False Dichotomies of Class (Part I): Mobility versus Mobilization

Martha McCluskey wrote a couple of weeks ago on the ClassCrits Blog about some questions regarding class that arose at Martha Fineman’s recent workshop, Masking and Manipulating Vulnerabilities, at Emory Law School. To summarize, McCluskey asked whether it is “problematic to analyze class as a category of inequality without directly engaging questions of labor rights?”

The genesis of that conversation at Emory was my speculation regarding the reasons for resistance to class analysis regarding whites and, by extension, resistance to the vulnerability paradigm. Like my other recent work on class, my comments at Emory focused on class mobility and did not engage issues of collective mobilization. I thus believe the clear answer to McCluskey’s question is “no.” Class mobility (think class ascension, although the sad trend these days is downward mobility) and class mobilization (as through unionizing and labor rights) seem to me different paths to empowerment of the working class and poor. I see these as able to reside comfortably, side-by-side, on parallel tracks. Indeed, now that McCluskey (echoing others at the Emory workshop) has voiced this issue, I find myself surprised that we do not see more law professors writing about class (im)mobility in a way that separates the issue from racism. That is, I am concerned that socially conscious progressives see challenges to upward mobility as stemming primarily, even solely, from bias against minorities. If this is the case, we are failing to see that whites, too, are increasingly victims of the inequality gap and its attendant barriers to upward class migration.

We socially conscious progressives are attuned to the need to achieve higher educational attainment for racial and ethnic minorities. We understand the need to facilitate their class ascension, to integrate more of them into the professional/managerial class, to bring them to the big table of law- and policy-making, in part so that we can benefit from what they know from personal experience. Affirmative action programs have long been aimed at this outcome—and rightfully so. We don’t just talk about unionizing minority populations, which presumes that they will stay working class, albeit in a materially more comfortable way. We talk about diversifying the pipeline into the upper middle class, a/k/a the professional/managerial class. We grieve the fate of minority children who could have become our political and business leaders—if only they had enjoyed something approaching equal opportunity.

Why, then, do we pay so little attention to class mobility among poor and working class whites? Why would we limit ourselves to working for their mobilization—as in unions—rather than their upward mobility? Perhaps we have taken for granted white folks’ ability to transcend class boundaries because whites are not the victims of racism. To quote Joe Bageant’s Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War, we’ve been snookered by the “myth of the power of white skin.” That is, we may buy into the “unspoken belief that if a white person does not succeed, his or her lack of success can be due only to laziness.” We recognize racism as among the many factors that impede class mobility for racial minorities, but we don’t credit the structural barriers—or cultural bias against poor whites (see here and here)—when assessing the prospects of working class whites. Yet many poor and working class whites face the same sorts of structural and cultural obstacles that burden minorities: crummy schools, inadequate health care, a dearth of educated role models in their communities, and low expectations.

Yes, tragically, racism is alive and well in this country. But minority status is not the only force that holds back working class young people who have the sheer native ability and ambition to get a college degree—or even go well beyond it. Socially conscious progressives are smart enough to know this, but I see very few acknowledging it. Which brings us to the State, hardly an innocent bystander of the “class war” to which so many insist on turning a blind eye. To pick up Martha McCluskey’s metaphor, of course the different classes are not just layers in a cake with as much do with one another as with the cake pan (a/k/a the State). No, the inferior education, health care and other dwindling supports to which the working class have access directly implicate the State and its grossly uneven distribution of resources. Relying on local funding (as opposed to state and federal funding) of myriad services is just one component of this. As President Obama recognized in his 2010 State of the Union address, “the success of our children cannot depend more on where they live than on their potential.” Yet sadly it often does. Read more here and here.

I admit that I’m interested in class (im)mobility in part because I’m a “class migrant,” one “born and raised working class, who join the upper-middle class through access to ... education” (quoting the definition from Joan Williams’ recent book). But the struggle for class ascension isn’t only supported by anecdote. Data indicate that upward mobility for the working class is declining—at least as measured by higher education attainment. In 1970, 61% of college students were the children of parents whose highest education level was a high school diploma or less—that is, they were “first-generation college.” By 1990, that figure had fallen to 41%, and in 2000, only 22% of those who attended college were the first generation in their family to do so. Even taking into account the role played by the rising percentage of people (parents) with college degrees over those three decades (though it remains less than 30%), the data suggest that the working class kid who gets to (let alone through!) college is increasingly rare. Structural impediments bear a significant part of the blame. Most obviously and recently, these include dramatically higher tuition for tertiary education, even at state colleges and universities.

In any event, I don’t see how this focus on class (im)mobility—which has both material and cultural aspects (as I shall discuss further in a future post)—precludes attention to organized labor. I’m all for unionizing those who will remain in the working class, and I would hope that nothing I say be used to naturalize constraints on workers’ power to act collectively. However much we increase mobility for some, we will always have workers with us, but they need not be poor. Clearly, collective action is necessary to improve their material circumstances.

But focusing only on organizing the working class is arguably an insult to the extent that it objectifies and distances “them” from “us,” compartmentalizing them below us in the class hierarchy. To focus exclusively on unionizing the working class overlooks the potential and desire of some to transcend class boundaries (as through higher education) and join the upper middle class.

Surely we want white class migrants among our ranks—just as we want class migrants from minority groups—sitting at the “big table” at which social progressive brainstorm problems, set priorities, and formulate solutions. I am convinced that they (we) could teach us (you) a few things. Class migrants can remind those in power what generations of them have known: like the racial privilege enjoyed by those of us who are white, our class privilege causes us to take too much for granted—and it tempts us to take too much individual credit for our own professional and material success.

Cross-posted to ClassCrits, SALTLaw.blog, and UC Davis Faculty Blog.

My Rural Travelogue (Part XIII): Australia's Great Ocean Road

I try to keep up with this series, "My Rural Travelogue," which I started several years ago as a forum for writing about rural places I visit. Doing so, however, seems to take a lot of time, so I often fall behind. Indeed, my last post in the series was last July, a full two months after the trip to rural Arkansas that was the topic of the post. So after I traveled Australia's Great Ocean Road last November to give a key note address at the Rural and Regional Law and Justice Conference sponsored by Deakin University, I wrote about the conference here, but never got around to describing my rural journey to and from Warrnambool, the conference site in western Victoria.

Now, however, I have the perfect excuse to do this short post about that trip because today's New York Times travel feature is about the Great Ocean Road, which I traversed en route to the Warrnambool conference. Since travel writer Ethan Todras-Whitehill has provided the basics about this bucket list-type journey, I can simply add a few photos and additional reminiscences. Here's how Todras-Whitehill describes the route he took, which spans 600 miles between the nation's two closest cities, Adelaide and Melbourne. For the record, Todras-Whitehill points out, that's the same distance as between Washington, DC, and Boston:

The Great Ocean Road itself is merely a small portion of the coast, the 151 miles between Torquay and Warrnambool built between 1919 and 1932 by soldiers who had returned from World War I, and dedicated to those who did not make it back. But it has an older name, too: the Shipwreck Coast.

Here's how Todras-Whitehill describes Warrnambool's highlight, which pays homage to that Shipwreck Coast and the nation's maritime history:

Flagstaff Hill [Maritime Village] has a replica village from the 1870s that, during the summer tourist season, includes volunteers in period costumes à la Colonial Williamsburg.

The professional photos accompanying Todras-Whitehill's story are stunning, including images of the dramatic limestone coast. Our journey from Port Fairy onto Adelaide was via the quicker inland route and thus featured more agricultural scenes, like the farmstead shown at the top of the page. Indeed, the area just inland from Warrnambool is also highly agricultural. I noticed several veterinarian clinics in sparsely populated locales as we approached this small city. Plus, a visit to the posh food halls of Melbourne's Queen Victoria market had apprised us of Warrnambool butter's status as a premium product.

So, my photos are mostly related to the rural livelihoods in these parts of Victoria and South Australia, less the type you find in a coffee table photo book. At top right, a photo of my son and me in Lorne, along the Great Ocean Road (a windy, rainy, cool day in November); middle left, an Elders Office in Kingston, S.A.--Elders being a provider of "rural services," e.g., real estate, financial services, commodity pricing, throughout Australia; lower right, a road sign suggesting the great distances between Melbourne and Adelaide; and bottom, a school bus stop on the Great Ocean Road (a/k/a the B 100) that runs just yards from Loch Ard Gorge (pictured in the lead photo for the NYT travel story and on wikipedia). Yes, people live and go to school, too, along this dramatic coast. The nearest town to Loch Ard Gorge is Port Campbell, which bills itself as a surfer's paradise (indeed, the eastern part of the Great Ocean Road near Torquay lies in the local government unit of Surf Coast Shire--seriously). Not sure, though, if Port Campbell is large enough to have a school, but Peterborough a bit farther down the road might.

Unfair, and a little off balance?

While this story may be several weeks old, it is one that I find – in light of the recent debate about budget cuts – both relevant and an interesting query. Are there really places where NPR is the only news source?

Specifically, the article in question referred to NPR’s Michele Norris’ statement that “if public broadcasting went away, there are people in small towns…that would not have access to news.” The article goes on to state that NPR is the only available broadcast source. This is based on a statistic that counts 12 broadcasters within a 50–mile radius, and that nine of these stations are in Alaska, two in West Virginia, and one in Texas. While additional limiting factors exist, the fact remains that in some rural areas – those without access to print newspapers and those without computers or dial up access – perhaps NPR really is the only broadcast source.

Of course, this then begs the question: do those in rural areas choose to listen to NPR? If not, are we as a society putting them at a worse position in understanding the issues that affect them and the world around them? And then finally, does this further create a class divide?

One clear connection to these questions is rural access to broadband internet service. The initial debate about funding rural access to broadband generated some controversy. First, FCC Chairman Katz derided President Obama’s $7.2 billion to expand the service to rural areas. Furthermore, the New York Times argued that such funding was a “cyber bridge to nowhere.” 

The  problem with such language, and such an attitude towards rural access to news, is that it perpetuates the stereotype that (1) rural individuals do not matter; (2) that rural areas have no need for news; and (3) that their access to knowledge does not impact our society as a whole. All three assumptions are false, especially when considering that rural areas encompass around 90% of the country.

Television news is also a mechanism for rural areas to garner their news, and the statistics in this case fair much better. Today, 98.9% of Americans have a television, and at least get one station – whether that station provides them with accurate news is a whole other question.

Perhaps ultimately, NPR may not be the only way for rural communities to have access to broadcast news – but if we consider it in this way – it becomes all the more pressing that they have some access at all. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to install post offices and post roads, where one of the rationales was to ensure that news travelled between the different colonies and states when there was no access to television, internet, or radio and everything was rural. Furthermore, the Communications Act of 1934 included a provision to allow for radio and telephone services into rural communities. If we consider the intent of our Founders and the intent of Congress in the past, denying these services would only be a disservice to our history.

Wrestling with rural identity

One of the most fundamental elements of the academic discussion on “ruralism” includes the struggle to define “rural,” and the stereotyping of the rural that goes along with the its various definitions. In Professor Pruitt’s Gender, Geography and Rural Justice, she compares some of the standard definitions of the rural (some are by population, others are by geographic region or industry), yet notes that rurality is rarely “the sole dimension of identification,” and should be defined broadly.

However, city dwellers may think defining the rural is an easier feat from their “outsider perspective.” If you ask urbanites what they think about when imagining the rural, a common response might be to link the rural with farming and agriculture. While much of rural America does thrive on the agricultural industry, farming is not always a complete picture of the rural. Many rural towns are heavily dependent on extraction or other industries, and farming may seem like a world away. Perhaps the “rural farmer” is the more prominent image to come to mind (rather than “the miner” or “the driller”) because it is the traditional definition. Or, perhaps the farmer model fits more easily within the stereotype of the rural idyll, conjuring an image of purity and tranquility.

Stephanie Larsen, the Assistant Director for the Center for Rural Affairs in northeastern Nebraska, would oppose this automatic linkage of the rural with farming. Although she identifies as a “rural person” who has recently taken up farming as a hobby, she wrestles with whether she is, in fact, a farmer. In her recent article for Grist Magazine “I’m Coming Out—As a Farmer," Stephanie grapples with what exactly being a “legitimate” farmer depends on: Is it the percentage of your income that comes from working the land? Is it the number of hours you devote to the land? Is it how much you know about gardening and livestock?

It’s fascinating to look at some of the reader comments on Larsen's article. One reader says it depends on whether Larsen conducts herself as a business, taking stock of the market prices for products and responding accordingly. Another reader says it simply depends on her state of mind—does she intend to be a farmer? Like the definition of “rural,” it seems “farmer” is also a broader term than one might think.

Even though scholars tend to agree that the meaning of “rural” is multi-dimensional, it appears that narrowing the definition to account for particular characteristics of the rural, such as the occupational identity of “farmer” and the like, may not be sufficient. While a singular definition of “rural” might never be possible, it does seem important to strive for at least a range of widely-recognized meanings. For one thing, an accurate portrayal of the rural might make it easier for Larsen to identify her own role in her community. Additionally, and importantly, defining the rural accurately could have various social implications. By raising awareness of the realities of the rural, an accurate definition could increase social visibility of rural areas, and perhaps even contribute to a more equitable distribution of resources.

Rural trappings and urban trends

Non-functioning old cars left in front yards has come up multiple times in our discussions of the rural this semester. A few weeks ago I thought about those abandoned old vehicles when I visited Flora Grubb Gardens, a hipstery, landscape design center in San Francisco. Located off of a rather busy street, Flora Grubb is a green haven amidst the concrete of the city. The old warehouse is overflowing with air plants and ferns, mosses and succulents, not to mention rustic outdoor furniture and vertical gardens. The center (it is more of a center than a store) is also complete with a Ritual Coffee shop and high-end yard furniture. While I can't afford anything there, I enjoy the place. However, the thing that really caught my eye when I visited, was an old truck in the yard that had been transformed into a porch, complete with steps leading into the bed, where a table and chairs invited guests to read the paper and sip their coffee. I immediately thought of Law and Rural Livelihood and began to contemplate the ways that rural trappings have become adopted as urban trends.

Growing up in a family of garage-sale addicts and junk-yard junkies, I am pretty accustomed to buying used, recycling, and refurbishing. For my father, it has become an art-form (collecting) and my parents' house is almost entirely furnished and decorated with other people's old things that have been "reinvented" to some degree. As I have grown older, I have adopted his habits and embraced the art of the yard sale. Over the last few years, in my pursuits of hidden treasure, I have noticed the increased number of people at Urban Ore and used furniture shops popping up in Bay Area neighborhoods. This is not to say that people haven't been buying used and collecting things for decades, but my sense is that it's growing in popularity. I recently walked into Zonal, a furniture store in Hayes Valley, with piles of used furniture, many with weathered wood and chipped paint. I asked the owner where he got his stock and he replied that he drives a van across the country collecting pieces, most of which come from the middle of the country. By the looks of his collection, I wonder how much of it was acquired in small rural towns, likely for a small fraction of the price he was selling them for in the City.

A good friend of mine recently became engaged and is in full wedding-planing mode. Of course, wedding venues are the hot topic of discussion, and in our conversations about potential sites for the nuptials, we waded into the subject of the cost of sites. I recommended that she just find a barn and get married there, to which she responded: "Barns are expensive. Everyone is getting married in barns these day!" I guess I wasn't so surprised, but it triggered a google search and sure enough, websites on barn weddings, even a one-stop barn locater site, with barns in various states. One customer bride-to-be, commented that getting married in a barn "symbolizes a sense of peace and oneness with the land that harmonizes well with the idea of a wedding." While this might be true, and clearly she is entitled to her thoughts, it gets me thinking about the way we view the rural and symbols that we associate with the rural. As a Denver Post article put it, "popular culture can't seem to get enough of rural Americana." And as Patrick Gottsch, founder of Rural Media Group, exclaimed, "It's cool to be rural now."

The Urban farming movement is growing, but it is not without its controversy. While it is helping some urban residents have more control over their food, is it also harming traditional farmers in rural areas of the country? While I view the practice as both a sign of respect for farming communities and the farming lifestyle, I also see that in many ways it is a privilege for for only certain urban communities. Then, as we all know, there are the clothing and food trends that can arguably be traced to a fascination of rural culture (and which I take part in as well, I must admit).

My question is: Are we romanticizing the rural? Are we using the stereotypes and trappings as we wish, without recognizing the issues facing rural communities in this country?

Democratist manifesto

Representative Paul Ryan's GOP budget proposal for 2012, titled "The Path to Prosperity," would impose spending cuts unprecedented in size. The plan is unlikely to be enacted wholesale because the Democrats still control the Senate, but it definitely sets a tone and a starting point for future negotiations. Admittedly, the nation's debt crisis is severe and reform is necessary, but the breadth of the proposed cuts are staggering. Five trillion dollars over the next decade would be slashed from the budget, much of it from Medicare and Medicaid in spite of the fact that in 2006 the U.S. ranked 39th in the world for infant mortality, 43rd for adult female mortality, 42nd for adult male mortality, and 36th for life expectancy. (The U.S. also ranked first in healthcare spending per capita according to the previously linked article, so we clearly have some efficiency issues. That is, prices may be too high, and spending per capita might be skewed upward by very high health care expenditures for the richest Americans, etc. Nevertheless, I don't think cutting spending for the poorest and most vulnerable of our citizens is going to achieve better results per healthcare dollar spent.)

Unfortunately, those rankings are probably going to get worse if funding for Medicare and Medicaid are cut significantly. And if this is where Republicans are starting from, on top of vowing to repeal "Obamacare," healthcare quality certainly isn't going to improve, no matter how much the Democrats chip away at the GOP plan. So we'll have to be content with the status quo, which, for example, features an infant mortality rate for non-whites in Mississippi of over 18 per 1,000 live births- about the same as Libya and Thailand. (The Kaiser Family Foundation data, which is from 2004-06, lists an even higher Mississippi infant mortality rate for blacks and Hispanics, of over 21 per 1000 live births.)

By GDP, the United States is far and away the world's richest country, almost three times as wealthy as second-ranked China and nearly as rich as the entire European Union (The U.S. ranked sixth in GDP per capita, using the IMF data). But we are also one of the most unequal countries in terms of income and wealth distribution, with a Gini coefficient ranking us among the most unequal of all developed countries (sort this linked chart by "UN Gini" in order to see the ranking). The U.S is the only industrialized nation without some form of universal health coverage for its citizens, which makes the country even more unequal: health is a good- one that many poor people can't afford, but wealthy people can. So much for the social contract.

Could we do something to reverse this slide into a Dickensian dystopia assuming enough of us wanted to? I'm not sure. I'm not convinced that significant reform is actually just a matter of political will. Author and activist Noam Chomsky argues in his book "Understanding Power" (at page 62 if you have access to the book), that real power does not lie in the political system, it lies in the private economy. Chomsky contends that even if a vast majority of the populace elected a government that enacted sweeping reforms to benefit the populace at the expense of the very rich, the result would be a massive outflow of investment and the economy would grind to a halt- a process known as "capital flight" or "capital strike."

Capital flight might sound far-fetched, but there are many examples of its occurence, even in very developed countries like the United Kingdom. When Brazil elected left-leaning former union leader "Lula" da Silva as president in 2002, "fear of socialism spurred a flight of capital, which drove down the exchange rate and... Brazilian bonds found no buyers, credit ratings plunged, and it seemed the country might default on its huge foreign debt." It is worth noting that, according to the same article, Lula did not turn out to be quite the socialist he was made out to be; whether that was good or bad for the poor people of Brazil is probably an open question, worthy of its own blog post or even research paper. The point is simply that capital flight can be a very strong deterrent to government action that inflicts too much pain on businesses and the wealthy.

Chomsky hypothesizes (although it seems so apparent that it might as well be an observation) that if one of the states were to substantially increase business taxes, even if most of the population supported it, business would run a public relations campaign, saying truthfully, that if you soak the rich, capital will flow elsewhere and you're not going to have any jobs. The rich have to be happy first, and then the rest of us might get something.

That very P.R. campaign mentioned in Chomsky's hypothetical is currently being waged full force against President Obama to eliminate even the possibility of his support for populist policies. The president is no socialist radical reformer by any means. Obama has lowered taxes, not raised them, in spite of what people believe. Obama's healthcare reforms, vilified as as a socialist nightmare, are actually pretty weak. He left Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner in their positions at the Federal Reserve even though they helped precipitate the recent financial crisis by allowing investment banks and mortgage brokers to operate virtually unregulated. (Please see the movie "Inside Job" if you have time, it's a really compelling explanation of the financial crisis.) Obama has also remained silent while Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor he hired to put together the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau up and running, was demonized by Republicans on Capitol Hill. Obama is not even going to push for tighter regulation of the big banks in spite of the havoc they have wreaked, much less turn the country into a socialist state, or create death panels, or repeal the Second Amendment, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

But that's not the description of Obama that you hear. The rhetoric from the right, including Republican elected officials and candidates, is as extreme as it gets. Aside from presidential "candidate" Donald Trump's birther claims (apparently he has hired investigators in Hawaii), Rep. Michelle Bachmann stated that "we have seen President Obama usher in socialism under his watch for the last two years," and "Obamacare is the crown jewel of socialism." Business lobbyists, in spite of huge gains in profits, spread fear that Obama is creating an "anti-business" climate (a pro-business climate is just code for lower taxes). Fox News, in the run-up to the 2008 election, linked Obama to socialism at least 35 times according to the website Media Matters. And here's some stuff Glenn Beck said. It's no wonder that more than half of likely voters think that the word 'socialist' describes Obama accurately. The P.R. scare campaign is definitely on, and whether they make it explicit or not, the plutocrats, through their media and Washington mouthpieces, are sending a message: Do not f**k with us.

Our options for fighting back may be limited. We can support the less reactionary of the two business parties, a.k.a. the Democrats, and hope to pass reforms that may not be revolutionary, but at least provide more support for our tired, our poor, and our huddled masses than they currently receive. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democrats enacted the New Deal reforms, for example, which significantly improved circumstances for the poor and unemployed of the time in spite of the fact that it angered some powerful people so much that they tried, but thankfully failed, to overthrow FDR in a coup d'etat. The New Deal illustrates that successes within our form of government are certainly achievable. And the Europeans have enacted a wide range of populist social policies within capitalist frameworks, although government plays a more dominant role in the control of capital in Europe than in America.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure another New Deal is possible here today. In the 1930's, capital could not flow as freely as it does now in deregulated financial markets, so the threat of capital flight is a very potent weapon. The rich don't need to plot coups anymore either- the sophistication and scope of the modern media facilitate unrelenting attacks on any politician who dares lean too far to the left. Anti-communism is the national religion, and the political consequences of failing to kneel before the altar are severe. So, even if reform is possible, it will always be limited to just how benevolent the possessors of economic power choose to be.

But maybe one day (although I don't know how), if we gain popular control of what is produced in this country, with workers and communities in control of industry, and extend the democratic system to economic power- then we would have true democracy. We could enact policies that put the people first,without being effectively vetoed by capital strike. Ironically, worker control of industry- what we call communism- is not antithetical to democracy, but essential to it. Viva la Revolucion.

Whose baby is it anyway? On rural Indian women and surrogacy arrangements

Medical tourism is the new upper-class endeavor du jour. There is even a blog detailing medical tourism, and it boldly asserts the following:

India has become the top international surrogacy destination for couples and even single men and women who have not been able to have children through natural means. The success of the procedure in India, is greatly attributed to the cutting edge technology adopted by the fertility clinics in India, highly qualified fertility specialists, social acceptance of surrogacy, and low cost of surrogacy, all leading to India’s high success rate in gestational surrogacy.

Well, that's good to know, but what hides behind the shining surface of this phenomenon? Read this article in Marie Claire for a good primer on the issues.

Photo Credit: Stephanie Sinclair, Marie Claire

As Professor Seema M. Mohapatra explained at the 2011 Feminist Legal Theory Conference at the University of Baltimore School of Law's Center on Applied Feminism, there are several dangers in the phenomenon of international gestational surrogacy. We know that surrogacy is a complicated medical procedure, which is is highly dangerous for the surrogate. But Prof. Mohapatra was talking about the dangers of women's subjugation, oppression, and objectification that is attendant to international surrogacy. Due Indian public mores, the women who participate in the surrogacy business there are segregated in closed facilities for the duration of their pregnancies, monitoried closely, receiving only the nutrition provided by the center. Women who participate in surrogacy programs must be mothers (they must have had at least one live birth) --- and this means that the surrogate mothers are removed from their families for over 9 months.

Even more problematically, these women receive payments that allows them to buy a  house and provide for the education for their children in exchange of their services --- an amount so large it would easily cloud any reasonable person's judgment.  Prof. Mohapatra argues that the disparities in global living standards allow for the oppression of poor women in the Global South, because getting $2000 for a woman who is making $20 a month is a coercive amount of money. That is an offer that cannot be refused.

As Prof. Mohapatra states:

[T]hose who serve as surrogates are often those in the poorest, least educated, and lowest classes of Indian society.

Needless to say, rural women of India are the primary participants of this scheme, and thus, the uneven economic development and spatial inequality hits rural Indian women once more. Not only do they suffer from lower per-capita income, higher rates of illiteracy, more distance from health services, than their urban counterparts, but their bodies are increasingly viewed as merely a vessel for a white woman's future child. To add insult to injury, the surrogacy providers in India charge a premium for having a "Caucasian" egg fertilized and implanted in the Indian women's womb -- as if Indian women were not "Caucasian" already.  This systematic devaluation of women's bodies and even their ova is incensing to this feminist blogger.

The abstract of Prof. Mohapatra's paper can be accessed by clicking here.

Are poor rural whites a cultural minority?

In examining the cultural backdrop of persistent poverty counties (re: PPC Blog), it became evident that persistent poverty in rural areas is often heavily associated with the oppression of a minority group within that area. Usually this oppression results from the racial stratification of power but two of the regions overwhelmingly affected by rural persistent poverty are populated primarily by white households; Appalachia and parts of the upper highlands of the south or also known as the lower Ozarks of the Appalachia (Arkansas, Missouri and eastern Oklahoma). The experience of the multi-generational impoverished whites in these two areas repeatedly begs the question of whether rural white poor people can be distinguished from the dominant white majority as their own cultural, or even "racial", demographic.

What else defines whether a group is a racial or cultural minority? Generally, a cultural minority might have a shared history or experience, possibly a shared language or dialect and sometimes a shared locational similarity. Race can be further defined as sharing a common racial or ethnic identity or heritage. It may be hard to distinguish white rural poor people as their own racial minority. White poor rural poor people still share the racial identity and heritage of the white majority and though some historical examples support poor white persons as their own race (as discussed later), it may be more appropriate to consider rural poor whites as their own oppressed cultural, not racial,minority.

Myrtle Reul of Michigan State University brings attention to an array of rural poor minorities of diverse races in her book The Territorial Boundaries of Rural Poverty (1974) including recognizing the struggles of the mobile migrant rural poor populations and forgotten white poor populations outside of Appalachia, like minority religion Amish or Mennonite poor populations. Within politics of power and oppression, racial minorities are restricted from power and access to resources through oppression by the dominant race or class. Acknowledging this pattern, Reul describes that poor rural whites could be considered a minority in and of themselves because the "whites who live in rural poverty..are isolated from full participation in the dominant society."(pg.182)

If lack of access to participation defines majority/minority status, then impoverished rural whites, especially with spatial isolation as a common trait of rurality, could be viewed as a minority group based on their heavily oppressed access to the resources and powers enjoyed by the dominant group.

My home state of Oklahoma is one of the less than half of the states in the country to include persistent poverty counties. Unlike the other PPC regions, Oklahoma lacks a solid cohesive historical experience to easily define what cultural oppressions led to such generational persistent poverty. The persistently poor counties in Oklahoma are mostly in the eastern edge of the state.

Like most of Oklahoma, these areas have been drastically affected by both the forced relocation of Native Americans and the Land Rush that opened up Oklahoma to settlement by what was usually the poorest of poor whites. Alvin Turner, in his historical essay in Alternative Oklahoma:Contrarian Views of the Sooner State (Joyce 2007), describes the complicated histories of Native American oppression specific to the Oklahoma counties in question (pg.156). These stories of genocide and assimilation are similar to the rest of the experiences of tribal persons across Oklahoma, and this racial experience certainly contributes to the persistent poverty of the area. But Native American populations are spread throughout the entire state, and the PPC experience is limited only to the eastern edge of the state.

The counties in question shared a similar southern share cropper history more closely related to neighboring southern states than the rest of Oklahoma as evident from old agricultural maps in The Geography of Poverty by Richard Morrill of the University of Washington (1971,pg.119-138). This agricultural experience could be the cause of the mostly white persistent poverty in this area. As well, these counties are located in one of the parts of Oklahoma that experiences spatial location due to the Ouachita mountain range. Like their isolated Ozarkian and Appalachian peers, these counties experience the deprivation of isolation associated with persistent poverty and are also mostly comprised of white populations.

These counties also share a common history amongst the rural white populations, a history that includes their previous generations being considered white "racial minorities". In an earlier compilation by Joyce titled An Oklahoma I had Never Seen Before (1994) numerous scholars discuss the history of Scotch Irish settlement in Oklahoma, especially the eastern counties (pg.6). One of these contributors, Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz is a UC academic and longtime activist,feminist, and historian. In most of her books, including RedDirt and Outlaw Woman, Ortiz uses her mixed ancestry family as an example of the multiple racial experiences of poor rural Oklahomans. Specifically, she often speaks to the shared cultural experience and oppression, the shared dialect, language and appearance and share identity and history of Scotch Irish poor whites who were allowed to colonize what Native American land was left during the early 1900s. This provides one example of how poor rural whites in the past have been socially viewed as their own "racial" minorities.

Even Oklahomans descended from the white minorities who have since shed their country of origin accents and other "racial" markers over generations, can still experience social isolation or stereotyping as "Okies." "Okies" could be considered a white cultural minority in the least, if not even possibly a racial minority due to the shared identification, relocation and oppression of poor Oklahoma rural white populations during the Dust Bowl.

All of these examples coupled with the overwhelmingly shared experiences of rural white poor people despite the specific location of their experience strongly encourage that the rural poor white experience is one so limiting and unique that it should be differentiated from the experience of the rest of the white majority population.

The racial and cultural experience of persistent poverty

In a report issued by the Economic Research Service branch of the USDA, a persistent poverty county is defined as county in which 20% or more of the population were living in poverty for the last thirty years according to census data. Using this definition, there are currently 386 persistent poverty counties in the US, and 340 of them are in counties that are also codified as being "nonmetro." The report mentions the link between rural poverty and race, as well as noting the lack of PPC(persistent poverty county) saturation in the West, Midwest and Northeast. Emphasizing the number of rural PPCs in the South, for brevity's sake or otherwise, the report fails to recognize the similarities of all the rural PPCs across the country. Despite being more scattered in areas other than the densely packed PPCs in the South, the histories of the rural populations living in such multi-generational poverty share common themes of racial and cultural oppression that grossly affect the economies of entire regions of the country.

The ignorance to the shared cultural oppression of rural PPCS evident in the USDA report reflects a general trend in media and scholarly attention primarily focusing upon urban poverty. A good example of this indifference to rural poverty is this quote from the "Who are the poor?" chapter of the book Persistent Poverty (1991) by Richard Roper of Southern Utah University:

Poverty remains a predominantly urban problem, if for no other reason than the fact that 75% of the general population lives in urban areas (pg.51).

Roper then goes on to briefly describe rural poverty trends and summarizes his only section on the rural poor by blaming rural poverty on economic challenges while mostly avoiding discussing the cultural oppressions of the populations facing such "economic insecurity plagues(pg.53)."
I would challenge that persistent poverty represents the results of the "relative" poverty experienced due to the oppression of generations of the same populations within each rural region; and, that this kind of persistent poverty experience is actually of the utmost concern in poverty eradication efforts because,as the USDA report clarifies, 88% of PPCs are in rural areas. The Rural Sociological Society Task Force on Persistent Rural Poverty differentiates between different states of poverty in the book Persistent Poverty in Rural America (1993).  Poverty is defined as being experienced as both a "relative" and "absolute" state.  (p. 138)          

Absolute poverty is described as a

material deprivation to such an extent that one's physical well being is at risk. Extreme material deprivation leads not only to physical degradation but mental despair...Poverty usually entails the unjust loss of choice in one's culture or functional lifestyle(pg.138).

Relative poverty is then defined as the experience of poverty resulting from the structural experience of social conditions that limit income and livelihood, such as structural economic and racial oppression (i.e., racial minorities earn less than whites). Both kinds of poverty result from and further contribute to the powerlessness of people within the social stratification of power and access to resources. A strong distinction is made that while absolute poverty can be affected by individual circumstantial changes; relative poverty can not be remedied without creating vast changes to the power class structures that control the overall distributions of resources in our society.

The Task Force continues to develop an image of the complicated nature of rural persistent poverty through determining that beyond absolute and relative, poverty also represents deprivations other than the deprivation of income and earning capacity traditionally associated with definitions of poverty(pg.174). The experience of deprivation in poverty is multidimensional and includes the deprivation of safety, increased cultural oppression and increased denial of opportunity, among other challenges faced by rural PPC populations. The Task Force emphasizes that racial oppression magnifies and is usually linked to the deprivations of persistent poverty.
Calvin Beale, one of the researchers for the USDA's Economic Research Service, articulates in his contribution to the book Poverty and Race in America (2006) that in most counties where the incidence of poverty is above 20%, the majority of those 20% poor are of minority races(pg.72). If that if that is not the case then, it is the high incidence of poverty amongst the minorities within the dominant population that pushes the percentiles beyond 20% for each county (pg.72). Beale then goes on to describe the racial demographics of traditionally poorest regions of the country (pg.72-74). The introduction to the study Welfare Reform in Persistent Rural Poverty (Pickering 2006) further develops the story behind the accumulations of red counties on the USDA PPC map (pg.1-2).

The southern PPCs result from the history of slavery and racial oppression of African American populations. PPCs in the west, southwest and parts of the plains states include Native American populations experiencing generations of relative poverty, cultural and physical genocide and the experience of the deprivation of life resulting from the reservation system. The populations living in persistent poverty in Texas are mostly comprised of Latino communities oppressed by the economics and inequalities of border-towns. The remaining heavy cluster of PPCs is found in Appalachia where communities have also been generation-ally oppressed by the dominant powers. In Appalachia however, the poor persons are more often white communities struggling against the results of the extraction industry and mining towns.
Evident in the shared history of oppression amongst the majority of all PPCs remains a need to address the structural element of relative poverty. Relative poverty keeps these populations limited and powerless even if their absolute poverty can be mitigated in the short term. Can absolute poverty amongst such multi-generational oppressed groups even be eliminated at all without first acknowledging the systematic abuses that have created these pervasive experiences of relative poverty amongst rural minority groups? And then, what are the next steps in creating the structural changes necessary to start eradicating the relative persistent poverty of rural minority groups?

Rural feminist grassroots organizations, and CEDAW as an expressive document

Beloved, by Toni Morrison

On March 30, 2011, Professor Pruitt and I presented our upcoming paper at a symposium entitled Applying Feminism Globally, organized by the University of Baltimore School of Law's Center on Applied Feminism. Nobel Prize Winner Toni Morrison delivered the keynote address. Many of Toni Morrison's writings explored the situation of rural African American women, notably my favorite, Beloved.

Our paper and presentation discusses the special "disability" of rural places and especially the hardships that rural women endure in addition to their gender "handicap." But our paper intends to write on a rather positive note, uncovering how the much-maligned Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) emboldened feminist grassroots organization in four countries: Australia, Canada, China, and India.

We argue that CEDAW is not only a source of law, but also an expressive document that has inspired feminist activism around the world and helped raise women’s legal consciousness. CEDAW was the first U.N. treaty that specifically considered the rural-urban axis in its catalogue of human rights. CEDAW’s Article 14 recognizes rural women as a particularly disadvantaged group in need of additional guarantees of particular rights. Article 14 stipulates that rural women — like their urban counterparts — should enjoy the panoply of CEDAW rights: education, health care, and an array of civil and political rights. But Article 14 also enumerates for rural women rights to agriculture and development more generally. It includes, for example, the right for women to organize self-help groups and cooperatives, a right not enumerated elsewhere in relation to all women. Finally, Article 14 specifies for rural women a wider range of socioeconomic rights than is recognized elsewhere in CEDAW. These include rights to various types of infrastructure, including water, sanitation, electricity, transport and housing.

In our paper we examine the four Member States’ responses to their Article 14 commitments to empowering rural women, specifically regarding how Member States have encouraged and enabled self-organization by women. Member States’ periodic reports to the Division for the Advancement of Women indicate that their governments benefit from — and, indeed, seek to achieve rural women’s empowerment through — women’s grassroots activism, including via the local self-help groups and cooperatives envisioned by Article 14. We then consider several specific local women’s organizations, looking at how they benefit from CEDAW’s mandate (however weak a mandate it is) to encourage women’s self-organization. We thus begin to construct a portrait of the symbiotic relationship between top-down lawmaking and bottom-up activism to empower women. In short, we focus on CEDAW’s role not as an enforceable human rights treaty, but as an expressive document that has facilitated grassroots feminist organizing.

Farmer v. farm workers

Until my mid-teens, I thought “farmer” and “farm worker” were one and the same: I believed these two parties represented the same interests. Then, one year, when my hometown grew brown with drought, I started hearing rumblings in the community about farmers and fish. Sifting through the adult conversations around our local café I learned that the farms north of us, near Tule Lake and Yreka, and south of us in the Central Valley, called for more water from the dams, creeks, and rivers. On the other side of the equation; my home town called for preservation of the streams that kept tourists and fishermen coming back year after year. Through the snatches of derisive conversation I began to piece together impressions of farmers as large landholders who frequently exploited cheep immigrant labor at the expense of their right to a living wage. Like the reality of farmer/farm worker relations, the town opinions were by no means monolithic; however it became obvious that freeway signs reading “Farmers Feed America” were political tools that I should consider before carelessly agreeing with their seemingly innocuous stance.

Perhaps unsurprising to most of us, farmer interests frequently clash with a number of other group interests including agricultural employees. It seems America has sided with the farmers at the expense of the farm workers. Today only 1% of America calls themselves farmers, yet protections for these livelihoods are some of the strongest in the nation. The US Farm Bill, passed every 5 to 7 years, provides for subsidy payments to these landowners that between 1995 and 2009 amounted to $246.7 billion. Farm workers, on the other hand, receive little protection from the law. They have experienced historical animosity in the political arena and are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act, which protects certain employee rights, including the right to unionize. National legislation also neglects to provide farm employees with a minimum wage, leaving this area to the sole discretion of the state. Today, five states have yet to enact minimum wage standards for these workers. Other states, like Kansas, with a minimum wage of $2.65/hour, abysmally fail to protect worker rights.

Despite the structural disadvantages faced by agricultural employees, they continue to mount efforts to further their rights. Californians are familiar with Cezar Chavez’ work to establish the first agricultural employee union, The United Farm Workers of America, which has successfully brokered union contracts with industry leaders across the United States. Recently, a Florida based group, the Coalition for Imokalee Workers (CIW) won a long battle covered by the New York Times. Primarily composed of Hispanic, Mayan, and Haitian workers, CIW organizes employees in a unique strategy to raise tomato farm worker wages. The group first targeted large tomato purchasers like Burger King and McDonalds. They requested these companies agree to pay one cent more per pound to the producers so that farmers could pass those earnings on to their workers. When these companies caved to the grass root campaigns, the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange prohibited farmers from distributing the extra money to their workers. This April, CIW reached an agreement with the trade association that allowed distributions of the increased earnings to workers as well as minimum labor standards. Even with the successes of United Farm Workers of America and CIW it is abundantly clear that farm employees continue to stand in extreme disadvantage in juxtaposition to their employers whose interests are served in national legislation.