Fair housing and its discontents:
The new rules are meant to reinvigorate it. Under the initiative, HUD would provide local governments with information on “segregated living patterns” and “racially or ethnically concentrated areas of poverty.” To encourage action — whether new affordable housing in affluent areas and zoning rules to promote integration or better services in poor neighborhoods — the agency would offer grant money. “We know where you live matters,” said current HUD Secretary Julian Castro. “Children who live in good neighborhoods do much better than those who are stuck in poverty.”
Housing advocates are thrilled with these changes. But how will white Americans react to an active effort to integrate their neighborhoods? Past experience suggests that they’ll resist.
Meredith Talusan on Fun Home and gender:
In the novel, both Alison and Bruce clearly express a gender nonconformity that only gains political and social recognition from others through their same-sex attractions. They do so in the context of an American legal and social system where homosexuality is the form of gender-nonconformity that has proven most difficult to repress, because physical and romantic desire is such a cornerstone of Western subject formation. Its resilience has helped homosexuality become the site of activism, albeit at the expense of the wider collection of gender-nonconforming identities that transgender and nonbinary people inhabit. Conflating sexuality and gender expression makes Americans uncomfortable, as the delicately negotiated terrain of sexual politics has tried to demarcate a line between the two. But this line was erected for specific purposes that benefit binary (or binary-presenting), cisgender gay people at the expense of transgender and nonbinary people. This is a line permitted by a heterosexist regime that has now come to frame homosexuality as merely a variation of itself, as evidenced by the jubilant and self-congratulatory reaction around the legalization of same-sex marriage in the U.S. As the poetry collective Darkmatter recently asserted, “in order for ‘homosexuality’ to become de-pathologized, gender nonconformity had to become re-pathologized. Gayness had to distinguish itself from trans: ‘We are not freaks like them.’ The modern gay subject only emerged in distinguishing him/herself from gender nonconformity.”
Hi duckies! Our good friends Jaya and Matt, who are bringing you such fabulous #content this week and next, are in the process of working with their People on their Dad Magazine book, and if you are in the Philadelphia area, you may be able to help them out!
We need Philadelphia area dads (or dads who are willing to get to center city Philadelphia), roughly age 50 and up, for a half-day session on August 7th. Anyone who’s interested should send a headshot/photo, email address, phone number, and a brief intro/bio to blair@quirkbooks.com. Dads of color highly encouraged!
I liked this interview with Mindy Kaling. I have also noticed that even though almost every living person eventually loses their mom, if I know someone has lost their mom, I’m there for them:
Is it easy to talk about your mother?
I talk about my mom with my father a lot. We take turns being the one that is sad. My dad will be reminiscing about her, and then I’ll have to be like, “OK dad, come on”. It’s good to have my father there because for every sad thing, he remembers a funny thing about mom too.
Alexis Coe informs me that this is a really big deal for historians and archivists and librarians, so it is a big deal for us.
This article gets it absolutely right (Jamelle Bouie in the link roundup TWICE today, go you Jamelle.) It almost doesn’t matter WHAT happened in that cell (no, it still matters, of course.) Bland is dead because of the police fucking up this traffic stop):
Which is all to say that—official account notwithstanding—we don’t know exactly how Bland died. But we do know how she got to jail to begin with. A minor traffic stop. And what’s clear from the evidence is that, while Bland’s ultimate death was a tragedy, her stop and arrest is a scandal, a testament to biased procedures and troubling problems in American policing. In thedashboard footage of her arrest released on Tuesday, Trooper Brian Encinia sees Bland—a black American woman from Chicago who had come to Texas to take a job at Prairie View A&M University—in her vehicle, speeds to catch up with her, and pulls her over after she fails to signal a lane change.
The opening of Beowulf may be DIFFERENT than you THOUGHT:
In a new paper, Dr George Walkden argues that the use of the interrogative pronoun “hwæt” (rhymes with cat) means the first line is not a standalone command but informs the wider exclamatory nature of the sentence which was written by an unknown poet between 1,200 and 1,300 years ago.
According to the historical linguist, rather than reading: “Listen! We have heard of the might of the kings” the Old English of “Hwæt! We Gar-Dena in gear-dagum, þeod-cyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!” should instead be understood as: “How we have heard of the might of the kings.”
The Atlantic has a list of 100 stories, some of which are not actually good, some of which are amazing, some of which are new to me (not these two, though, which are straight-up perfect)!
THE NEW YORKER / This Old Man by Roger Angell
“Decline and disaster impend, but my thoughts don’t linger there. It shouldn’t surprise me if at this time next week I’m surrounded by family, gathered on short notice… to help decide, after what’s happened, what’s to be done with me now. It must be this hovering knowledge, that two-ton safe swaying on a frayed rope just over my head, that makes everyone so glad to see me again.”
MEDIUM / On Kindness by Cord Jefferson
“…rather than the pain of her youth hobbling her such that more pain was all she had left to offer, she decided early in her life that her sorrows were evidence of too much heartache in the world as it was.”
Why I Deleted Your Band’s Promo Email
