In accepting the apology from Don Imus for his mean comment about her women’s basketball team, Rutgers Head Coach C. Vivian Stringer offers one of the best examples of non-sermon preaching I’ve seen in a while. She uses storytelling and fine rhetorical skill to drive home the point that this isn’t just a slip-up of one man, but the product of a culture of sexism and racism that fosters this sort of thinking. She points out that the women on the team are not politicians or celebrities who choose to put themselves out in public to be open to anyone’s criticism; instead, they are young women just beginning their lives, and doing a great job – role models for girls across the country – to boot. These are the people who should be celebrated as the best our nation has to offer, not scorned or treated as if their thoughts and feelings don’t matter.
Her best line:
“It’s not even black or white, the color is green.“
Watch the two segments here:
We need more people, especially white male DJs, to hear her message. Then maybe we’d have less of the likes of Don Imus or the New York DJs who thought a prank about a Chinese restaurant, targeting one of its waitresses, would be funny. Of course, the best thing we can do is to stop listening to these mean people who exploit their privilege to degrade others – and we can keep listening, all the more, to truly wise people like Coach Stringer.
I found it through my buddy Johnny’s blog post about “Porn in the Pews,” another good read that collects various interesting observations into a coherent message about sexual immorality (real sexual immorality, i.e. not homosexuality) and the need for feminism in the face of it.
I found a feminist essay in the most surprising place. Parade Magazine’s Marilyn vos Savant wrote on 3/25/07 that it is important for women to keep their names when they get married. She said,
“When enough women keep their surnames throughout life and pass them on to their daughters for life, we will witness an improvement in the stature and independence of women the likes of which has not been seen since women got the vote.”
I pass this along not to condemn women who have changed their name, but to celebrate that we can all make the choice for ourselves about what we want to do with our names, identities, and our lives. So many of our choices are symbols of our status in the world. Often it seems easier to just go along with convention, but if we can be intentional about our decisions, we really can shape the way we perceive ourselves and others perceive us.
...is a network of feminist women and men who identify with the Church of the Brethren. Emboldened by our awareness of the violence and pain related to the denial of gender inequality, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, we engage in the prophetic task of creating church which is free from attitudes and practices of injustice.
