Author: Critical Ethnic and Community Studies

I am an ambitious man engaged in necessary dialogue

Charlie Phan
TCCS ‘20

A group of young men pose for a selfie after an AMEND session.
Participants of AMEND – Ambitious Men Engaged in Necessary Dialogue – including the author, far left. Photo credit: Winston Pierre.

When I attended UMass Boston as an undergraduate student, I was introduced to a young men’s group called Ambitious Men Engaged in Necessary Dialogue (AMEND).

I have been involved with AMEND since February 2014 when I attended my first event and met the founding brother of the group, Manny Monteiro.

Manny is a UMass Boston alum who, as an undergraduate, worked as a Peer Mentor for the Success Boston Initiative. While serving in this capacity, Manny felt there was more he could do in order to impact the lives of others and to give back to his community. With the help and support of former Success Boston Initiative Coordinator Liliana Mickle and Manny’s other mentors, advisors, and success coaches, his vision became a reality and AMEND was formed.

AMEND has been encouraging men to engage in necessary dialogue since November 2012 with its first ever session. Manny’s inspiration for creating AMEND was due to experiences in his life where he felt he was lacking masculine love, a desire of finding connections with other male figures, and to create a safe space for men to talk about topics and interact with each other in a way that might be seen as “unmanly” in some spaces.

Redefining masculinity in an age of toxicity

Many men might have been taught that it is “unmanly” to express emotions or to talk about their feelings. AMEND provides an opportunity for men to do exactly this – while learning, growing, and healing with each other in community. Manny succinctly summarizes what AMEND does with the acronym RICH BROS: Reflect, Inspire, Create and Heal (RICH) through Brotherhood Builds, Retreats, Outings and Sessions (BROS).

Some of the topics discussed during AMEND sessions included “Perceptions of a Woman,” “Define your Struggle,” “Masculinity,” “Social Justice,” and “Education.”

Read Grace Furtado’s article, “How did you manage to get a ticket?” about attending the The Massachusetts Conference for Women…

Many of these topics touch upon values of UMass Boston’s Transnational Cultural and Community Studies program, the graduate program in which I am enrolled. A matter of fact, one of Manny’s advisors is TCCS core faculty member Aminah Pilgrim.

The founder of AMEND, Manny Monteiro, is pictured with two of his mentors.
From left to right, Liliana Mickle, the “mother” of AMEND, Manny Monteiro, AMEND’s founding brother, and Professor Aminah Pilgrim, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and core TCCS Faculty member at UMass Boston. Photo credit: Merveil Meyitang.

As a part of AMEND, I was able to join a group of brothers who all share love for each other. I remember the first meeting I attended: I felt so drawn in because of the passion and enthusiasm of AMEND members and other event attendees for the topics discussed, and how everyone wanted to learn and grow as a group. I loved the atmosphere of the space and how the people who attended wanted to establish a community with each other.

One of my favorite AMEND sessions was called, “What’s your why?” During this session, we talked about our goals and future aspirations. Within the conversation, other brothers and myself talked about our dream-careers and what’s holding us back. As a group of predominantly young men of color, some of the barriers and roadblocks revolve around race, ethnicity, and gender. It was great to hear others’ aspirations despite what is perceived to be holding others back. In spite of these obstacles, I really admire everyone’s determination to achieve what they set out to accomplish.

As a group of predominantly young men of color, some of the barriers and roadblocks revolve around race, ethnicity, and gender.

I’ve also participated in sessions on the topic of fatherhood. We talked about fatherhood in a way that disputes gender norms. We resisted the idea that fathers are the ones who have to be “manly.”  We advocated that it is OK for fathers to show love and affection with their children.

What I most appreciate about the culture of AMEND is how people are able to share ideas that go against mainstream views of how things “should” be – in masculinity, manhood, and beyond. I also appreciate how men are able to express emotions of anger, frustration, sadness, and cry. As mentioned throughout courses in the TCCS program, “the personal is political and the political is personal.”

Read Zainab Salejwala’s article, “Using a faucet is a privilege” about the Flint water crisis and human rights in America…

The emotions and experiences of the people who come to these events are real and personal. If any of the men who attends an AMEND event is overwhelmed with emotion, they are welcomed to let out any emotions they have. They are in a safe and supportive space to do so. If a person says something that goes against what society might view as how a man “should” be or how they should feel, AMEND has created a space for those men to feel comfortable sharing these experiences they might be viewed negatively in other spaces.

One of the biggest things I love about Manny and the culture he has started through AMEND is the group’s commitment to reflect, inspire, create and heal (RICH) and the commitment of learning and growing together through our retreats, outings, and sessions.

Looking ahead

For the future of AMEND, Manny has big visions. He wishes to turn AMEND into a non-profit organization and find a physical space that will further facilitate providing support to young men. He even wishes to eventually provide housing for young men with housing insecurity.

I am excited to see what happens next. Manny is man who is dedicated to giving back to the community and who enjoys helping others.

In my future with AMEND, I hope to further engage with brothers in upcoming events. I hope to incorporate the knowledge and experiences I have gained in the TCCS program thus far in future AMEND sessions as we promote learning, growing, and healing while engaging in necessary dialogue on topics such as gender, sexuality, masculinity, education, social justice, and many more.

 

Anatomy of an apology

Rajini Srikanth
Professor of English, College of Liberal Arts
Core Faculty, TCCS Program

The words "sorry,""feel," "vulnerability," "relationship," "reparations" and others are arranged in a design.
Illustration by Myles Green.

I first started to think seriously about the linguistic act of apology when I encountered a comparison of the apology letters of two Presidents writing to Japanese American internees for the violation of their constitutional rights and for the material and psychological devastations to their lives caused by the internment.

The comparison is provided by Stewart Ikeda, and the two letters he assesses are those by President George H. Bush and President Clinton. His conclusion, after a careful examination of the structure of the two apology letters, is that Clinton’s letter is the more sincere and therefore the more effective, because he does not take refuge in bureaucratic language, does not use the passive voice to distance himself from taking responsibility for the internment, and explicitly states that racism and wartime hysteria were the reasons that the country – the leaders in particular but also the people – allowed such a gross violation of the rights of 120,000 people of Japanese descent to occur.

Ikeda does not consider whether an apology is a sincere speech act to begin with; he takes it for granted that an apology is worth delivering for an injury done and that an apology should communicate genuine remorse and self-reflection on the part of the one who caused the injury. If you have ever received a meaningful apology from someone who caused you harm – economic, psychological, medical or any other type – you likely remember, in your muscles and bones, the experience of feeling less weighed down, of feeling uplifted, of a certain kind of veil being removed from your view of the world, of the purging of anger, of the quieting of sorrow. An apology can alter you both psychologically and physiologically.

If you have ever received a meaningful apology from someone who caused you harm – economic, psychological, medical or any other type – you likely remember, in your muscles and bones, the experience of feeling less weighed down, of feeling uplifted, of a certain kind of veil being removed from your view of the world, of the purging of anger, of the quieting of sorrow.

***

I’ve often wondered, what would Michael Brown’s mother feel like if she received an apology from Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Michael in August 2014? Or Eric Garner’s daughter, if she received an apology from the police officer whose chokehold strangled her father, in 2014? Would the apology have prolonged her own short life? She was an outspoken activist against police brutality. Did the stress of that task claim her life in 2017?

President Obama signed an Apology Resolution in 2009 for wrongs done to Native Americans, but this resolution is almost perfunctory and, moreover, the apology was not announced to Native American groups and brought to their attention. Robert Coulter of the Indian Law Resource Center observes, “What kind of an apology is it when they don’t tell the people they are apologizing to? For an apology to have any meaning at all, you do have to tell the people you’re apologizing to.” True. Other nations – Canada, New Zealand, and Australia – have issued public apologies for the harms done to indigenous peoples.

Nine states in the United States have issued apologies for slavery. But what does it mean to apologize for such an egregious wrong, a devastating violation that persisted for more than two centuries and affected millions of individuals? Ta-Nehisi Coates in his 2014 essay in The Atlantic calls for reparations for slavery, describing the myriad ways in which white America has plundered black Americans and left them economically and psychologically vulnerable. That neither political party wants to discuss reparations – even to study what it would mean and how much it would cost – says something about the fundamental unwillingness of this country to acknowledge the deeply problematic foundations on which it stands, he says. So, while apologies for slavery have been issued, the conditions of Black life have changed little. There is a hollowness to the words, one could argue.  

Other glaring omissions or inadequacies remain. Japan has still not issued an “unequivocal” apology to all the women from many Asian countries who were sexually exploited as “comfort women” for the soldiers of the Japanese army during World War II. The surviving women who were used as sex slaves do not accept as a meaningful and genuine apology the agreement that was reached between South Korea and Japan in 2015 on the matter of comfort women. The United States has not apologized for the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the radioactive poisoning of the environment and subsequent generations of Japanese.  

One of my colleagues, who is sometimes justifiably cynical, has argued with me that apologies are suspect articulations. One can mask exploitative and oppressive practices by performing apologies that are skillfully crafted and delivered. Abject apologies can convey a sense of deep remorse, but in fact the injurer may not have fundamentally changed. A company can apologize for some serious lapse of oversight that resulted in death or injury: a medication that was priced too high and therefore inaccessible to those who really needed it. A hospital for a botched procedure: Surgeon Atul Gawande recommends apologizing for medical injuries even though in a culture as litigious as ours, an apology could be read as admission of deliberate wrongdoing and therefore culpability before the law.

But an apology can radically transform the possibilities for the future of a relationship between two people, between two countries, between two groups. It can eliminate fear and engender a new beginning. An apology can function like the big bang – creating the conditions for new life and new collaborations and harmonies. But what if each party in the disrupted relationship believes itself to be the injured subject and is therefore expecting the other party to deliver the apology? And this is where we come to that vexed issue of power.

The more powerful of the two parties involved should deliver the apology – after all, the powerful have less to lose than those without power. An apology by the powerful to those less powerful may even make the former feel a certain sense of righteous self-satisfaction: “see how generous and noble I am that I can set aside my pride and humble myself to this person, this group.” I would argue that even a self-serving apology, delivered by the more powerful party, can achieve a type of clearing of the fog, a parting of entangled branches, to deliver a clear view of the terrain that both parties can now traverse together.

David Grossman, Israeli novelist, essayist, and journalist, in a compelling speech delivered in 2006 on the occasion of the memorial rally for slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, exhorts his fellow Israelis to apologize to the Palestinians. Grossman is proudly Zionist, and as a committed Zionist he realizes that it is in the best interest of the Israeli Jews to reach out to the Palestinians and acknowledge the profound destruction of their way of life wrought by the founding of the state of Israel. Let us as a people, says Grossman, recognize the misery and suffering we have caused the Palestinians.

There is no way of knowing whether this apology would open up a new pathway for a meaningful interaction between Palestinians and the state of Israel, but it is certainly worth an effort. Should the Palestinians trust the sincerity of the utterance? Should they accept the apology as a genuine offering of recognition of their humanity? And, herein, I believe, lies the crux of the linguistic act. Can it carry within it all the complexities of sentiment and understanding that the injured party needs to feel from the injuring party so that the injured group feels there is a deep and genuine desire to connect emanating from its adversary? The performance of the apology – and I admit that initially it might be primarily performance – must be skilled and rich, textured and complex – so that it carries within it the potential for transition from performance to desire, ritual to internalized sentiment and practice.

Can it carry within it all the complexities of sentiment and understanding that the injured party needs to feel from the injuring party so that the injured group feels there is a deep and genuine desire to connect emanating from its adversary?

Aaron Lazare, well known researcher on apology, observes that delivering an apology can purge the injuring party of guilt and shame and, he says, not only can it heal a broken relationship, but it can also enhance a relationship because “something is discovered” in the act of apologizing. While I agree in the main with Lazare’s belief in the salutary effects of apology on the one making it, I wonder what happens when the injuring party feels no guilt and shame because the party that has suffered the injury is not considered “fully human” or fully deserving of the embrace of humanity. Would white police officers, who are by and large culturally conditioned to see the black man’s body as a weapon, truly embrace the humanity of the African American male? Would they feel sufficient guilt and shame at having wrongly injured or killed a black man so that they would be moved to offer an apology to the family member or loved one of the injured or dead man?

Shame and guilt are necessarily accompanied by introspection. Without introspection, without the capacity to look within oneself, there can be no apology. The introspective act requires one to acknowledge culpability – to be able to say, “I did a wrong”—and to feel genuine sorrow, shame, or guilt for the wrong one has done. And, as Lazare reminds us, a sincere apology also signals “forbearance” – a promise that one will not repeat the offense. Apologizing is an act of humility – one is prepared to “de-center” oneself and to foreground the emotional well-being and dignity of another person – that individual or group one has harmed. (I borrow the word “de-center” from Elaine Scarry.)

A sincere apology is a gift: the gift of your vulnerability and your humility to those whose suffering you have caused. You go as a supplicant asking that your gift be received, and in that gesture, you demonstrate that you are seeking to build a relationship with that person, that group, whom you previously had treated with indifference, callousness, or hostility. 

Sometimes I am tired

Kimberly Coffman
TCCS ’20

Stream of consciousness prose:

Sometimes I am tired. I wonder if anyone else ever feels like a nomad in their own body. Stopping at a space that feels incomplete, dilapidated. Is this the journey or the destination? My mother gave birth to the struggles of her people’s diaspora through the intergenerational trauma that was inescapable for my brothers and sisters and I. Where is home? Is home the California chaparral – hot, arid, frustrating, yelling, crying? It wasn’t the California coast – cool, distant, dreamy, aloof. Apparently, “home is where the heart is.” But how many times have I removed my heart to make a home for a tall, white man’s emotional labor? Colonization.

Sometimes I am tired. My people are crying. My people are hungry. My people are poor. My people are politicized. My people are vulnerable. My people are paternalized. My people are researched. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out who my people are. Am I that much of an anomaly? I am the product of anomaly. M I S C E G E N A T I O N. Tragic and confused, and, of course, undesirable but so desired. I’m so exotic. I lick my lips with the tongue that will shape words that taze you, they run through your body like electricity and you cannot deny them because you don’t want to. I don’t play hard to get I am hard to get, and when you think you’ve gotten me, you haven’t.

But I am tired. Sometimes I feel alone, and sometimes I am not okay. I don’t know where I belong. My mother speaks of home as a place where she used to eat fried grasshoppers stuffed with peanuts and smell the tobacco from her father’s pipe. But she never describes it as the California chaparral. “Forced migration.” Explain to me how we can take trauma that is so acerbic it tastes of metal in your mouth and then turn it into the word “diaspora.” A word that sounds like a whisper, so innocuous. Explain to me what isn’t an imagined home, because that is the only home I know and the only home that my mother, my home, knows.

Sometmes I am tired. But I still can’t find a home where I can rest.

A photograph of the author and two siblings, taken in 1998.
Kimberly, Seth, and Kristofer Coffman circa 1998.

From Gaza to Tijuana: Militarization and violence at the hands of the state

Juan Pablo Blanco
TCCS ’19

“Protesting voices are not soothing. It is not in their nature to lull the listener to sleep, comfort them, reassure them that all is fine. Protesting voices must shake the listener out of their slumber.” – Nada Elia

These are the words written by Diaspora Palestinian writer and activist Nada Elia in her essay, “The Burden of Representation – When Palestinians Speak Out” within Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence, and Belonging (2011, Syracuse University Press).

Her words have never rang more true today. In a time when attacks on vulnerable populations grow increasingly harsh and blatant, and centrist “liberal” discourse keeps asking us to play nice, focus on bipartisanship, and some idea of common ground, Elia makes clear the uselessness of these attempts to play nice. Or, as Elia cites Audre Lorde’s ever-pertinent wisdom, “We were never meant to survive, that our silence cannot protect us, because ‘the machine will try and grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak’” (Lorde, 1977).

These days, it is hard to not make a connection between the struggle against occupation and apartheid in Palestine and the so-called migrant caravan reaching the U.S. border. Some quick research of both will show a militarized border wall, tear gas canisters in the air, and a professional military force attacking unarmed civilians with impunity. Both cases show narratives that end up blaming the victims, whether it is the reductionist argument that equates anti-Zionism (an opposition with the state of Israel and its occupation of Palestinian territory and its attack on the Palestinian people) with anti-Semitism (the historic vilification and oppression of Jews) or the idea that migrants shouldn’t be complaining about teargas canisters being launched their way because they were told this would happen if they made it alive to the U.S. southern border. Both these narratives, in short, are used as silencing tactics.

Moreover, political discourse is also present that criminalizes civilians and turns them into war criminals. For example, in right-wing political commentaries, one can find narratives that speak of the use of “human shields” both in Gaza by Palestinians as well as at the U.S. border by Central American migrants and refugees. By grabbing hold of this narrative, Israel and the U.S. (as well as the Mexican state in the case of the border) all wash their hands clean of any responsibility for the violence directed upon these people. These narratives also turn these vulnerable peoples into, not the victims of the wars that they have been unjustly subject to, but the actors of wars who are to be treated under the rules of military combat.

While “liberal” media sources have, to some extent, criticized U.S. military tactics at the border, it is imperative to remember that oftentimes, due to claims of “impartiality,” these atrocities are left out of the public narrative. Elia points to this censored-storytelling as she recounts the BBC’s refusal to broadcast the massive slaughter of innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip leaving more than thirteen hundred Palestinians dead in January 2009. The BBC’s refusal to broadcast this news was due to their desire to “maintain impartiality in its coverage of the massacre” — that is, a twenty-two day military offensive launched by Israel from “the air, sea, and land, against a weakened, quasi-starved imprisoned people, the majority of whom are refugees and children” (Elia, 142).

While I am not trying to equate the more than 70 years of occupation at the hand of Israel with what is happening at the border today, it is important to remember that these are both examples of colonization, occupation, and violence enacted on innocent people by a militarized, racist state. It is also important to remember that we cannot look at these struggles in a vacuum, and that we must understand that until all of us are truly free, none of us will be. We cannot wait to ground into dust.

Can you tell which photo is from Palestine and which one from the U.S.-Mexico Border?

A photograph of a large group of protesters facing tear gas from a police force in an unknown location
Photo credit: New York Times.
A photograph of a large group of protesters facing tear gas from a police force in an unknown location
Photo credit: New York Times.

How transdisciplinary research is like making gumbo

Debra Butler
PhD Student, School for the Environment

A photograph of gumbo soup.
Photo credit: Gumbo Brothers restaurant, New York City.

Transdisciplinary research is “issue driven”, participatory and collaborative. Transdisciplinary research requires the time and patience to build relationships of respect and trust, to thrive in conditions of  ambiguity and uncertainty, to value iterative process over product, to learn from “failure”, to appreciate silences and that which is not obvious, to stay curious, and to “know” that nothing of life should be wasted.

I was raised in the culture and traditions of the coastal south, a gumbo of indigenous Native, African, Spanish, French, Greek, Irish, Lebanese, Caribbean and Chinese traditions, a place where timeless homelands and memories of distant home places converged. One of the advantages of doing research in one’s own community is a rich, deep backgrounding in place and people. Transdisciplinary research requires the researcher to honor and be accountable to one’s own community, taking care and knowing that intimacy is both advantage and restraint.  Transdisciplinary research must privilege the rituals of everyday life and the lives of collaborators in the research process.

Read Associate Professor of Anthropology Rosalyn Negrón’s article, “What is transdisciplinarity and what does it have to do with social justice?”…

Food was part of every ritual of life–to nourish, to negotiate, to celebrate, to comfort. Food was gift and  gratitude. Growing up, almost everything we ate was locally grown or harvested from the Gulf. The Gulf is a rice culture, so most meals included bowls of rice or grits with rich spicy sauces or étouffée.

My family was/is serious about food, and when you are serious about food, even a simple meal turns into a party. Gumbo is a party. This story is about one of those rituals and why transdisciplinary research is like making gumbo.

The word “gumbo” is thought to be of African origin, ki ngombo (Bantu) for okra, brought by Africans to the Gulf coast. Other interpretations consider the word a corruption of kombo (Choctaw) for sassafras, which is ground into powder called filé. Okra or filé was the thickener in gumbo, a truly indigenous food with taste and texture dependent on what ingredients were available, whether the meal was “everyday”or celebratory, and how many folks had to be fed. There are as many kinds of gumbo as there are cooks on the Gulf Coast.

Like transdisciplinary research, there are certain important protocols that had to be understood and followed for a successful project.  According to local legend, oysters were safe to eat only in months with the letter “R” (September through April), period. Therefore, oysters were not an ingredient in warm weather gumbos. Instead, they were full of shrimp, crabs, chicken or sausage.  My grandfather fished with his brothers, so grandkids and cousins participated by crabbing on the bay. My grandmother, mother and aunts negotiated fresh shrimp prices from the boats docked at the waterfront. I moved along with this convoy of women, mostly listening, but occasionally called to select the plump little crustaceans by their color and briny smell.  I learned that that “browns” had more flavor and held up to spices and slow cooking…a “hands on” lit review!

In the warm, steamy magic of my Grandmother Ignacia’s kitchen, the ritual of gumbo was an “event”, especially when making winter gumbo during the cold weather seasons of Christmas, Mardi Gras and Lent. Winter gumbo was usually made with a richer stock and a roux (more on roux later). During Mardi Gras, and especially during Lent, gumbo was seafood only. During Lent, it was sacrilegious to even think about putting meat (sausage, game or chicken) in gumbo.

From the age of 8 or 9, I became the apprentice under my grandmother’s watchful eye and free-style methodology. Cooking was alchemy. It has its own sensibility, texture and music. She bought fresh file in tiny brown bags from her friend at St. Rose of Lima parish on Mon Lois Island.  She rubbed herbs between my palms…hold this over your nose, breathe…my brain coded “Sage”! Sassafras! Garlic!

I was the designated roux watcher, a position of dedication, honor and responsibility. Roux was made from good, plain flour and lard or Crisco in a heavy cast iron skillet. The roux was stirred constantly with a wooden spoon. You did not let the roux burn. The fat was melted on low heat before the flour was added, then the mixture was smoothed out and coaxed into a beautiful warm brown. There is no better smell than a good roux. I stirred, and stirred and stirred.

Again, like transdisciplinary research, the process is iterative. It is slow. It requires being “in the moment.” It calls for attention and care, the ability to absorb uncertainty and ambiguity, to watch and learn from community, to sometimes change direction, recalibrate and begin again.

Once, my cousin Denise became too involved in a comic book and let the roux burn. Poor Denise was was instantly expelled and banned from my grandmother’s kitchen. Her dishonor was more than a punishment for carelessness, it was a breach of my grandmother’s trust and a disrespect for the value, labor and commitment of preparing food. Denise was only allowed back when the magic was over and there nothing left but dirty dishes, pots and pans. My grandmother re-started another roux and dusted the flour from her apron. She handed me the wooden spoon. And, we began our research, again.

***

Day 1

Make the stock

In a large pot, add enough water to cover fish* or chicken or beef and celery, onions, bay leaves, garlic, red peppers.  Bring to a boil, then simmer for at least 2-3 hours. Cool. Remove meat & chop into small pieces. Strain stock. Discard skin and bones. Refrigerate stock and meat.

*Fish only for a seafood gumbo.

Day 2

Clean seafood. Check oysters and crabs for shell fragments. Refrigerate.

Chop celery, onions & garlic.  Add to stock. Add bay leaves. Re-heat.

Cut okra into ½ inch pieces. Set aside.

Make roux. Let cool to room temperature. (You can make the roux a day ahead of time. Save at room temperature in a glass container)

Add 2 cups of strained stock to roux to thin. Bring stock to boil. Add roux to stock at full boil. Cook at low boil 5 minutes. Add filé.  

Increase heat to full boil. Add seafood, oysters & okra, (meat from stock), and seasonings.

Stir. Turn heat OFF. Let gumbo rest for 20 minutes. Stir.

Remove bay leaves. Season to taste. Let the gumbo rest 1 hour.

Serve with hot white rice and heavily buttered crusty French bread & a cold beverage. Hot sauce on the side.

Thank the cook.