One Last Thing on Race

While walking to a party last night, I was thinking about perceptions of people walking at night (since as a woman I obviously pay attention to all the cars & people who walk past me just to be safe).


At some point, I realized that I would probably be more scared of a young white male offering me a ride than I would a young black male.

I thought that was interesting.

Racism & Me

For my work, we've had a 3-part training on diversity over the last few months, & I felt an obligation to write down some things I wanted to say about race...

~I can definitely say that I've become more aware of situations that I am in where the color of my skin could be working to my advantage. I do a lot of apartment searching & job interviews & I can't help but wonder if my race will help me.
(Especially I wonder if a black couple in a long-term relationship would be evaluated as if they were married in applying for an apartment. I was in both places, but I don't know if that happens for everyone.)

~I have shared about how uncomfortable I was when I walked out of an apartment building (which I had been looking at) & saw a few black men across the street from me. I don't know if the discomfort was because they were black, or because they were men.

~I have been actively been trying to learn more about the perspective(s) of black women so that I can better relate to some of my students, since I still feel very ignorant in how they're lives are shaped.

~I have been excited that many of the books we have been reading in our CADRE groups have involved African-Americans & Native Americans (& hopefully later on will include Latino/as).

~While my mother showed me the way to some avenues for understanding racism, a dialogue was never actually established.

~I became aware of White Priviledge while in India for my year abroad (with the extra restrictions placed upon me because I was White & the gained knowledge that many of the men were taught to believe that lighter skin was better). However, I don't think that I was able to transfer it as well to my life in this country until much more recently.

~I remember conversations with my friend Sarah Anderson (who is half-Japanese) on the impact of race on her life. She was disgusted with talks about affirmative action, hated that a presenter came in to talk to "all four" of the "peoples of color" by a blond-haired-blue-eyed woman, & hated the look the new drama teacher gave her when she introduced herself (with the irritation of knowing that the woman expected someone with her name to be a white female).

~I don't remember any racist comments made about Carlo when he was with my sister. I know my father would get irritated that he kept losing his job & left all the responsibility on my sister, but I think that could be because she's had bad luck with guys thus far.

~I feel uncomfortable telling people about how my sister left Carlo because he smacked her up real good (one time?) because I don't want them to assume that I'm making a statement about black men being abusive.

~After seeing my sister's child (from Carlo), I was unable to look adoringly at my other nephew. He seemed just so pasty. Julius has made if harder for me to look at white babies anymore.

~I don't remember what it was that tipped me off, but I know that I started being against Columbus Day in 5th or 6th grade because of the truth about what a bastard he really was finally came to me.

"She's All That"

Movie Anaylsis:
(rough)

This is another "make-over movie." On the plus side, both of the main characters get changed. But I still think it's stronger on her side than his. Through the story, Zack learns, essentially, to relax when it comes to making life decisions, & choose what he really wants.
But it's so much different for her. She has the obvious physical change that brings her beauty to the forefront. She also becomes more personal in her artwork; her art teacher tells her that she notices, & that Laney shouldn't let go of "what's brought about this change." So? So this is implying a bigger importance on the role that Zack has played for Laney, & not as much visa versa. Don't get me wrong though. I loved the idea of the movie when it first came out. I wanted to see a movie where the underdog was realised as being beautiful. And I still think that's the idea. I just wonder a little if girls are going to wonder about how much it is going to take to get there...and work at it...even if they are just fine right now.


(Another revision: Thinking again about the basics of this story...in the bet & the remaking of an "unappealing" girl into a beauty...reminds me a little of My Fair Lady. I kind of wonder a little as to whether the basic premise was stolen from there, and then dumbed down to be palatable for a teenage audience.
Makes me kind of remember Tiffany's bitterness at the rewriting of Shakespearean plays for teens...
I think this will require a rewatching...)

"Mean Girls"

Movie Analysis:
(rough)

There were some good points to this movie. It was right. Girls are really mean. And those who are passing through adolscence now have the advantage of scheming with 3-way calling. People can talk on AIM & save conversations to show later. It's different from how my life was like, but similiar to what Anne Barkow told me about her time in middle & high school.

The problem was that the idea was that it could all be fixed. All that was needed was for the girls to be put in one place where they could admit to back-stabbing each other & such. It isn't that easy to fix! It is ignoring some of the main causes for such subversive behaviour. The problem is that girls don't feel like they can be openly irritated since everyone is always telling girls to be "nice." This would be fixed just through apologies. Cliques & rifts don't disappear that easily. And the humour that is scattered throughout tends to undermine the point that was trying to be made. It was almost hard to tell if the movie was supposed to be sarcastic, but Tina Fey was actually trying to convey the idea from the book Queen Bees.... Serious idea by SNL. It didn't really work in the end. The start was okay, but didn't go where it should've.

(Additionally, I wrote this a couple years ago. Since then, I have been working in an inner city school in Minneapolis. I want to abridge some of the ideas that I wrote, and that have been written: this suppression of open irritation is more true for suburban middle & upper class white girls. While some parts may apply still, it is not as wholly true for lower class minority girls.)

"Clueless"

Movie Analysis:
(rough)

This was a movie attached in Branded by Alissa Quart. She commented on the movie's constant protrayal of consumerism. (For example, Cher has to go shopping when she's frustrated...& at any other opportunity it seems.) Quart says that it is just another "make-over" movie, but I don't think it's a make-over movie for just Brittany Murphy's character. Cher also starts working for more charitable causes (in a naive way). But she really doesn't change. Sure, she's thinking a little more openly, but not in any substantial way. She got the guy, but you can't believe that she's actually any different. So what do we have? Another consumerist girl...& one who pretends she's not...sometimes.

Branded

by Alissa Quart

Teens & parents are constantly bombarded with "branding." Colleges/universities, clothing lines, etc. have images attached to them, & people will do a lot to make sure that they're into the correct thing. Girls will work as consultants & get special attentions from the brand they commit themselves to. Teen movies have become covered in ads in the shots like never before...as have video games. There must be an "unbranding."

"Killing Monsters"

by Gerard Jones

Kids will form violent images in their minds without even seeing similar scenes. Acting out fantasies that are "violent" in their ideas are needed means for a kid to feel powerful & in control. Adults need to remember that there is a difference between make-believe & reality.

"i keep wondering what i take for granted that will shock posterity the way the belief in slavery now shocks us. could it be the idea that it's okay to raise animals purely for the purpose of slaughtering and eating them?"
--john powers, vogue magazine film critic

Music Exclusivity

Music is one of those areas that when you do crossing genres that you can sometimes feel uncertain if you should be. Is it respecting it & showing that it's really good? Or is it bringing it down through assimilation?

I don't know.

But it makes me feel a little confused with how to label the mixed CD I'm working on. I wanted to reburn my Dessa disc, & put the "Independent Women Pt. 1" on a disc that it would fit into. So I sought out more R&B music to fill out the CD.

But what do I call it? It's not just women. Not just about strong women.

It feels absurd to be worrying over something so insignificant as this, & yet I do.

Hmmm...

I wonder what that says about me & my place in this...

Mulan

This is a movie that I decided to rewatch to see how people were portrayed.

At first, it was just a "I want to rewatch to see if they're right that it is one of the rare movies for young girls that actually stars a strong woman" thing. I rented it with the intention of showing it at one of my movie classes for the girls, assuming it matched up to the feminist requirements.

And then I saw "Mickey Mouse Monopoly". I realized I couldn't just watch it to see how it talks about women, but also had to see what it was saying about the Chinese. So I watched it with these double lenses on.

I think that it does mostly work from the feminist angle. Mulan knows that the girl she's expected to be isn't really her, and never really strays from being herself. (With the exception of trying to act like a guy.)

However, I realized that while it may be a Chinese tale, the movie isn't really about them at all. It's a setting and sets what the characters should look like, but that seems to be the limits. Someone had pointed out when we watched "MMM" about how all the voices in the Disney movies sound "White", and the same is true for "Mulan". Several of the older men seem to have an accent, but no one else does.

(The woman in the video also said that it only worked to make "Mulan" in an extremely sexist culture. She made it sound as though Disney made Ancient China much more sexist than it really was, but since I'm not a Chinese history expert, I don't know.)

I also decided to be bothered by the presence of the dragon Mushu. At least a little. I know his purpose is there as comic relief. But it seems to feed into the concept of dragons in China. While I'm sure they frequently appeared on things, I just don't know if I want to have that as the lasting image of what things are from China.


So..."Mulan" works....when presented as being set in a place that doesn't exist. Then it can be the simple, and important, tale about a girl who wins against all odds.

But I just don't know if I'm comfortable with that.

Movie Recommendations

"Celluloid Closet"--Documentary of the portrayal of homosexuals in movies from the 1930s on.

"Mickey Mouse Monopoly"--Documentary about the portrayal of minorities in Disney films. (While I have not seen the entire thing, yet, the parts I saw did make me want to go back & rewatch the films with new eyes.)

Bad Medicine

Call it Viagra culture: In the eight years since the little blue pill made the scene, its wild success has institutionalized the impulse to treat any and all sexual problems, idiosyncrasies, or irregularities with prescription drugs. the result is an increasingly commerciatlized approach to sex that turns attention away from the complex social, cultural, and psychological determinants of sexuality that have been the subject of feminist analysis for several decades. Feminist activists and scholars have long observed that sexuality--especially, but not exclusively, women's sexuality--is as much a matter of politics as biology. But in their effort to medicalize sexuality, big pharmaceutical companies want us to believe that sexual problems are a result of biology alone. Of course the drug industry want us to believe that the solution to our sexual woes lies in a pill/patch/cream/nasal spray; after all, a pill that puts orgasms easily within reach can be marketed in a profit-making system, but social change is a little trickier...

The first success of Viagra culture, apart from the drug itself, has been the success of drug companies in successfully banishing the term "impotence," with all its psychological connotations of weakness and failure, and replacing it with the more biologically oriented, less judgmental "erectile dysfunction," or ED. And in the hopes of doubling their profits by doubling their market, pharmaceutical companies are now working toward their second challenge--reconceptualizing women's sexual problems as physiologically based "female sexual dysfunction," or FSD. So far, no "pink Viagra" has yet received approval from the Food and Drug Administration, but dozens of products are in development, and each year growing numbers of women are given off-label prescriptions of men's sex drugs, even though these drugs have not been proven sage or effective for women. (Despite the popularity of Viagra s a party drug for gay men, Big Pharma's marketing and research programs betray a deep heterosexual bias. The current research on FSD in particular tends to focus almost exclusively on heterosexual women, relying on a heterocentric view of sex and implying that only certain women's sexual problems--and only certain kinds of sexual problems--are worthy of consideration.)

The year 2003 marked both the fifth anniversary of Viagra's launch and the release of two prominent new sex drugs for men, whose names will be familiar to any e-mail user: Levitra and Cialis. All these drugs are intended to tread ED, a condition made famous by those first Viagra ads featuring an aging Bob Dole confiding in us about his post-prostate-surgury erection troubles. Nowadays, drug makers are seeking ways to distinguish their ED products in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Pfizer, the maker of Viagra, realized it needed sexier ads to capture the younger set, and soon dumped Dole as its poster boy in favor of highly masculine (and less wrinkled) professional baseball players and NASCAR drivers. The adds for Levitra and Cialis, however, have attempted to secure a portion of Viagra's multibillion-dollar annual market share by literally bringin women into the picture: Prominent ads from the Levitra campaign feature a female partner front and center, talking about her man's concern with erection "quality," the silent male demoted to the background. Cialis capitalizes on its alleged 36-hor range of effectiveness by depicting a heterosecual couple enjoying an air of romance ("If a relaxing moment turns into the right moment, will you be ready?"), with one of its first ads showing a couple enjoying the view from their his-and-hers bathtubs.

But pharmaceutical companies want women to be more than the spoonful of sugar tha makes the medicine go down for their male partners; they want women to spend an equal amount of time worrying about their own sexual problems and what pill might treat them. Female sexual dysfunction is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the official catalogue of mental illnesses), so if a woman is diagnosed with something that falls under the umbrella of FSD (say, lack of desire, lack of arousal, pain during intercourse, or lack of orgasm), she is automatically considered to have a mental illness of disorder. A few generations ago, a woman might be considered mentally ill (more specifically, a nymphomaniac) if she wanted sex too much; these days a woman might just as easily be labeled mentally unsound if her libido is below "normal."

For years, Pfizer hoped to determine that Viagra could be used to counter lo0w arousal in women, but in 2004, the company stopped its clinical trials, concluding that Viagra was no more effective than a placebo. (The placebo, by the way, did have a positive effect on sexual arousal, suggesting, if nothing else, the important role of expectation in psychology.) But why have women share the men's candy when an FDA-approved sex drug specifically for women could be just as much of a marketing boon as Viagra was? With a market for such medical treatments at an estimated nearly $2 billion per year, pharmaceitical companies have a tremendous financial incentive to produce a successful contender, and thus far more than half a dozen companies are focusing their efforts on drugs intended to treat low desire and arousal, developing and testing a raft of pills, patches, creams, and sprays, hoping to find that elusive pick Viagra.


The main focus in FSD-drug development is on testosterone products intended to amp up sexual desire, rather than the Viagra model of products that increase blood flow to the nether regions. Just months after Pfizer pulled the plug on the Viagra trials targeting women, Proctor and Gamble announced plans to seek FDA approval for its Intrinsa testosterone patch, designed to remedy a lack of desire in women. Mainstreem media obediently followed Proctor and gamble's marketing spin--it's not just sexual arousal that's the problem, it's desire for sex to beigin with--proclaiming the failure of the Viagra trials to be evidence of women's complex sexuality. Testosterone--often called the "hormone of desire"--seemed like the most promising fix.

Though low sexual desire in women is often considered to be a product of low testosterone deficiency, this assertion has not been borne out of by evidence; a 2005 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association explicitly debunked the notion of a link between low sexual desire and low testosterone levels in women. In December 2004, the FDA reviewed the first-ever application for an FSD-specific drug--the aforementioned Intrinsa patch. The FDA's advisory committee determined that the benefit of the drug (an average of one additional sex act per month, according to the trials) was overshadowed by the patch's potential long-term health risks, and they unanimously voted against approval of Intrinsa.

Yet despite the lack of scientific data on the efficacy of testosterone to treat low libido in women, the absence of FDA approval of use of testosterone to treat these problems, the known risks of testosterone therapies for women (ranging from beard growth to more heath-threatening liver problems), and the unknown long-term risks of such therapies, a growing number of physicians are prescribing testosterone drugs off-label to women. (If a drug is FDA-approved for any one condition, a doctor is allowed to prescribe it off-label at her discretion for any other condition, even if the drug has not been tested or approved for that condition.) In an October 4, 2005 article in Newsweek, testosterone researcher D. Jan Shifren estimated that one-fifth of all prescriptions of testosterone products approved for men are actually written off-label for women for the treatment of "sexual dysfunction." Such off-label prescribing is becoming increasingly normalized in mainstream media accounts of FSD, and depicted fovorably in outlets such as CBS Evening News and 20/20, as well as in numerous women's magazines.


Women in search of solutions to their sexual problems often turn to the mass media, looking to magazines and television talk shows for advice, information, and empathy. But because many of these sources encourage women to see disappearing libidos or foiled orgasms as de facto FSD, these encounters often work to spread the Viagra culture, to the detriment of the women themselves. Two sexperts have risen to particular prominence in this converage of FSD, largely through their presence in pop venues: sex therapist Laura Burman, PhD, and urologist Jennifer Berman, MD. The Berman sisters have been favorable featured in numberous women's magainzes, including Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and Ladies' Home Journal; appeared on many TV shows, such as Good Morning America, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and 20/20; and had their own weekly cable-TV talk show on the Discovery Health Channel. (Laura has a reality show called Sexual Healing upcoming on Showtime.) With cowriters, they've published two mainstream books on women's sexual problems: For Women Only: A Revolutionary Guide to Overcoming Sexual Dysfunction and Reclaiming Your Sex Life and secrets of the exually Satisfied Woman: Ten Keys to Unlocking Ultimate Pleasure.

In 2001, the Bermans founded the UCLA Female Sexual Medicine Center. Three years later, Laura Berman left UCLA to open a private clinic, the Berman Center, in Chicago. Jennifer Berman soon followed suit, opening a sexual-medicine practive in Beverly Hills at the Rodeo Drive Women's Health Center. The shift of the Bermans' practices from an academic center to the explicitly for-profit commercial sector speaks volumes about the new reatil-oriented cultures of both sex and medicine. Both practices offer a boutique experience in a high-end, spa-like environment. A review of the Berman Center's website, where a prospective client can secure an appointment witha credit-card number, indicates that an initial assessment will cost $550 plus testing, and another $550 will buy a session of "bio-identical hormone thereapy." Not surprisingly, there's no mention of insurance coverage. (there's already been a lot of outrage in feminist and women's health circles about the fact that Viagra is more likely to be covered than contraceptives, and one can easily imagine that insurance companies might similarly refuse to cover sex drugs for women, even if they are eventually FDA-appoved.)

Even more important than the commercialized nature of the Berman's practices, however, is their approach to treatment. Although both assert that they combine the strengths of psychotherapy with the benefits of sexual medicine, they ultimately give preference to the biomedical perspective. As part of a 2004 20/20 special on women's sexuality, the Bermans rtreated a woman whose husband had threatened to leave her if she didn't remedy her low mojo. Though the sisters failed to find any biophysical indications for the woman's depressed libido (in other words, no sign of "low" testosterone), they nevertheless wrote a prescription for testosteron and, with this magic bullet, side-lined the deeply problematic nature of the woman's relationship with her husband and any psychological facotrs that may have affected her sex life.


The spread of an already prevalent "just pop a pill" approach to the realm of sexual desire minimizes the myriad ways in which our society fosters sexual problems in both women and men. People work more hours in the U.S. than in any other industrialized society, take fewer vacation days, and have increasingly longer commutes--so exhaustion alone is quite possibly a major explanation for many an underused American bed. But for women, the same political struggles that have long informed their sexual choices and well-being are still in existence. Persistent gender inequality in heterosexual coupling (manifested in women shouldering much of the burden of household work and childcare), and increasing threat of restricted reproductive rights, and active epidemic of sexual vilence against women, and women's higher likelihood of being diagnosed with depression (and higher rates of antidepressant use) all likely play a role. In addition, women's magazines' continual emphsis on sex and how to make it longer, better, and more frequent can easily give women the impression that they're at fault if they can't blow their man's mind--to say nothing of their own--every time. Certainly, a sex drug won't address these fundamentally social and cultural causes of sexual discontent. Men, of course, can also experience sexual problems for many of these same reasons as well, a point usually minimized in discussions of ED.


As the medicalization of sex expands, growing numbers of critics are raising voices of dissent. Since its 2000 inception, the New View Campaign has used a variety of tactics to counter the growing biomedical orientation surrounding women's sexuality (see www.fsd-alert.org). Critical articles about FSD have also appeared in medical journals, such as the British Medical Journal, and a number of mainstream publications, including 2005 features in the Seattle Times and the Los Angeles Times. and recent drug scandals, such as those involving the Vioxx brand pain reliever and hormone replacement therapy, appear to be ushering in a more widespread critical appraisal of the health threats of our pill-popping culture.

Perhaps the biggest danger of the rise of the Viagra culture is that the source of women's sexual problems is becoming overtly depoliticized. A main intent of the feminist women's health movement was to politicize women's sexual/health problems, often by challening the power of the medical establishmetn. Now that drug companies are the major players hijacking the characterization of women's sexual problems, we need to firmly resituate women's sexuality back intot the political realm. Sure, some women may be helped by a new sex patch or pill, but this quick fix (with health risks) might just put a Band-Aid on a larger problem. Neither the medical establishment nor the drg industry is going to change, so it's time for women to demand that these profit-hungry entities stop trying to peddle drugs that benefit their bottom line at the expense of our health.

Notes To Come Back To: SCARFACE (1932)

~Intro (government needs help, responsibility to force them to act)
~Howard Hawks
~"Italian Accent" in subtitles
~"Old-style gang leader" vs. New Italians
~1932
~Volstead Act
~Corruption of politicians, lawyers, witnesses ("wink")
~Based on book/real events
~"Micks"
~Glorify/Romanticize as "Demigods" by plastering across front page
~Take off front page
-most not citizens; make laws; give bad name to Italians
-private citizens need to act (cops can do nothing)
~X marks the spot (need to rewatch to see how many times...but definitely many)
~His involvement eventually kills his sister

~Rinaldo, Camonte, Lovo, Cesca, Epstein, etc.

Christian Broadcasting

Last week, while working late, I brought up the commericals that ask you to donate several hundred dollars so that a Russian can be moved back to Israel.

Perri said that she had seen that commercial...and that her first reaction was: "If they're planning on sending people back to where they came from, I'm saying this now: I'm not going back to Africa."

I thought it was an intriguing thought.

If there was a mass effort to remove people from this country, I might just barely make the list...and that would only be for being a "crazy liberal", but not because of my color.

It's amazing how often it's possible to forget about "whiteness."

Hmm....

Gas Prices

driving back from target last night, i realised that it's kind of crazy the effort that gets put into watching the pennies on the gas station signs rise & fall.

...


i finally realised that this obsession is kind of absurd. a jump of 10 cents means that it will take an extra dollar to fill my car (for big trucks it's probably about $2-$2.50).

when did a dollar become so big? normally we get so excited over the things that we could get for $1 ("wow! a burger!...or fries!...that's awesome!). it seems a little strange that the thing we get so excited over spending to get food we compulsively stress over when it comes to gas for our cars.


just a thought.

(yes, i do realise that the jump up of $1+ per gallon that's happened over the last few years DOES make a difference...and that the difference has come about by the slow increase of pennies over time. on the short term, though, it does seem odd how close many people watch the gas prices to get the best deal...that really isn't that much better of a deal.)

(and yes, i will continue to be one of those people...though probably less so now.)

Applying for Jobs

At my interview yesterday afternoon, my Program Directors were talking about how the funding cuts were going to cause the corps to be significantly less diverse.

For some reason, white women are always the ones who apply early. (For note of reference: my corps tutors underachieving students.) All other types of people apply later along in the hiring process...sometimes even within a month of the program starting.

I thought that this was really interesting. What does it say about these different populations with how they relate to this sort of work? What other sorts of applying styles do other programs out there (that might not be so geared towards a particular group of people) have?

I think that it would be interesting to see what sorts of jobs that men apply to first, with others coming along later. Or the ones where non-white ethnicities are the primary candidates, followed by whites.

There's probably some research out there on such a thing. Well, I imagine there is.

If anyone hears of any, let me know.

The Culture of Buses

It may seem really lame, but it's something that has been intriguing me for the last month at least. Buses are really interesting places to examine. From the sorts of people who ride them, to the bus drivers, to the subtle codes.

Originally, I had been wondering about the difference between buses in the city and those heading to the suburbs. It is just because I have been downtown a couple times when the bus just blows past a rider because they weren't at the stop, and several times when the express bus has held up so that the late person could get on. There are so many possibilities, I still don't quite know why. There is the personality of the driver, the personalities of the riders, and the bus schedules (buses run more often in the city than to it). I'm sure it ends up being a combination, but I thought it was interesting that the waits occur more often with the express bus. (I don't think it's just the bus that I ride.) This is a remarkably complicated question; and with no way to find out, I have had to move on to other things.

Like the "rules" about sitting. That's right. It amuses me each day to watch the ways to signal that you don't want someone sitting with you (placement of stuff and seat choice for example...yes, some seats are less popular for being the second occupant that others). But the one that I see so easily every day is how are seats are same-sexed (with the exception of the VERY front, sideways seats...and when talking about couples riding together). Men will never sit next to a woman. Even if she is a co-worker. He will sit in a seat adjacent to hers, but not in the one right next to her. (On the buses I have ridden, it is easy for a woman to sit next to another woman. Females are probably about 65-75% of those on the bus.)

It's been fun figuring these out. As far as the strategies go, it's meant that I've figured out how to routinely get the seat to myself (even though I assume many now realize that I also get off at the first stop, making it moderately inconvenient for them to have to move). When the bus stops at the transit station, I note the number of people out there in line, but also the rough number of women. (I also end up sitting next to some of the businessmen at times, and it always feels a little odd. But that just might be because I was the one who had to sit down next to a stranger.)

Anyways, I will no longer go on. I have written this down. That is enough.

"Remembering Mills"

In honor of the true spirit of this blog, I would like to copy something I found. (Okay, so not totally the original spirit, but a very important addition at least.)

"The powers of ordinary men are circumscribed by the everyday worlds in
which they live, yet even in these rounds of job, family and
neighborhood they often seem driven by forces they can neither
understand nor govern."



The New York Times

May 14, 2006
Essay
The Deciders
By JOHN H. SUMMERS

"The powers of ordinary men are circumscribed by the everyday worlds in which they live, yet even in these rounds of job, family and neighborhood they often seem driven by forces they can neither understand nor govern."


The opening sentence of "The Power Elite," by C. Wright Mills, seems unremarkable, even bland. But when the book was first published 50 years ago last month, it exploded into a culture riddled with existential anxiety and political fear. Mills — a broad-shouldered, motorcycle-riding anarchist from Texas who taught sociology at Columbia — argued that the "sociological key" to American uneasiness could be found not in the mysteries of the unconscious or in the battle against Communism, but in the over-organization of society. At the pinnacle of the government, the military and the corporations, a small group of men made the decisions that reverberated "into each and every cranny" of American life. "Insofar as national events are decided," Mills wrote, "the power elite are those who decide them."

His argument met with criticism from all sides. "I look forward to the time when Mr. Mills hands back his prophet's robes and settles down to being a sociologist again," Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote in The New York Post. Adolf Berle, writing in the Book Review, said that while the book contained "an uncomfortable degree of truth," Mills presented "an angry cartoon, not a serious picture." Liberals could not believe a book about power in America said so little about the Supreme Court, while conservatives attacked it as leftist psychopathology ("sociological mumbo jumbo," Time said). The Soviets translated it in 1959, but decided it was pro-American. "Although Mills expresses a skeptical and critical attitude toward bourgeois liberalism and its
society of power," said the introduction to the Russian translation, "his hopes and sympathies undoubtedly remain on its side."

Even so, "The Power Elite" found an eclectic audience at home and abroad. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara debated the book in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir published excerpts in their radical journal, Les Temps Modernes. In the
United States, Mills received hundreds of letters from Protestant clergymen, professors and students, pacificists and soldiers. This note came from an Army private stationed in San Francisco: "I genuinely appreciate reading in print ideas I have thought about some time
ago. At that time, they seemed to me so different that I didn't tell anyone." In the aftermath of the global riots of 1968, the C.I.A. identified Mills as one of the most influential New Left intellectuals in the world, though he had been dead for six years.

The historical value of "The Power Elite" seems assured. It was the first book to offer a serious model of power that accounted for the secretive agencies of national security. Mills saw the postideological "postmodern epoch" (as he would later call it) at its inception, and his book remains a founding text in the continuing demand for democratically responsible political leadership — a demand echoed and amplified across the decades in books like Christopher Lasch's "Revolt of the Elites" (1995), Kevin Phillips's "Wealth and Democracy" (2002),
Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire" (2004) and Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter With Kansas?" (2004).

Much of "The Power Elite" was a tough-talking polemic against the "romantic pluralism" embedded in the prevailing theory of American politics. The separation of powers in the Constitution, the story went, repelled the natural tendency of power to concentrate, while
political parties and voluntary societies organized the clash of interests, laying the people's representatives open to the influence of public opinion. This "theory of balance" still applied to the "middle levels of power," Mills wrote. But the society it envisioned had been eclipsed.

For the first time in history, he argued, the territories of the United States made up a self-conscious mass society. If the economy had once been a multitude of locally or regionally rooted, (more or less) equal units of production, it now answered to the needs of a few hundred
corporations. If the government had once been a patchwork of states held together by Congress, it now answered to the initiatives of a strong executive. If the military had once been a militia system resistant to the discipline of permanent training, it now consumed half the national
budget, and seated its admirals and generals in the biggest office building in the world.

The "awesome means of power" enthroned upon these monopolies of production, administration and violence included the power to prevent issues and ideas from reaching Congress in the first place. Most Americans still believed the ebb and flow of public opinion guided political affairs. "But now we must recognize this description as a set of images out of a fairy tale," Mills wrote. "They are not adequate even as an approximate model of how the American system of power
works."

The small groups of men standing at the head of the three monopolies represented a new kind of elite, whose character and conduct mirrored the antidemocratic ethos of their institutions. The corporations recruited from the business schools, and conceived executive training
programs that demanded strict conformity. The military selected generals and admirals from the service academies, and inculcated "the caste feeling" by segregating them from the associational life of the country. Less and less did local apprenticeships serve as a passport to
the government's executive chambers. Of the appointees in the Eisenhower administration, Mills found that a record number had never stood for election at any level.

Above the apparent balance of powers, Mills said, "an intricate set of overlapping cliques" shared in "decisions having at least national consequences." Rather than operating in secret, the same kinds of men — who traded opinions in the same churches, clubs and schools — took turns
in the same jobs. Mills pointed to the personnel traffic among the Pentagon, the White House and the corporations. The nation's three top policy positions — secretary of state, treasury and defense — were occupied by former corporate executives. The president was a general.

Mills could not answer many of the most important questions he raised. How did the power elite make its decisions? He did not know. Did its members cause their roles to be created, or step into roles already created? He could not say. Around what interests did they cohere? He asserted a "coincidence of interest" partially organized around "a permanent war establishment," but he did little more than assert it. Most of the time, he said, the power elite did not cohere at all. "This instituted elite is frequently in some tension: it comes together only on certain coinciding points and only on certain occasions of 'crisis.' " Although he urged his readers to scrutinize the commanding power of decision, his book did not scrutinize any decisions.

These ambiguities have kept "The Power Elite" vulnerable to the charge of conspiracy-mongering. In a recent essay in Playboy called "Who Rules America?" Arthur Schlesinger Jr. repeated his earlier skepticism about Mills's argument, calling it "a sophisticated version of the American nightmare." Alan Wolfe, in a 2000 afterword, pointed out that while Mills got much about the self-enriching ways of the corporate elite right, his vision of complacent American capitalism did not anticipate the competitive dynamics of our global economy. And of late we have seen that "occasions of crisis" do not necessarily serve to unify the generals with the politicians.

Yet "The Power Elite" abounds with questions that still trouble us today. Can a strong democracy coexist with the amoral ethos of corporate elites? And can public argument have democratic meaning in the age of national security? The trend in foreign affairs, Mills argued, was for a militarized executive branch to bypass the United Nations, while Congress was left with little more than the power to express "general confidence, or the lack of it." Policy tended to be announced as doctrine, which was then sold to the public via the media. Career diplomats in the State Department believed they could not truthfully report intelligence. Meanwhile official secrecy steadily expanded its reach. "For the first time in American history, men in authority are talking about an 'emergency' without a foreseeable end," Mills wrote in a sentence that remains as powerful and unsettling as it was 50 years ago. "Such men as these are crackpot
realists: in the name of realism they have constructed a paranoid reality all their own."

John H. Summers teaches intellectual history at Harvard. He is currently writing a biography of C. Wright Mills.

Repression of War Experience

Now light the candles; one; two; there's a moth;
What silly beggars they are to blunder in
And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame --
No, no, not that, - it's bad to think of war,
When thoughts you've gagged all day come back to scare you;
And it's been proved that soldiers don't go mad
Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts
That drive them out to jabber among the trees.


Now light your pipe; look, what a steady hand.
Draw a deep breath; stop thinking; counting fifteen,
And you're as right as rain...
Why won't it rain?...
I wish there'd be a thunder-storm to-night,
With bucketsful of water to sluice the dark.
And make the the roses hang their dripping heads.
Books; what a jolly company they are,
Standing so quiet and patient on their shelves,
Dressed in dim brown, and black, and white, and green,
And every kind of colour. Which will you read?
Come on; O do read something; they're so wise.
I tell you all the wisdome of the world
Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet
You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out,
And listen to the silence: on the ceiling
There's one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters;
And in the breathless air outside the house
The garden waits for something that delays.
There must be crowds of ghosts among the trees, --
Not people killed in battle, --they're in France, --
But horrible shapes in shrouds --old men who died
Slow, natural deaths, -- old men with ugly souls,
Who wore their bodies out with nasty sins.

You're quiet and peaceful, summering safe at home;
You'd never think there was a bloody war on!...
Oh yes, you would...why you can hear the guns.
Hark! Thud, thud, thud, --quite soft...they never cease --
Those whispering guns --O Christ, I want to go out
And screech at them to stop --I'm going crazy;
I'm going start staring mad because of the funs.

--1918, Siegfried Sassoon

Red--Anonymous (something I found while cleaning)

I've always wanted to be a communist.
I found it a beautiful ideal in
which humankind could finally
live equally, sharing possessions
and knowledge.
Materialistic world we live in
I strive for my utopia
World in which differences are
an asset not a handicap
Judging, judgmental
Even I disciminate by saying I
hate racists.
Ask a Russian if he wants to be a
communist.
Ask a Tibetan how she feels
about communism
Ideal, mystic unrealistic
Human nature a destructive
force bringing greed and selfishness
Power seeking pigs
Waiting for my communism