Michaela's blog

         I started this class thinking silence was a finite task, one that I would struggle to “complete”, as if that would be even possible. I moved from shallowly thinking it was all about pulling myself out of the noise of modern technology to frustration with the rhetoric of silence as a political statement. Now I’m working more and more toward a knowledge that silence is with me daily, in those ways that I have been wary of, like taking time to be completely silent, but also in what I refrain from saying when I am speaking. Specifically, I have found myself thinking about and responding to Hummingbird’s paper on self-silencing, and our class discussions about who may presume to speak for someone else. Do they have to be of the same background racially? Do their genders (and their perceptions of what that means for their daily life) need to match up? Do they have to be from the same socio-economic class to speak to the privilege or lack thereof that accompanies varied levels of wealth? Can I, as only barely culturally Jewish, even speak to that side of myself as influencing my life? I don’t presume that there will ever be a definitive answer to any of these (although there are definite opinions that I have read and heard expressed, both in class and in readings). I do hope, though, to create a greater understanding of silence as ever-present, especially in my exploration of self-silencing personally in the context of speaking for someone else, as their story may relate to others or me.

After our discussion in class last week about what a female offender looks like, and our reading of "The Real Cost of Prison Project" graphic strip, I see many of the intersections between what we wrote on the board, like "overpolicing" and the overcriminalization of drugs, leading so many of the women pictured in the graphic to prison and all the other consequences that came with their arrest (losing children, not being able to get a job, etc). Reading Alexander's book, however, has gotten me really upset about how hard people fought to criminalize drugs, especially in the 1980s, especially in the war on crack cocaine (used largely by African Americans), and how that vendetta is still so prevalent in our public consciousness today that drug rehabilitation is hard to come by, when offenders are shipped off to prison instead. 

Reading (the DEA officer) Stutman's quote from Alexander's book, on page 52, about how he had to lobby to make drugs an issue that Washington (as a symbol for the government as a whole) would care about and work to combat. I was kind of appalled by the idea of the media lapping at the DEA's story, since "crack was the hottest combat reporting story to come along since the Vietnam War". Making a great, sensationalized story for the masses is not reason enough to create harsh laws and punishment that will impact offenders, too many of whom like the women from "The Real Cost of Prison Project", will be hurt in such a negative and unforgiving way. 

One thing that really stuck out for me in the Silva article was the mention of the scale of intelligence on which prisoners were placed to determine whether their IQs merited effort on the part of the prison system to educate them. These labels, ranging from "above average" to "imbecile", are not only offensive in the ability-minded conscience of today, but also in the idea that there is no hope for nearly half of all prisoners to ever learn something useful. These standardized tests, as we have discussed in class, are in no way a feasible method for extracting useful data about intelligence, and, so far as I know, there is no evidence that they would have been executed under fair conditions to prisoners. It seems that these scores and hurtful labels are an excuse for us to allow prisoners to fall between the cracks without education in incarceration facilities--if they were never bright enough to be educated anyway, we don't have to worry when our rudimentary attempts to educate them are unsuccessful, or don't land released prisoners a job (likely related to unwillingness to hire former prisoners no matter their level of "rehabilitation").

Copied from an email that I sent to Barb this morning about my avatar:

With regards to my avatar: (http://arrestedmotion.com/2011/11/releases-joe-sorren-x-ingrid-michaelson-human-again-album-cover-and-print/) 
I really like this image--it is from the album cover of a recent album by Ingrid Michaelson, one of my favorite artists, so I feel connected to it in that way. Not only that, but I feel connected to the girl in the picture--she is small in comparison to her surroundings, almost swallowed up by them, looking at them and trying to understand, trying to connect with something. In my mind, these surroundings are water, and the girl in the image is merely dipping her toes in, although it is all around her. I often feel this way about academia, about issues of social justice--I have a lot of curiosity and hunger to understand everything around me, and the comments and feelings and experiences of others, but I've only just scratched the surface. I think it's important to keep this sense of not knowing, especially in a class like this where there is so much that is subjective, and in the rest of my life, because what has more ambiguity and such multitude of possible choices than that?

I really enjoyed our class today--getting to discuss these different terms, on our own terms, is something that I think is incredibly important, especially in a class with as much subjectivity and nuance as our own. I really enjoyed hearing from other students about their experiences that intersected with these topics from Pratt's and Cook-Sather's essay. It's an opportunity to hear and cherish the so-called "student voice" in a way that feels very genuine, and to really discuss social issues that I feel are too often otherized and glossed over in many other social science classes. 

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response.” In my family, we use this as a jokey phrase when one family member insults another in a facetious manner. Though it becomes a laughing matter as the insulting party is chastened and the insulted vindicated, choosing not to dignify a truly offensive action with any sort of reply or reaction can be a powerful and provocative use of silence as a statement in and of itself. At my high school, we used our silence as a tool to combat the hatred of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), in a different manner of protest than that used by the Occupy demonstrators in Esty’s picture, who used their voices loudly to make a statement.  Instead, we stood united against the WBC’s attempts to get a rise out of us or tear us apart.

In a time when I feel like I'm always plugged in or listening to something, silence to me looks like taking a moment to unplug the headphones, close my eyes, and stop everything for a moment. Media, music, television, movies--pervasive, addicting, wonderful, distracting?  Cutting myself off from the information flow can be annoying--I don't really like the feeling of having my earbuds in without any sounds filtering through them, and it makes me feel vulnerable to be removed from any sensory input with my eyes shut as well. But the feeling is only temporary, and I can listen to the world without the earbuds, to the (relative) quiet of my hall and the crickets dancing outside my window. Which of these is more silent, I wonder? Does letting in the natural noise of our surroundings, or not listening to anything at all, better represent silence? I guess I'd say that earbuds with no sounds is more silent, but, at least for me, much more uncomfortable than sitting quietly in my room and listening to my fingers tapping the keys, the conversations of my hallmates, and all the "noise" that is produced in nature, that I can never turn off.

I thought both of these readings were insightful looks into how words and how we speak them shape who we are, or who we appear to be. I was struck most by Deavere Smith's and Cliff's words about reflection: "The mirrors of society do not mirror society" (Deavere Smith), and "I had mixed time and incident and space and character and also form to try to mirror the historical turbulence" (Cliff). So often in our media today, the "mirrors of society", or the "uncovering" of facts about well-known figures, are falsified, made to be more sensational and attention-grabbing than they truly are, losing authenticity and connection to the "real life" that they are supposedly showing. Deavere Smith's point about participation of unseen groups in the "mirror of society" rings true in this age of "reality" television marked by privilege and excess, and even in scripted movies, shows and plays, in which minorities and other marginalized groups are relegated to small, teachable roles, of the model or the nadir of how members of such groups should behave. Cliff, on the other hand, is accepting her background as a member of a belittled and oppressed group in order to write a more honest depiction of herself, and in her own, more fully formed voice. Yet at the same time, she acknowledges that "we are a fragmented people". No one voice, no matter how rich or on-point, will be truly able to represent an entire population. I think that this leads nicely back to Deavere Smith's point: everyone has an individual voice, shaped by ethnicity, language, environment, education, and so much more.

I was so happy tonight at the final performances--I had loved reading people's public "essay" #11, and this seemed like another outlet for expressing things that maybe are a little messier or more raw than what we've been assigned to write previously in this semester.

That being said, I definitely felt like my project was outshone by a lot of yours! I loved the creativity of playing Apples to Apples, Jeopardy, 20 Questions, and all the videos--I thought that they were so intriguing and fun, and only wished we'd had more time to explore them.

I still felt that my group's project was worthwhile--we had planned on breaking the group up, discussing what we had written down, etc. But of course, time flew, and so we were not able to follow through on that. But I thought that leaving things up to individual interpretation might be even more in the spirit of the exercise--it whets your appetite, if you're interested, in continuing our class (in both meanings of the word) disscussions, and bringing up taboo or private thoughts even if it's scary. If your thoughts were left in the bag as mine were, I'm sorry that we couldn't get to you--but maybe that can be incentive for you to make yourself heard elsewhere?

In any event, I have loved this class so much, and felt incredibly privileged to get to learn and work with all of you and to call you my friends.

Want to share books with me?

My name is Michaela, and I’m an upper-middle class white girl. (Hi, Michaela).

Well then. Now that we’re all a little more acquainted (or at least you know something a little personal about me), let’s talk.

I’ve been at Bryn Mawr as a student now for approximately 3 ½ months, but I spent many of my formative (read: awkward teenage) years here as the kid sister to a BMC student. My sister graduated class of 2010—another fact about me, another thing that I don’t necessarily like to bring up for fear that it reveals my unfair privilege.

In high school, I tried to empathize with the less well-off kids at my fairly diverse, but still very wealthy, public school. I’m from around DC, so I wanted to identify with the “real people” of DC, not the ones like me who were truly from the affluent Maryland suburbs but told people that they were from the city (the count is up to three on things that I’ve now told you about myself that are a little tough/embarrassing/shameful (?) to share. If you comment, will you tell me at least one?)