The family court building in Newark blends almost seamlessly into the surrounding downtown architecture: anonymous grey or brick walls covered with countless coats of paint to hide deteriorating structures underneath, and fronting impressive pillars built during a moment of "Newark is Coming Up in the world" optimism. I spent so much time in that building last year—as a court advocate and translator for a local domestic violence agency—that the maze of lobbies and elevators and entranceways stopped confusing me and I almost forgot how bewildering the building itself is to those seeking justice in its "hallowed halls." Add to these halls hundreds of people running to appointments, in the wrong building, fighting with each other and their attorneys in countless different languages, and a general sense of desperation so strong your shoulders clench tighter in automatic response, and you can imagine the difficulty of escorting abused women through the building.

My
job amidst this general chaos was to translate the signs pointing the
ways to various courtrooms, the documents that made no sense in English
let alone Arabic (the primary language of my clients), and finally,
the official judgments of "the court" about whether or not
my clients' partners were abusive enough to grant orders of protection.
Some days in court were better than others, and some judges known to
be less racist than others, but for the most part the official voice
of the court translated into something like, "You are not an abused
woman. In fact, you were never even involved in a relationship with
this man. You are just applying for an order of protection to get papers
to stay in this country. Or to get benefits. Or to get healthcare for
your children." The fact that some of my clients already
had papers, benefits, and healthcare made no difference at all to the
ways they were seen. I couldn't explain to them why the judge
didn't listen to me (to us), or why I was so powerless despite the privilege
of white skin, middle class education, and "proper" English
to make him hear me. (Actually, I learned in conversations with
coworkers and other clients that my job was easier than a lot of translators
because the racist image of the poor, helpless Muslim woman is such
a dominant stereotype that police officers and judges often allow Arab
women to be victims at least. Not seen as full human beings, but still
seen as needing protection.)

My
job in Newark provoked all sorts of questions for me about how racism
and sexism and classism invade our consciousness, our systems of government,
and even our "private" lives and the ways we explain the world
to ourselves. I learned from such experiences about not only the
very material consequences of being in an illegitimate family, but also
the connections between those who are silenced by falling outside "family"
and thus outside the rights of citizenship.

The
particular experiences of my clients are reflective of U.S. society's
response to all other women who live outside the dominant family structure.
When Bush talks about the family as "the cornerstone of society,"
and passing legislation "that supports families," we know
what he means is that he wants to support a certain kind of family:
white, upper-middle class, and straight. On the ground, what the
justice system often ended up saying to my clients was something like

"you don't deserve public resources (like police protection, enforcement
of child support, TANF benefits, etc.) because we don't recognize your
family." But the judges, and even George Bush, don't invent
their ideas of "family" out of thin air ‐ the people
in power are surrounded every day by stories about immigrant and Black
women. The same systematic racism and sexism that silenced my
clients in the courtroom, shapes the way our stories are framed in the
mainstream press. These publications can't come right out and
say, "America is not for Black people" or "Go back where
you came from." But their stereotypes of Blacks and immigrants
still evaluate the worth of people in the amount that they "belong"
within certain white, middle class, heterosexual ideals.

We
can't learn to talk to our neighbors, across the border or across the
street, if we can only see them through mainstream media stereotypes.
As racial tension grows between African-Americans and immigrants, and
this tension is exploited by groups like the anti-immigrant vigilante
Minutemen, we need to build connections between people, and not demonize
or celebrate them in terms of how they fit into American ideals.
The family is actually a neat ideological justification to filter the
racism, classism, and sexism of both the left and the right ‐ the
right can determine who counts as "legitimate" families to
police American citizenship, and the left can pass out the benefits
of this citizenship on the basis of these same ideals.

On
March 29^th, I opened the Times to read the latest in the
immigration debate, and noticed across the page a story about an "alleged"
rape at Duke University. Although the paper presented the two
as separate, I started to see some strong connections. The two
stories point to the especially toxic blend of racism and misogyny that
I fought with my clients against in Newark and activists fight against
in Durham, Detroit and so many border communities. In both the
Duke rape case and the immigration debate, the victims of such oppression
are listened to as far as they fit into the status quo family ideal.
The story of the "alleged" rape at Duke University, where
three members of the lacrosse team had been indicted for sexually assaulting
an exotic dancer whom they had hired to work at a team party, was repeated
and retold over various mainstream news outlets for the next few weeks.
Sympathetic coverage of the story usually refers to the woman as "the
single mother who was raped." As a mother, trying to support
her family, she can be heard and seen as a victim of sexual violence
and racism ‐ but as soon as the fact that she takes off her clothes
for money comes into the story, she was basically asking for it.
The New York Post calls the accuser a "Black stripper", while
her lawyer continues to insist that "her real profession was as
a mother" and that "she did what she had to do to support
her two children." The mainstream media can recognize her
need to support her family, as long as the ways she chooses to do so
and the economic conditions that influenced that choice stay hidden
from sight.

Meanwhile,
in the immigration debate, I constantly hear the sentiment that immigrants
need to cross the border to find work to support their families.
Like the immigration debate, from which I hear the sentiment that immigrants
need to cross the border to find work to support their families, the
Duke accuser's suffering can only be seen as important because the victim
is represented as working towards the ideal of the American family ‐
an ideal that is recognizably white, middle class, and hetrosexual.
The same images that feed the stereotypes of my clients as immoral,
lying, or just trying to scam citizenship by marrying an American also
play into how the accuser in the Duke case is dismissed as an oversexed
Black woman who uses her sexuality to support a dysfunctional family.

Single
Black mothers and immigrant women are treated as invalid citizens because
their family structures are wrong. Think of all the stereotypes
and stories about welfare queens that are now being used to claim that
immigrant families drain the taxpayer's resources by sending their kids
to school or claiming Medicare benefits. The Duke case and immigration
debate also share a backdrop of poverty that the press attributes to
anyone but the American government. Our complicity in Latin American
economic ruins and the decimation of jobs for urban Blacks is hidden
amidst "compassion" for the poor victims. I want to ask what
kind of relationship people can have to each other if the relationship
consists of one person feeling compassion for other people but has never
put themselves in movement with these "others." The
division of stories about immigrants and African Americans maintains
this kind of compassion ‐ Americans' ability to look while removing
ourselves from scrutiny. The invisible American dream of an identifiably
educated middle-class, straight, home-buying family who feels "white"
even if they aren't is the idealized common ground of both stories.
This ideal is powerful because it disguises the racism and classism
and sexism of America by letting us talk about "strong families"
and "supporting families" instead of talking about whiteness
and middle class status as a condition of citizenship. We continually
invest in the ideal by materially supporting only the right kind of
family ‐ for example, welfare clients are now court ordered to attend
marriage counseling in order to receive benefits. (Not to mention
the unacknowledged public money spent on limiting "inheritance
tax" or giving tax cuts for home mortgages).

Poverty
is scary, especially racialized poverty ‐ so we attribute it to failing
families or values. But marriage will not cure poverty or racism.
In fact, a Black child in this country living with two parents has a
greater chance of living in poverty than does a white child living with
a single mother. Immigrants' desire to "raise their families
and practice their faith" (that describes the immigrants Bush wants
to welcome across the border) will not save people from exploitation.
As long as we keep valuing only the people who fit into recognizable
family structures, we will not be able to see through the stereotypes
and twisted stories we're fed by the mainstream media every day.
And the ways that we choose to hear, remember and retell sexual and
racial violence have a direct effect on the ways we choose to engage
in or resist such violence. As supporters of racial and sexual justice,
we can't watch these manipulations float by. We must learn to
hear the connections and see through the walls built between people
and their stories.