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12-5-09 IWR For Muslim Women Does 'Complacency Breed Complicity' Following the Actions of Lubna Hussein?

12-5-09 Cutural Creatives Australians Say Data Logs Used in Climategate Are "Bloody Mess"| Environmental Leaders MUST Speak Out

12-5-09 Smart Sensuality Defending Desiree Rogers; Is American Feminism Reduced To Saying "No" to Botox Tax?

12-5-09 HopeTracker Copenhagen Roundup Dec. 4; President Obama Reschedules Copenhagen to December 18th; With Raw Data Destroyed, UN Is Forced to Call for Probe of UEA Climategate; Anti-West Climate Negotiator Sacked from Copenhagen

12-5-09 GreenBeings PETA's 'Be An Angel for Animals' Campaign Rankles Catholics; 'Killer Petunias' Revealed as Meat-Eating Carnivores

12-4-09 HopeTracker Digging Further Into CO2 Carbon Absorption Models

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12-4-09 Smart Sensuality Will Poor People Die, Feeding A Human Fat Supply to Beauty Doctors?

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Smart Sensuality 12-5-09  Defending Desiree Rogers; Is American Feminism Reduced To Saying "No" to Botox Tax? 12-4-09 RedTracker 12-4-09 Smart Sensuality Will Poor People Die, Feeding A Human Fat Supply to Beauty Doctors? 12-3-09 The Photoshop Body Image Debate Gets Serious ;  Limelight Lover Desiree Rogers Finds Herself in the Hot Seat; Susan Boyle's Smashing World Debut Album  RedTracker For 30 Years Ireland's Police Concealed Known Child Abuse By Catholic Priests12-2-09 RedTracker Male DNA May Decrease Longevity; Tiger Turmoil: Three and Counting 12-1-09 Science Redefines Innate Human Behavior;  The Horrors of Stiletto Seduction with Fat Ankles

Cultural Creatives 12-5-09 Cutural Creatives Australians Say Data Logs Used in Climategate Are "Bloody Mess"| Environmental Leaders MUST Speak Out HopeTracker Copenhagen Roundup Dec. 4; President Obama Reschedules Copenhagen to December 18th; With Raw Data Destroyed, UN Is Forced to Call for Probe of UEA Climategate; Anti-West Climate Negotiator Sacked from Copenhagen 12-4-09 HopeTracker  Digging Further Into CO2 Carbon Absorption Models  ; Foreign Policy Targets 100 Top Global Thinkers 12-2-09 Climatologists Must Defend CO2 Absorption Models Now HopeTracker West Bank Settlement Mayor Arrested, Now Hospitalized 12-1-09 HopeTracker Hopeful Global News About AIDS;  Real or Surreal: With 'Webtribution' Fact and Fiction Are Inseparable 

International Women's Rights 12-5-09 For Muslim Women Does 'Complacency Breed Complicity' Following the Actions of Lubna Hussein?  12-3-09   Iran's Zahra Rahnavard Takes #3 Position in Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers List  ; In Egypt, Large Numbers of Veiled (Scarved) and Niqag-Wearing Women Sexually Harassed on the Streets 12-2-09 Women's Rights Groups Want Long-Term US Afghan Commitment; South Africa Unveils Dramatic New AIDS Policy 12-1-09  Lubna Hussein Speaks in London About Women's Rights 

Les Artistes 12-3-09 ArtTracker Finally: Cate Blanchett & Director Liv Ullman Do Justic e To Blanche DuBois in "Streetcar Named Desire"12-1-09 ArtTracker Old European Culture predates Greece, Rome & Mesopotamia 11-23-09 ArtTracker Pope Benedict Encourages Artists to 'Quest for Beauty' ;  Japan's Anime Industry Feels Competitive Pressure  

Green Beings 12-5-09 PETA's 'Be An Angel for Animals' Campaign Rankles Catholics 12-4-09 GreenTracker Brazil Makes Major Progress on Amazon Deforestation 12-2-09 A Sexual Solo Act Suitable Only for Booby Birds; Foul Weather Kindergarten Kids Embrace Mother Nature

Smarty Pants 12-2-09 GivingTracker Oprah, Clinton & Kristof Promote "The Girl Effect" 11-29-09  Jesus Luz: Candidly Up Close and Personal 11-22-09 Smarty Pants Jacqueline Novogratz's Acumen Fund Means Good Business for Poor People; Maria Conceicao, Emirates Woman of the Year, Had to Borrow a Frock for Her Awards Ceremony  

Anne's Private Eye 12-5-09  Women Looking for Their Sexual Selves 12-1-09 Monotheistic Religion, Wilhelm Reich and Female Sexuality  11-13-09 Voyeurism, Standard Hotel & Italian Women

Anne's Journal 11-26-09 Date Nights, Friendly Fruits and Life in the Garden of Egypt's Blue Lily Eden

11-18-09 Love Potion News Egyptian Mummies Reveal Heart Disease 11-14-09 Love Potions Pine Sol: Soft Porn, Smart Sensuality Aphrodisiac LovePotionNews Passion Fruit, Viagra-Laced Parfait 11-10-09 French Women Trail Americans in Fatness by 40 Years

Dolce Vita Channel 11-24-09  French Pleasures: A Bit of Anne in Paris 11-18-09 DolceTracker Wine Rating Is Highly Personal & Inconsistent  

J'Adore 12-3-09 Tom Ford Exposes Soulfoul Substance in 'A Single Man' 12-2-09 Twinkle, Twinkle, Mysterious Bug Nebula Dying Star; Trifecta 11-24-09 Inspired by YSL's Parisienne 11-23-09  Sharon Core Photography: Love Potions for Sensual Souls


 

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Monday
Mar232009

Reading, Race & Other People's Realities: Reactions to Michelle Obama Planting a Simple Food Garden

DateMonday, March 23, 2009 at 8:35AM

Hope springs eternal with me, and my mood is good this morning.

Weekend media responses to Michelle Obama's breaking ground on the White House Kitchen Garden are a proliferation of articles on organic food, eating local, the controversial Alice Waters/Michael Pollan "food elite", and a rare blog reference like the one I posted yesterday from Obama Foodorama, regarding the 'meaning' of Michelle's gesture and the lack of coverage in the 'black' media and blogosphere.

This fact fascinates me, given the challenges of fast food and lack of access to healthy fruits and vegetables in urban and poor communities. The shootout in Oakland, where racial tensions are high, is a greater priority than Michelle's garden, based on my investigation of 'black' media and blogs.

Flexible as the Internet is, there's not room for both stories.

I woke up wanting to share the inspiring, timely and relevant look into "A Man Named Pearl", an enormous pleasure that I only enjoyed last night, thanks to my friend Robert calling to say "don't ask; just watch it."

Writing on Anne of Carversville, where video and more photos of Pearl Fryar's 'Love, Peace, & Goodwill Garden" live, I said:

This story is an excellent example of media discussing racial issues in a positive, honest, proactive way.

The hour-long special addressed racial stereotypes about blacks not keeping up the neighborhood, the challenges of Fryar's roots as the son of a sharecropper and small-town Southern racial prejudice in general.

I nearly died when a busload of white ladies arrived at Fryar's magnificent topiary gardens, openly admiring his older guy, studmuffin physique. This clip was followed by Fryar's forever wife talking about lack of jealousy in her husband's now global celeb status.

In one hour, Pearl Fryar's 'Love, Peace, & Goodwill Garden" hit at least five major race relations nerves with grace, a clear-headed focus, and most often, Frayar's own unique words and vision on the subject.

The key word here is 'vision', because Pearl Fryar is a man obsessed with a vision for his garden, his own reputation and self-actualization as a man, his spirituality and his influence and contribution to his community.

Pearl Fryar wants to move America forward. Land is his canvas, and it's here that Fryar makes his topiary art.

Pull Up a Chair and Sit Down at the Kitchen Table

Surveying 'black' blogs and media this morning for my 'take' on garden reporting, I returned to The Kitchen Table, a blog written by two Princeton profs.

I bumped into The Kitchen Table two weeks ago, looking for reaction to Maureen Dowd's David Brooks 'sleevegate' commentary.

Commentary and opinion are the 'right' of every writer on the Internet. But the facts of what Maureen Dowd actually said, as referenced on The Kitchen Table, depressed me so much that I left a rare comment and challenge to the message conveyed to readers of the post.

Reading The Kitchen Table post was a "no, we can't" moment in my rose-colored glasses prism of life. I asked if the writers are actually Princeton professors?

Garden-post hunting this morning, I landed again on The Kitchen Table, this time to read Michelle Obama's Garden.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell articulates the 'nervous about plowing the land connection' that Obama Foodomarma hit on yesterday, in trying to understand why 'black' media didn't cover Michelle's ground-breaking event.

This week has been particularly fraught for me because I have been holding my breath about the new White House vegetable garden on the South Lawn. The anxiety started when I heard the first news report using the words "Michelle Obama" and "crops" in the same sentence. My first thought was" uh oh, is this going to turn into a story of my First Lady planting crops at the White House?" Are we going to have to endure thinly veiled and deragatory slavery references?

(text skip)

But I was gripped with fear of the racial implications. I worried that none of these aspects of the garden would be publicly visible and that we would be bombarded only with cruel and ahistorical references to slavery. Lord, I did not want to see Michelle Obama planting crops.

Reading these words, my own reaction -- based also on the Maureen Dowd post -- was 'give me a break; this is so depressing.'

To my credit, I read on, anticipating a vitriolic case for why black people can't work in gardens in America.

That is not the end of our story, I am happy to say.

We are not looking at a peace and love moment here in American race relations, just one baby step forward between the writer Melissa Harris-Lacewell and Anne.

My sensitivity is raised on just how deep these fissures are buried in our unconscious (and articulated) expectations of each other's behavior.

Melissa's post ended in a good place for both of us:

Then this morning I got my New York Times and saw Michelle Obama and the schoolchildren of Washington, DC planting a garden. I breathed a deep sigh of relief about the lovely image. There was nothing to fear here at all.

The past two years of watching Barack Obama campaign and now govern have been an interesting journey for me as a scholar of American race and politics. I am constantly having to readjust the lens through which I view the world. Sometimes my country acts in predictably racially-biased ways, but increasingly I am also having to recognize the changing meanings of racial symbols.

Yesterday there was no great, hovering specter of American slavery. It was a simple act.

Michelle Obama planted a garden.

Last word goes to Melissa.

Peace out. Anne

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