k*mb*rl**l*d**

To my mind the harshest indictment that can be made of academic historical writing is its refusal to acknowledge, other than in the most pro forma way, that a person is writing about other people—a person, not an IBM machine or a piece of blotting paper.
To say that a historian is inescapably in his own books and that he has the obligation to admit it, is not yet to show how he could include himself in a way that might better serve the documentation, the reader—and himself…. My conviction is that when a historian allows more of himself to show—his feelings, fantasies and needs, not merely his skills at information-retrieval, organization and analysis—he is less likely to contaminate the data, simply because there is less pretense that he and it are one.

— Martin Duberman, Black Mountain: And Exploration In Community, from the introduction (via yingpow)

Reblogged 6 days ago from yingpow 4 notes

Domestic Workers Shocked by Sharon Stone’s Alleged Abuse of Nanny

New York, NY—Yesterday, Sharon Stone’s former nanny Erlinda T. Elemen filed suit against the actress for an array of alleged abuses, including verbal abuse over Erlinda’s Filipino heritage and religious beliefs. In response to the suit, the National Domestic Worker Alliance releases the following statements:

Statement from Ai-jen Poo, Director, National Domestic Worker Alliance

“Domestic workers are excluded from almost every major labor law, including protection from discrimination and harassment. Erlinda’s case is another example of why it’s so important that we address these exclusions and recognize the importance and humanity of the workforce. Her case is not just a case of one bad employer.Every worker is vulnerable to this type of abuse. The State of California has the opportunity to take an historic step forward by passing the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, AB889. We hope CA lawmakers will take this suit as a call to action.” 

cadomesticworkers

Reblogged 1 week ago from cadomesticworkers 1 note

NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO: Occupied Okinawa #10: Hajichi Decolonization →

Although the idea of ancestral veneration remains in Chamorro culture today, that specific practice of taking the bones of your ancestors into your home and then treating them like members of the family is considered crazy. If you were to conduct yourself in such a manner today people would report you to the police, report you to mental health, and most importantly report you to the Catholic church. In the centuries since the early days of Spanish colonization, an incredible variety of discursive barriers have been placed between you and that practice, to disconnect you from it and to make you unable to see it in any objective sense. Your sense of what is normal and what is abnormal has been so shaped in the centuries since that you cannot see that practice in the way Ancient Chamorros did, and therefore have trouble integrated it into today’s world.

… You cannot fault people for feeling this discomfort, it is natural. History is not a straight line, even if we attempt to arrange our perceptions of it in such a way, it is still twisting, contradictory and painful. But the larger lesson for decolonization is the need to take on these chunks of your history that do not fit in the present, and insist that they be brought into today. It is this insistence that can provide an incredible strength, because of its impracticality. If you already speak English, why bother learning Chamorro? If you already live a capitalist consumerist lifestyle why change to something else? The answer is that there is no strength, no self-strength, no chance for self-determination if you just accept the flow of history that flows against you. You just get carried away by history’s currents. You eventually cease to exist and only find form in museum exhibits on lost cultures. But if you push back against that flow, and if you insist that something that was lost or taken from you should continue to exist today, you provide the possibility for decolonial strength. It is the kind of strength that has the power to define what is normal today, what is acceptable, where the limits of your culture and your political power are.

Posted 1 week ago from bookmarklet