Goddamn it, I was planning on skipping that whole thread, pretending it wasn't there. 220 comments on Covering?
I've got a job too, you know.
Well, but the troublesomeness in the 'black hair' context speaks to the 'core identity' issue. By requiring black women to give up a convenient hairstyle, the following implication may be heard: Being black in America is an identity made up of a complex of social and physical traits. Your physical traits, as a black woman, push you away from the social mainstream -- to qualify as a member of the mainstream, we will require you to do work not required from those straight-haired women who are innately mainstream. In order to be accepted, you must invest time and effort in changing your physical nature.
That seems like core identity to me.
Maybe the distinction you're looking for is a distinction between covering requirements that mandate doing something wrongful, and those that are merely burdensome. I can see a principled distinction between requring a Sikh to cut his hair, which is, if I've got it right, sinful, and requiring a black woman to straighten hers, which is only troublesome and insulting and alienating.
I think where that distinction comes down is in only protecting religious requirements, and I don't like that as a result, but it strikes me as a coherent place to draw a line.
It would be fair for a employer to hate on that white guy's "unprofessional" cornrows because, to use the technical term, they are nasty-ass scraggly.
And I should say that I agree with all of this. But I think it's possible to make this argument and still say that some non-core prohibitions should be illegal, when they impact a protected class; even when the intent isn't to impact that class.
Gah, 4 to the post. Anyway, I read the distinction the way LB puts it in the third paragraph of 2, and I agree with the thought behind 2 as well. I also agree with 3. But I don't agree with 1! Nyah!
This doesn't speak to the essential distinction being drawn, but I wanted to point out that hair straightening products are probably physically unhealthy.
The cornrow case was from the early eighties. Which makes the bo derek reference more reasonable. Since then cornrows have become a lot less popular for whites and blacks.
Yoshino's use of relatively old cases is unfortunate. Things have played themselves out in different ways since the courts have made their decisions. There really is greater tolerance for the type of things Yoshino objects to since the eighties.
Bowers v. Hardwick has been reversed and along with it the professed rational for Bowers bad employment practices.
The military's rules on religious displays are currently pretty tolerant.
The courts' decisions have followed these general social trends.
Look, the real points are that Yoshino's clearly a dick, and that Abu should have tenure at Yale.
Since then cornrows have become a lot less popular for whites and blacks.
I see a lot more braids (and fine-gauge locks -- the ones where you have to look closely to know if they're braids or locks) on middle-class black men and women than I ever did in the '80s. You're right that the short-lived corn-rows for white women fashion of the early '80s is over, but I'd disagree about the other half of your statement.
LB, my preference is to focus on what's mandatory and what's not. There *are* other ways of wearing non-straightened hair.
A problem with doing something wrongful is that I still want to say, at the end of the day, that it's not really wrong to go uncovered, to cut off hair, whatever. That is, I want to be respectful without endorsing the contents of the requirements.
I have to say that one issue might be dress codes themselves, which are pretty intrusive even when they have no ethnic slant. On the other thread I mentioned a 40-item 1 1/2 page dress code for bank cahiers. I actually think that society would survive if bosses weren't able to control employees' lives to that extent.
Matt, I agree that the legal issue is separate; your 4 seems right at the cost of being pretty open-ended as to where lines are to be drawn.
I could just be unobservant about the popularity of cornrows among blacks.
In college, I knew a white transfer student from Italy who wore cornrows in 1986. It seemed pretty strange even then.
I was going to suggest that dress codes have become more tolerant of cornrows. But, I think the NBA just outlawed cornrows in its new dress code.
I want to be respectful without endorsing the contents of the requirements.
I don't see how you can do that.
Respectful means accepting that others can define their core identities as they wish; that you respect their choices about what's core and what's not. Anytime you say "I (or some avatar or the mainstream) get to decide that X is not part of your core identity" you've just devalued them.
Michael, we have a talent for talking past one another. I mean only that my respect for someone's religious (e.g.) requirements does not entail that I have to think their story about God caring about headgear is correct.
But I don't believe in the "what you say ends the conversation" bit about identity, either.
But the problem with a no-cornrows rule is intent, more than effect. It's not that we're worried that black women won't be able to find another way to style their hair; we're concerned that the employer has some problematic reason to want them to. If cornrows were indeed a style primarily worn by the Bo Dereks of the world -- cute blond women who put their hair in neat and tiny plaits -- I kind of doubt that anyone would institute a rule against the hairstyle.
we're concerned that the employer has some problematic reason to want them to.
If that's true, there exist legal remedies. Yoshino remains a jackass.
10: You don't have to endorse someone's value system to see a distinction between 'Mandating X to take action Y would require her to do something she sees as wrong; in her belief pattern Y is sinful,' and 'Mandating Z to take action W would require him to do something he finds alienating, insulting, and violative of his core identity.'
The mandatory/non-mandatory distinction is a good one, but I'm not sure what to do with it in this context. The hair thing strikes me as likely to involve de facto mandatoriness -- I'd expect an employer who had a problem with braids to also have a problem with locks and big afros, leaving the acceptable hairstyles at straightened or very very short. The message remains: if you want hair at all, it had better be white. But I don't have an actual employer's dress code to base this on.
A relatively strange phenonoman is large corporations' suprisingly easy acceptance of things like affirmative action and restrictions on sexual harashment. If court's were to protect the type of thing Yoshino is talking about under a civil rights framework, there are alot of human resource managers who would be happy to send out the memos.
If that's true, there exist legal remedies.
In the absence of an explicit confession of the discriminatory purpose, there really don't. I'm not saying there should, necessarily, but it is mistaken to think that there do.
17: But that's the whole point of the article (the YLJ one -- I didn't read the NY Times one). Yoshino identifies the problem in order to call for a legal remedy. Right now, the courts don't identify no-cornrows rules, which have a race-based effect and a quiet, background race-based motivation, as racially invidious, and don't protect against them.
Michael, we have a talent for talking past one another.
Sorry. I'm not being deliberately difficult. We come from different universes of discourse, and the appearance of sharing a language is deceptive. I'm doing my best to learn the language of this universe, but apparently I'm not covering my deviance from the norm very well.
21: Or, what LizardBreath said in 20. Goodness, you people are quick around here.
23: It's amazing how much energy you can put into blog comments when you're avoiding work.
Goodness, you people are quick around here.
i feel like i am beating a dead horse here, but:
10: the only other real option is to cut your hair off, if you genuinely have this kind of hair.
if you wear it in a 'fro (which i can't imagine these companies allowing anyway) it gets dirty and tangled with stuff and awful.
i feel like i am talking in a vacuum. surely you guys have exes or good friends with fuzzy hair? why do many keep bringing up examples of white people with cornrows? it's funny but surely it's obvious to you that it's not relevant?
26: Oh please. I do have good friends with "fuzz hair," who wear their hair in afros, and it does not get "dirty and tangled with stuff and awful." We're assuming a baseline wherein everyone is expected to maintain basic standards of hygiene and management.
surely you guys have exes or good friends with fuzzy hair?
nice fuzz there on w-lfs-n.
but. seriously. to j above: your friends must have very short hair then. Or spend some serious obsessive amounts of time on their hair.
mmf & j.: I can reconcile what they two of you are saying if you mean different things by 'afro'. J. seems to mean any non-straightened, non-braided, nonlocked hairstyle, however short, while mmf is talking about a real 70's style big afro. From talking to friends, a longer afro is a real brute to maintain, as mmf says; obviously, at under an inch or so in length, it gets much easier.
What happened to the blonde joke post? It disappeared! It's not in google, even!
I still think we are seriously overlooking the fact that hair is a HUGE issue for black women. See, for instance, this article where the big argument is "I've gotten beyond the hair issue"--and this is a huge deal. Or this, about the reaction to California's attempt to regulate hair braiding salons. Or one of Pam's posts (and the links therein) about black hair.
Seriously. The general *principle* at hand, that some things are intrinsic to identity, e.g. religious requirements, and others aren't, e.g. hairstyles, is a fine principle: but black hair is about the *worst* example for the latter. It's incredibly charged, it *is* central to identity in ways that fly under the rader of the dominant culture, and that fact is a huge part of *why* it's so central. Policing black hair, historically, has done enormous amounts of harm.
Having said all that, I think it's funny that Labs feels bad that we argued about this.
What happened to the blonde joke post?
You mean this?
Now I'm really curious. Why did I think that was a post? Probably because the rest of them are.
I just came across this excerpt from a Sam Lipsyte story (in n+1):
"That's the thing," said Principal Fontana. "I want to be involved in your lives. Or I think I do. But then, really, when I look into my heart, I'd rather be on the driving range, or getting drunk, or getting my wick dipped. Is this shocking you?"
"Some nights," I said, "I picture myself naked, covered in napalm, running down the street. But then it's not napalm. It's apple butter. And it's not a street. It's my mother."
"Right," said Fontana. "I knew I could talk to you."
Last weekend I went to a party in a club called Fontana, and I wished for an Unfoggeder to make cracks about how great it was to be inside Fontana to, but there was no one to be found except my RL friends.
33: yes! I am so glad you articulated that. a)Hair really is central to African-American women's identity in a way that often flies under the radar of the mainstream and b)[the part I got hung up with] this makes a lot of sense, too.
It makes *more* sense to me that racial/cultural identity be protected than that religious identity be protected in the public sphere. Am still puzzled why there might be disagreement on that.
on a totally unrelated note I would like to add that if anyone offers you celery puree as a side-dish to your dinner, ever, this is a really really bad idea. !
I'm actually having a hard time coming up with a possible 'covering' requirement that would be at all likely to lead to litigation, rather than mere irritation, that wouldn't be about something central to identity. When I try to think of possible examples, I come up with the hair issues we've talked about, and about that gay woman who was fired for revealing that she'd gotten married talked about in the other thread. Those are both pretty core issues.
Here's one: I get fired for having an open marriage.
That might work -- I've read people writing on polyamory who frame it as an orientation as central to their identity as homo- or heterosexuality, but clearly that's not a universal conceptualization. But now that I'm thinking along those lines, anything characterized solely by off-the-job conduct would work: firing smokers, or those Catholic school cases that come up every so often where they fire unmarried women for getting pregnant.
Would work as what? I'm confused now. As an example of a non-identity firing? Or as a firing that would lead to litigation?
Also, what if I were actually sleeping with a co-worker? Then the whole open marriage thing might constitute on-the-job behavior, no?
As an example of a non-identity covering requirement (and one that might lead to litigation). But really I think the unmarried and pregnant Catholic schoolteacher is a better example of a non-identity covering requirement. She's not being fired for pregnancy, she's being fired for failure to hide that she's sexually active; but she almost certainly wouldn't be fired for a verbal slip that made her sexual activity obvious.
Also, what if I were actually sleeping with a co-worker? Then the whole open marriage thing might constitute on-the-job behavior, no?
Surely that would depend on whether you were disporting yourselves in faculty offices. Where was that post about the faculty member who walked in on a couple of students?
No celery puree?! My sister and her fiance made an incredibly delicious celery and rutabaga puree for the bigass dinner they made over the winter break. If you were actually presented with it, yo'ud change your tune with a swiftness.
The rutabagas would have to have been a dominating element though. I can see how celery puree straight would be pretty lame.
And I should say that I see the Catholic school teacher example as a substantial injustice (as I would if you got fired for the open marriage thing) but it doesn't fit nicely into something I'd call a core identity issue.
Celery root. I suppose that's relevant. The rutabagas provided a pleasant accent but did not dominate.
Also, there was a shitload of butter.
Where was that post about the faculty member who walked in on a couple of students?
Here.
I know of a married lawyer who got, er, sacked, for having an affair with another lawyer who worked, um, under him. I understand that they were in fact having sex in one of their offices, although I don't know if the powers that be knew that. I've heard of far more lawyers who didn't get fired for such activity. As far as I know, none of these persons was in an "open marriage," as such.
The inability to provide a principled way to distinguish behaviors essential to "core identity," from behaviors inessential to "core identity," is probably one very good reason why the courts should not become involved here. Indeed, to take Yoshino's argument at face value is to suppose that there are as many "core identities" as there are individuals----all of whom "cover" their identities in various ways, and are therefore victims of opression by a (fictional, as Yoshino admits) mainstream.
Of course, giving the spending patterns of adolescents, and the passionately held views of adolescents on matters essential to their identities, such an expansion of the law may not be all bad for the business of law.
Jesus, that should be "oppression" and "given."
Damn covering impulse.
Well, I would agree that, for me, the open marriage thing isn't a *core* identity issue. But I think that pregnancy could reasonably be argued to be a core identity for women, married or no, Catholic or no. Plus, unmarried & pregnant = core for Catholics, yes? Mary and all that....
I like Michael's idea, though. Second-guessing other people's core identities is a serious problem, and it's probably best, in the end, to let them define it themselves. I realize, of course, that that ain't the way the law works. Luckily, I'm not a lawyer.
Anyone who likes rutabagas is OK with me.
Sprouts are out but rutabagas pass? You're a man of exceeding mystery, Emerson.
None of 'em are as good as okra, though. Except maybe taro.
I just talked to a friend from Alaska and he says that they have devised a way of making lutefisk up there which actually tastes good. He described it to me and it didn't sound like real lutefisk.
56 -- Who doesn't like rutabagas? Turnips are the elite of vegetables, and Swedish turnips are the elite of turnips. (OT: yesterday I had turnip cakes at Sweet and Tart Cafe in Flushing, and they blew my mind as they have done every time I have eaten them before.)
I love Chinese turnip cakes, which aren't really cakes. Lo-bwo-gao.
Yeah those. Sweet and Tart makes them particularly fine.
Taro sucks. At least the way they cook it in Samoa. Rutabagas, on the other hand, are excellent.
The inability to provide a principled way to distinguish behaviors essential to "core identity," from behaviors inessential to "core identity," is probably one very good reason why the courts should not become involved here.
Well, or should not become involved along FL's suggested lines, distinguishing 'core-identity covering' from 'non-core-identity covering'. (I suppose the concept is mangled enough that I shouldn't pin it on FL any more.) The courts aren't champing at the bit to create a new right not to cover -- for one thing, it's particularly unclear what the documentary foundation for any such right would be. (I can comfortably find a right to privacy in the intersection of the 4th and 9th amendments, but I can't figure where to hang this one. If it belonged anywhere, it would be draped attractively from the 1st amendment, but the 1st amendment doesn't include a right to be free of private repercussions from one's speech.)
Is this the volume of posting that we're to expect now that Ogged is getting laid?
The inability to provide a principled way to distinguish behaviors essential to "core identity," from behaviors inessential to "core identity," is probably one very good reason why the courts should not become involved here. Indeed, to take Yoshino's argument at face value is to suppose that there are as many "core identities" as there are individuals----all of whom "cover" their identities in various ways, and are therefore victims of opression by a (fictional, as Yoshino admits) mainstream.
I am shamed. I was trying to say that. I'd whittled my exposition down to four pages, and it still wasn't that clear. Thank you.
crap. I posted that in the wrong thread. Sorry.
no I didn't, I just got confused. Again.
Go home, Michael S., you're drunk.
I think that allowing the possibility of individual definitions of core identity would lead to a hellish mess. I am pro-labor and pro-individualism, but I've seen how a strong-willed person with a lawbook or book of union rules in their hand can make the workplace into a living hell.
Some people's "core identity" seems to involves fighting everyone else in the world on every possible point. The ones I've seen have usually pressed their case on the basis of left ideology or some form of identity politics, but they haven't been involved in the community they identify with, and they haven't related well to their coworkers or to their union.
Sometimes malcontents and writ-writers are great heros of liberation, but sometimes they're just people with a chip on their shoulders and a grudge against the world. I worked labor jobs for 25 years or so, and along the way I got to know at least six union reps pretty well, and every single one of them was somewhat demoralized by the number of cases in which they had to defend and represent people of that description.
Some of the problem here is the attempt to write labor law purely on a liberal individual-rights basis. Someone making a case might be trying to make things better for everyone, or they might just have their individual axe to grind. Individual "core identity" would favor the latter group in a big way.
Just wait a minute -- are we in frivolous or serious mode here? I think that I just wasted another dump of seriousness.
Serious is good -- there's room for all the frivolity necessary on the basketball thread.
here i am, earnestly trying to save you from the fate of Politely Stomaching Starchy Pallid Mass of Pulverized Unrecognizable Mushy Celery, Bite After Bite. and you guys bring up rutabaga, turnip (forgetting the lovely parsnip, which is delicious next to some cooked chestnuts and deer cooked rosee, or maybe a little rabbit)... mais c'etait du pure celeri!
i think celery-root is different: celeri-rave.
there is also a very nice dish called HAMBURGER TARTARE some of you might enjoy here. blog meet-up in paris. i'll be sure to point it out to you on the menu. :)
In all the talk of covering and laws and rules requiring it, I am a little surprised that the French laws prohibiting muslim girls' head scarves hasn't come up. Not to mention the converse, women like Jill Carroll who wear/wore the head scarves in order to work in the muslim world. Figuratively and literally covering.
In French cases, small crosses on necklaces were called into question but, if I recall, ruled as legal.
Religion and other institutions purposefully mess with core identity, they seek to reshape it. It strikes me as significant that this is often symbolized by the reshaping of hair: there is a haircut associated with becoming a nun, entering the military, and retiring from a career as a Sumo wrestler.
In the US, religion is a protected case legally and otherwise. It is considered a de facto part of core identity. Still, if your religion requires you carry a knife everywhere you go, not-so-much.
Still, every Sunday, kids all over the US get wine for communion in Catholic churches. Technically, I think, this is against the law, but somehow universally tolerated, even in dry counties in, say, Kentucky. But peyote and other substances are ruled as illegal even in the context of religious ritual. So there is a line, even if society stretches that line far from the defined legal line. In this case they stretch it liberally in favor of tolerance. Still people seem generally not to want to talk about serving wine to minors in church, so they are covering in the general public for something that the general public generally accepts occurs in a tolerated yet illegal way. Everyone is OK with it as long as everyone covers appropriately. ( I may be, like, totally wrong about the legality of communion wine. Does any one know for sure about this? )
It's kinda like masturbation. Does not almost everyone do it? Does Hitachi sell the Magic Wand? Yet almost everyone covers this. Is it core to cover this? Is it core to masturbate? Do work place rules prohibiting masturbation prohibit a core behavior? How many of you have ever broken a rule or law about where and when you might masturbate? Has this infringed on your core identity? Does posting on unfogged from work fall into this? Has anyone ever stood up for their rights as a jerk-off? I mean besides here.
And while some may say masturbation is not a religious experience, I'd say it's as close to a religious experience as I might ever come to. ( spelling? )
Technically, I think, this is against the law, but somehow universally tolerated, even in dry counties in, say, Kentucky.
My utterly fallible memory suggests that part of the impetus behind the Prohibition was anti-Catholic prejudice. Anything to this? Was wine for religious ceremonies unavailable during the Prohibition?
Wine could be served for Communion by Catholic (and probably Episcopalian, etc) priests during the Prohibition. However, they had to get authorization from the Feds when they bought it.
I would say there must have been, because if there wasn't, I would have encountered stories about church-related bootlegging. Prohibition (and current dry counties) was a prohibition on selling alcohol, rather than giving it away, wasn't it? All churches would have needed would be a loophole to acquire the wine, but the Mass itself wouldn't be a problem.
if your religion requires you carry a knife everywhere you go,
I've wondered how Sikhs have managed air travel in the US since 9-11. The required knife doesn't have to be much, an inch long token is sufficient, but that still must cause major hassles.
Googling for prohibition and anti-catholic sentiments turns up this article, which looks pretty interesting though I am at work and unable to process it. Apparently the Klan was involved in Prohibition, in alliance with fundamentalist Protestants. (This is from a not-even-skim reading of the article and may be a mistaken impression.) Weep for my ignorance of my own country's history.
A lot of communion wine is 0.5%, below the Prohibition standard.
Both Mexico and France, mostly-Catholic nations to the extent that they're religious, have long had prohibitions on religious dress in certain contexts. This is because of anti-clericalism due to the negative political role of the church.
I think of government recognition of religious exceptions as a mickey-mouse, messy sort of compromise in response to specific situations. The Amish are a major example -- it works because the Amish have been here for about 300 years and are generally exemplary citizens. But I wouldn't support giving every religion the same kinds of exemptions that the Amish get. Much less individuals.
One of my ancestors was a saloonkeeper who was implicated in the murder of a prohibitionist preacher around 1890 in Sioux City Iowa. The jury acquitted and went to a tavern to celebrate. Take that, KKK!
A lot of communion wine is 0.5%, below the Prohibition standard.
Or, if you grew up Baptist, the communion wine was Welch's Grape Juice. So not only did you have to make the mental leap from blood to wine, you had to make a second leap from wine to grape juice.
No wonder I lost my faith. It's confusing.
i have been told that "Welch" in fact refers to a Reverend Welch who got his business start making grape juice for his congregation.
75: Wow, there's so a First Amendment Case in there.
Prohibition ended, only not everywhere. There are still many dry counties in the US. On most of the land in some states it is illegal to own, consume, sell, or transport alcohol. This is basically due to some specific forms of fundamentalist christianity. And I doubt whether the "prohibition standards" apply there in such a way that communion wine could actually be legal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_county
The Bible Belt and Islamic world are good arguments for drunkenness.
So I was just in the lobby looking at (signs announcing) upcoming talks, and I noticed that Kenji Yoshino is speaking here tonight from 6:00-8:00. Should I just read him the relevant parts of these two threads with any details identifying particular people redacted? (N.B. I'm not nearly crazy enough to acutally do this). I would bring up the Goffman stuff, but since I don't know it myself I'd sort of feel like a fraud. In truth I'm not even sure about whether or not its worth attending.
I think you should have asked in character, doing different voices for each of us.
No, my roommates wanted to cook a good dinner tonight, so I came home, helped ou a little, and ate it.
Regarding your manuscript, The Tale of Kenji: it's a little on the short side for a novel, and way anticlimactic. Where's the conflict? Try to punch it up a little and get back to us. Nice title, by the way.
From every page of Kenjiyoshino.com
Seldom has a work of such careful intellectual rigor and fairness been so deeply touching. Yoshino... masterfully melds autobiography and legal scholarship, marking a move from more traditional pleas for civil equality to a case for individual autonomy in identity politics... As healing as it is polemical, this book has tremendous potential as a touchstone in the struggle for universal human dignity.