be a nice bushy plant again. Oh well- I'll try again when this one stops being useful.

Meanwhile, the arugula is getting too old and bitter to be eaten in a salad, so I harvested a bunch and made pesto. I used an internet recipe as a starting point (yet another example of how my life is easier thanks to internet searching), but changed the proportions as follows:

• 1 3/4 cup arugula
• 1/4 cup parsley (because that plan is doing really well, too, and I thought it might mellow out the arugula a but)
•  2/3 cup walnuts
• 2/3 cup asiago cheese (I substituted asiago for parmesan because (1) I had it on hand and (2) I thought that the stronger cheese might balance my overly strong arugula- I think it did)
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 6 unpeeled garlic cloves
• 1 peeled and minced garlic clove
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper

(Isn't the messy counter top a nice, authentic touch?)

I browned the 6 unpeeled garlic cloves as instructed (i.e., for about ten minutes in a skillet over medium high heat), and then removed the skins. I toasted the walnuts and grated the cheese, then I blended everything up in the food processor.

 We ate about three tablespoons mixed with ~1/4 cup of pasta water over ~8 oz of pasta that night, and then I partitioned the remainder into an ice cube tray and froze it. I'll defrost a cube or two at a time to server over pasta or gnocchi for a quick weeknight meal- so I'm tagging this post with my "Dinner during Dora" tag, even though the initial pesto prep might take more than 20 minutes (but it might not, if you're speedy).

And then something really funny happened. I suddenly understood that Barbara Kingsolver book on food that I read when I was pregnant with Petunia. I still don't agree with everything in it, but I finally understand it. Back then, it annoyed me because it seemed that unreasonable to think that a busy, two career family like ours could find the time to grow any of our own food. But it isn't really- if you are lucky enough to live in a climate like San Diego's, it is actually pretty easy. Even a newbie can do it. And end up with a freezer full of arugula pesto.

Weekend Reading: The Food Edition

I came across two rather sobering articles about food this week. The first was a post from Marion Nestle at Food Politics about factory farming, and how it isn't likely to go away, so perhaps we should think about how it could be done better. It is a very reasonable post, I think. I wish someone would put her in charge of food policy in this country- I think we'd get some good policy. I don't always agree with her 100%, but I never think she is a raving lunatic- which is more than I can say for a lot of the people involved in the food debate (on all sides- something about food brings out the loonies).

The second was an article in the New York Times Magazine about sugar. I came across the article on slashdot, of all places, and I clicked over with a fair amount of  skepticism. I've had the Robert Lestig lecture that sparks the article suggested to me many times by people who think that high fructose corn syrup is much worse for us than sucrose (a.k.a table sugar or cane sugar). Each time, I try to explain that the person is misunderstanding the lecture- Dr. Lestig is concerned about BOTH sucrose and high fructose corn syrup. Basically, he's concerned about the amount of fructose (a component of both sucrose and HFCS) in our diets. It never works. I am either ignored or told that I don't understand biochemistry (which is sort of a funny charge for someone to level at me, since I have a PhD in biochemistry). I have concluded that some people see "fructose" in the name of HFCS and not in the name "sucrose" and just can't get past that. I was afraid that the same misunderstanding was going to propagated by the NY Times. But it wasn't.

The article is actually well-written and a fairly even-handed discussion of what the science suggests (but does not yet prove, as the article is careful to state)- namely, that the large amount of refined sugar in our diets may be worse for us than just empty calories. It also touches on the concern I have with the whole HFCS hoopla- that consumers will start demanding HFCS-free foods (they have), and food companies will respond, but by simply switching to sucrose rather than by reducing the amount of sugar in the foods (they have), which will leave us as fat and unhealthy as we were when we started (if anything, we're getting worse).

I have written before about my views on HFCS and refined sugar, so I won't belabor them here. I don't think of myself as an alarmist on this issue. I still eat cakes, cookies, and ice cream (three of my favorite foods!) but I do so in moderation, and I try to limit their intake by my kids, as well. This is dead simple for Petunia- she has yet to find a sweet she's much interested in eating. But Pumpkin loves candy, and she seems to always be getting some in birthday party treat bags or what not. So we ration it, and yes, some of it just disappears. So far, she hasn't caught on. I'm hoping that by the time she does, she'll be old enough to understand my reasons for limiting it. We'll see.

I also think there is a genetic component to this story, and I actually suspect that my girls are in pretty good shape in that regard, given what I know about the medical histories of my family and my husband's family. In another context (about which I cannot blog) I've been hearing (and thinking) a lot about the idea that some substances are only toxic in combination with a certain genetic background. This makes a lot of sense, given the fact that what makes substances toxic is often how they interact with specific proteins in our bodies, and there is genetic variation in most proteins (there are actually some proteins that are so essential that no variation is tolerated- basically, if you have a fetus with that variation, it does not survive... but I digress). I suspect sugar is a substance like this. Some people can eat a lot and have no problem. Other people will end up with metabolic syndrome, and eventually diabetes. The problem is that right now, we have no way to know which group any one person is in, so I think we should all try to limit our intake.

This sounds so reasonable, but it is hard- and not just because we're programmed to like sweets (throughout most of history calories were scarce, so our bodies are built to reward us when we eat something with lots of energy, like sugar). I can limit cookies and candy. But I also have to watch out for the sugar that is added to so many of our foods. There is more sugar in most breads than is necessary. My yogurt is waaaay sweeter than it needs to be, but I don't like plain yogurt. I am seriously considering making my own lightly sweetened, flavored yogurt, starting from the plain stuff. I have to check the label of everything I buy to make sure that there isn't more sugar than I think is necessary- which adds time I'd rather be spending in some other way to my shopping trips. Given this, I think there is a role for some policy changes in solving this problem. I'm not sure what those changes should be, though, and musing on that is more than I want to do right now.

So I'll move on to two non-food related posts that I think you should read. I've come across two more posts about being a working mother that made me nod in recognition and agreement. First, my blog friend Melba has a post up about why she works, prompted by a clueless/insensitive comment on some other post she read. She makes the excellent point, often lost in these sorts of posts, that we are all different, so different things will bring fulfillment and happiness to different women. I think that 90% of the "mommy wars" nonsense would go away if we could all really remember that. (I think the remaining 10% is generated by various interest groups to further their own interests, and will not go away until "family values" means something about supporting families, and not about opposing gay marriage. But I digress.)

Then, via Anne Peattie's #scimom post, I came across a post from Nicole and Maggie (whose blog I think will now be a regular stop for me) entitled "Why I'm not a guilt-stricken mother and why I have it all and why the patriarchy sucks". It is as awesome as the title, and makes the point that we are certainly not the first generation of mothers to work. As I like to point out, anyone who thinks that mothers whose work involves more than raising their children are a new thing brought about by feminism should go look up the instructions for how to make soap, being sure to find a recipe that starts at the very beginning, with "render animal fat...."

Now, I know that Dr. Isis didn't much like this post. From her response, I think she was a bit offended by the suggestion that she is somehow partially responsible for the guilt she feels on the housecleaning/home-cooking front, and I can understand that. I suspect that I have some readers who feel the same way.  I've written about my thoughts on guilt before, but I want to elaborate a little more here and explain my thoughts on this: I think the guilt issue is one of the few issues facing working mothers where we can essentially fix it ourselves. Think about it- it might be hard, particularly for women who come from cultural backgrounds that place a great deal of emphasis on a mother staying home with her kids, but we can decide to stop feeling guilty about things that don't really matter. We can't just decide to start getting equal pay for equal work, or stop hearing the nonsense about women being biologically inferior at math and science, but we can decide to stop feeling guilty. I'm not letting the rest of society of the hook, and I'm not pretending that the cultural messages we get don't make letting go of the guilt harder than it needs to be. But ultimately, this little bit of liberation is in our own hands.

Buying Time

As I mentioned in my last weekend reading post, Liz over at Mom-101 had an excellent post last week asking "What don't you do?"- i.e., when you "do it all" what actually doesn't get done? When I thought about my answer to that question, I realized that a lot of the things I don't do are things where I "buy time".

I've written before about how having enough money to buy some conveniences is one of the things that I think makes me a happy working mom. In fact, buying time is one of my favorite things to do with my money these days. When I did the time tracking exercise as part of my "life reorg", I was horrified by the amount of time I was spending on chores, so I set out to find more ways to buy time, using some of the ideas in the 168 hours book and also some ideas of my own. Some of the ideas didn't work for us- for instance, grocery delivery didn't end up saving any time. But, I think the basic premise is sound, and I am still looking for new ideas. So I thought I'd post a list of some of the ways I buy time, and see if any of you have new ideas for me.

• The biggie is the housecleaning service. We've recently decided to increase the frequency and get the cleaners to come every other week instead of once a month. This was a result of our big argument about chores. I finally convinced Hubby that it just isn't worth the money we save to try to do the cleaning ourselves- either it doesn't get done, or one of us thinks the other is slacking and we waste time and energy arguing over it. We still do some touch up cleaning and a smattering of "deep cleaning" chores, but soon, I won't have to worry about who is going to dust or clean the bathrooms.
• I buy a lot of things on Amazon. Really. I rarely go to Target, or even the drug store, anymore. I signed up for Amazon Mom, which gets me free Prime shipping as long as I keep buying things like baby lotion and toddler wipes. I was reluctant to sign up at first- I was sure there would be a catch. There isn't, as far as I can tell, and I am glad I signed up. Here is a list of some of the things I've bought on Amazon in the last few months:
• A new watch (my last one fell off at some point and I didn't notice)
• Art supply boxes to organize the abundance of crayons, markers, and stamps Pumpkin now owns. I think I'm going to buy another one and a matching box for papers.
• Princess band-aids. God forbid we run out of these.
• Markers and a book of mazes for a birthday gift for a day care buddy.
• The Paper Bag Princess, which I paired with a princess coloring book for a birthday gift for another day care buddy.
• A Farm Animal Train Set to add to Pumpkin's train empire (a birthday gift for her).
• The Brome 1055 Squirrel Buster Mini, because Petunia likes to watch birds in our backyard, and the stupid big birds broke our last feeder.
• Quick Fix Meals- to add some variety to our meal rotation.
• Biokleen Bac-Out Stain & Odor Eliminator. We relied on this product heavily during Pumpkin's potty refusal stage, and have now discovered that its pretty good at getting out various food stains, too.
• A fishie bath mat so that we could start giving Petunia baths in the big tub with her big sister, allowing us to consolidate down to one bath time.
• I could go on, but you get the idea. Just about the only thing I won't buy on Amazon is clothes for me- it rarely turns out well.

• I don't clip coupons or compare prices across different grocery stores. We go to the store nearest our house and the only coupons I use are the ones the store gives us. We do a Costco run once every couple months or so, mainly for beer, diapers, graham crackers (still beloved by both my girls), and various paper products. And we go to Trader Joe's about once a month, too, since they make the only American breakfast cereal Hubby likes and they stock New Zealand cheddar cheese (which is very tasty- try it sometime).
• I make use of a variety of convenience foods- as I outlined in an earlier post.
• I'll pay more for things like frying pans and dishwashers to simplify kitchen cleanup. I still love my scanpan and dishwasher.

I am very aware of how lucky I am to be able to buy time like this. I know a lot of people think that it is hard to combine motherhood with a career in science or other demanding field, but I think the working mothers who have it the hardest are the ones working in jobs that don't pay enough to allow them to buy a little time, particularly since those jobs often also don't have paid time off and flexible schedules. When we discuss policy changes that might make the life of the working mother a little less stressful, we need to be sure we don't forget about those women. Buying time won't buy our way out of the family-unfriendly policy mess we have now.

But I also hear women whom I know are as well-off as I am say that they can't afford some of the things I do. That may be true- just like you never really know what is going on inside someone else's marriage, you never know the true state of someone else's finances. However, there are choices I make that compensate a bit for my refusal to clip coupons or comparison shop. As I mentioned in my comment on Liz's post, I don't get manicures or pedicures. Heck, I don't even paint my nails. I don't see the point. I only manage to get my hair cut about three times a year, and I use Suave shampoo and conditioner and Pantene hair gel (each about $2-3 per bottle)- and I swear I can't tell the difference from when I used to use the expensive stuff from my salon. I'll admit that my hair could use slightly more frequent trims, but a braid works well for the last month or so before I finally get around to going in for a cut. I don't have a huge wardrobe, and I tend to buy with an eye for quality and styles that will last.

It is all about choices, really, and the right choices will be different for every individual. But I think we have to own our choices and be aware of the trade offs we're making. There is an old adage in project management and software development- you can have two of the following: fast, good, and cheap. In any project, you have to find the combination that makes the most sense for the situation: what is fast enough, good enough, and cheap enough to make the project a success? I think something similar applies to working motherhood. You have to balance between time with the kids, money, and time for all the other things in your life. The balance you come up with will depend on your situation, but it will always be a balance.

So what's the balance in your house? Do you buy time? If so, how?