Does Race Matter?

No More Content

2010-04-28T17:49:00.003-03:00

In an ironic twist, soon after I left Racialicious and ended blogging altogether on the subject of race and identity politics, I received several comments from people who had started reading this blog (which is a compilation of my writing that I had done for public consumption on the aforementioned matters).

However, just to be clear, while I appreciate the feedback, I am not longer writing on these subjects and have only left the blog up for the sake of reference. There will be no more new material.

I still write, but on another set of topics altogether, at Retail DJ, my site about music and fashion. If you are interested in either of those, feel free to follow it.

~Wendi

What MTV's Jersey Shore Means for White America

2010-01-01T01:23:00.001-02:00

by Special Correspondent Wendi Muse

I admit that, despite its train wreck-like qualities (which Racialicious Special Correspondent Arturo so dutifully detailed in his post "Jersey Shore': Believe the Hype"), I really enjoy watching MTV’s newest reality show Jersey Shore. In its attempt to portray the summer activities of a group of guidos and guidettes, the male and female versions of a subculture that sprang from groups of Italian-American youth only to spread like wildfire to a variety of other ethnicities, primarily in the northeastern region of the United States, MTV has created reality tv gold for people like me. In a voyeuristic way, I have always liked peering inside the television versions, albeit edited, of others’ lives. Jersey Shore is no different on the surface, really, though this show is a bit of an exception in another way. Unlike its glossy counterparts, The Real World, My Super Sweet Sixteen, and The Hills, Jersey Shore takes on an explicit case of ethnicity as its main focus. Sure, there are typical displays of salacious summer behavior: hot tub hook-ups, drunkenness, and a lot of semi-nudity. Where Jersey Shore differs, however, is in its cultural significance.

When I say “cultural significance,” I am not implying that archives of Jersey Shore episodes will make it into the annals of American life to be uncovered centuries from now. But what I mean here is that the show and those who participate in the guido/guidette subculture who also identify as Italian-American are making the choice to articulate their take on their ethnic identity through behaviors, styles of dress, and other aesthetic expressions despite Italian-Americans having been long-accepted as whites. In an odd way, this privilege of whiteness that was gained by the Jersey Shore cast’s ancestors by way of legal battles and hardcore assimilation in the past is exactly what gives them the privilege to then assert fabricated markers of their ethnicity in the present.

As Gregory Rodriguez of the LA Times notes in his piece “The Dark Side of White,” which expounds on the upcoming census categories and the most recent struggle surrounding whiteness for Arab Americans, being considered “white” always takes a hard fight and comes with a cost:

Claiming whiteness has always been a Faustian bargain. Ditching the ancestry question on the decennial census makes the nature of the exchange all the more clear. In our culturally, geographically, economically mobile society, the embrace of ethnicity -- real or imagined -- has long served as a source of protection and rootedness. As the concept of ethnicity vanishes into whiteness, society's alienation abounds.

Claiming ethnicity and claiming whiteness, though polar opposites, both pose a threat to one’s identity. For those white ethnics (hyphenated European-Americans, i.e. Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, German-Americans) who arrived during the 1800s during the heyday of phrenology, eugenics, and some serious talks on race and its validity and significance, becoming white was the key to success. Without whiteness, access to resources and social acceptance were basically rendered null and void. Despite the color of one’s skin, the social state for white ethnics was more or less reduced to that of recently emancipated blacks. The comparison is not direct, of course, particularly in consideration of the very fact that some white ethnics could and did pass as Anglo-Saxon or Nordic whites, and those who did not were at least a tiny bit closer on the racial continuum than say blacks or Asians (who, at various times in history, were completely banned from entry into the U.S.) in the phenotypic sense. Yet the other side of assimilation, of course, is the ugly act of erasing ethnic identity. Language, food, styles of dress, and lifestyles of these white ethnic immigrant groups were often demonized, leaving many to conceal and/or destroy cultural ties with their country of origin altogether.

Now in a time when multiculturalism is an accepted concept, many groups have worked to reclaim the links that were lost, particularly because of their increasing cultural currency. In a strange way, the cast of the Jersey Shore is doing just that. They are using their white privilege to assert a hybrid identity that was created over time in the United States as means of connecting in some way to a lost past. Few white ethnics speak the language of the Old Country and, despite their hyphenated identities, often know little about the respective contemporary societies. Yet in the creation of this fictional culture, they are working to take ownership of what was lost over time. Unfortunately for groups who lack the white privilege that allows the movement between whiteness and chosen ethnicity, there is little room for such a decision.

I think of African-Americans and other members of previous diasporas (i.e. Indians who moved to work within the “coolie” system/indentured servitude in the Caribbean) in particular in this case. There is oftentimes a complete disconnect from not only culture, but literal geographic roots. I have no idea what specific nation(s) my ancestors are from, nor do I know the language they spoke, their names, the food they ate, or any of their other traditions as most records of them were destroyed. My roots are American, and I take that “ethnicity,” if you will, with me when I travel. Even within the United States, I can claim being from the South as a cultural tie as my speech patterns, expressions, foods, and even lifestyle differ from those of my peers who were raised in other parts of the country. The negative side is that this is about as far as I can go in terms of claiming an ethnic heritage. Yes, I am black, but in many ways, black cultural traditions that have sprung up in the United States are either ridiculed, deemed insignificant in terms of their value in society, or closely tied to, say, being Southern or simply being American.

The other interesting aspect of Jersey Shore in terms of its impact is that while it portrays white ethnics in what can seemingly be read as a negative way, much to the chagrin of many Italian-Americans and New Jersey residents, its lasting effect on the white population is minimal. If this show were about, say, Chinese-Americans, the results would most likely be different in terms of cementing stereotypes of Asian Americans as a whole. Many of the shows that feature non-white ethnic/racial groups often contribute to the solidification of stereotypes, whereas this show may be discounted as a throwaway take on a small niche group of Northeastern Italian-American kids and yield limited negative results. Whites can watch the show and “otherize” the people portrayed because they are “Guidos” and not like other whites. Non-whites can watch the show and “otherize” the cast members for the exact same reason. In the cast claiming its subculture and, in turn, imaginary ethnic identity (imaginary in the sense that they seem to lack any real understanding of both old and contemporary Italian elements of culture), they differentiate themselves from other whites despite their being able to shed the markers of fake tans, gel, and extensions in order to simply be perceived as “white” whenever they wish, no questions asked.

Yet with the continued struggle for resources, many of which are now being accessed by nonwhites with the aid of legislated benefit programs such as affirmative action, resentment runs as a heavy theme in conversations around race. I wonder if this show, though it’s still in its inception, is a sign of some greater trend to claim or event create an ethnicity for the sake of purposeful othering and thus re-entering the resource grab by way of being non-white. There have already been examples of genetic testing being used by people who have been perceived as and personally accepted that they are white for their entire lives in order to manipulate the school system, so there is a great possibility that in the coming decades, otherness by way of location, class, and particularly race and ethnicity may be viewed as a means of participating in a competition that has yet to abandon whites to begin with despite the growing popular belief that non-whites gain privilege by way of their respective ethnicities.
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originally published @ Racialicious on 12/30/09

Have a Merry Colored Christmas: Tales of Holiday Racial Exclusion

2010-01-01T01:22:00.001-02:00

by Special Correspondent Wendi Muse

This weekend, my mother called me on my cell phone, a bit frantic over Christmas gift shopping:

Mom: I have no idea what to get Lacey [one of my young cousins]. She has everything!

Me: Why don’t you get her a book, Mom?

Mom: Well I am here at the store, and all the books I keep finding only have pictures of little white girls. No brown children like Lacey!

Me: Well, you could always color them in.

Mom: Yeah, but the fact that I even have to…

Almost every holiday involves a conversation that goes something like that in my family. Birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, Easter, Christmas, and Valentine’s Day . . . you name it. Decorations, cards, and even gift wrap tends to forget that non-white people exist. When greeting card companies, toy stores, and all parties involved in the corporate holiday conspiracy to make us max our credit cards and pull out all our hair do decide to include people of color, they all look the same. All the black children have medium-brown skin and dark curly ‘fros (or Afro-puffs), all “Asians” become East Asian and are a faint yellow with straight black bobs, Latina/o children all become some derivative of Dora the Explorer, and children of other ethnicities somehow cease to exist. I give them credit for getting much better over the years. When I was young, even the aforementioned groups were virtually ignored, save the occasional black child featured on those “We Are the World” stick figure style Christmas cards.

It got to the point that just in order to make sure that holiday cards were appropriate for my family members, my mother and I would break out my box of Crayola colored pencils and use various shades of brown, yellow, and beige to get the skin colors right. Every momentous occasion involved a DIY craft project in the Muse household.

But now, in an era in which multiculturalism is more lauded by the powers that be in the merrymaking process (possibly because they recognized that POC had buying power and were active holiday consumers just like whites), it’s sad that we, as members of minority groups or even white parents and families who want to create a more inclusive environment for their children (and their kids’ friends), have to face the reality that there may not be a card, wrapping paper, or even a toy that is physically representative of non-whites.

Or if there is, there can be a tiring amount of digging involved. Mattel recently launched a new set of Barbies and have had Asian-American, Latina, and Black Barbies available for quite some time as well as their collectors’ set of international Barbies. Though Mattel’s nod toward expansion and inclusion has prompted several complaints, many of which you can find on this very site. The greeting card companies, as I mentioned earlier, have also improved, but I am still waiting to see people of color on cards beyond the special “ethnic” card section (which, even then, is only limited to black people, much like those ridiculously labeled “ethnic” hair care aisles. Wait, where are the Irish-American hair care products when you need them?!??!!). The same could be said of Christmas ornaments (painting the tree-topper angel was often easier than finding a brown one).

It is my hope that these improvements continue, and as I mentioned earlier, I give companies credit for their recent attempts to be more inclusive, particularly considering that some countries still face this issue in more glaring ways that we (For example, in Brazil, dolls of color are harder to come by. Most of the dolls are white with blonde hair and blue eyes, despite the significant phenotypic diversity of the population), but little moments like my mother’s phone call remind me that finding presents or gift accessories on which a person of color is one of the main points of focus, the protagonist, the central figure can be surprisingly still hard to come by.
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originally published @ Racialicious on 12/24/09

SBF Seeks Social Validation: Why Are So Many Black Women Single?!?!?

2010-01-01T01:21:00.001-02:00

by Special Correspondent Wendi Muse

I am 26 years old, have a college degree, and middle class. I am typically well-dressed and well-groomed. I have never been called ugly, quite the opposite, and I speak several languages. I am nice, courteous, and well-spoken. My big "flaw"? I’m black, female, and single.

At least according to the world of Helena Andrews, whose classist, heteronormative, and strikingly self-defeatist attempt at explaining the “Big Marriage Gap” (from now on referred to as the “BMG”) for black women in comparison to their non-black female peers in their 20s and 30s, is not only oversimplified, but a typical regurgitation of anecdotes about black female dating (or lack thereof) we see in the news every few months. While Nadra pointed out most of the flaws in Andrews’ reasoning in her piece “Successful, Black and Lonely,” the first of several Racialicious pieces on Andrews’ original article for the Washington Post, I plan to venture away from criticism and more into the territory of uncovering the elusive “why” Andrews so poorly investigates.

While many articles have focused on the statistics of black women being on the low end of the national statistics for women rushing to the alter, the nation’s marriage rates seem to have been on a steady decline for quite some time, particularly as rights were afforded to those who cohabitated, as the increasing pressure for costly weddings were met with not-so-sufficient bank accounts and pocketbooks, and the meaning of family shifted to include single parents, same-sex couples with adopted children, divorced couples, and so on. Marriage was no longer viewed through the same cultural lens as it was in years past. It became less obligatory in American culture and more of a privileged option for those who fell within the scope of eligibility and who had the financial resources to afford it (or the time to head over to Vegas for a drive-thru ceremony).

But aside from changing views of marriage, views of women and their societal roles, as a whole, had shifted. Women were increasingly gaining more roles as leaders, planners, and players in higher levels of companies. They were becoming financially independent, self-sufficient beyond the bounds of their families, fathers, and other male counterparts. So why is it that as black women embraced these norms (though many had been participating in some of these practices well in advance of more formal, white-led movements as a result of economic factors and the shifted familial dynamics resulting from slavery), they were chastised for doing so?

Sure, some of these practices, as I mention above, were not embraced by choice. Not every woman wants to be the breadwinner or the unexpected head of the household, particularly as some of her more privileged peers find comfort in the security of marriage and other sources of financial support. But in a racist and sexist twist, many of these same elements of “modern womanhood” that white women were applauded for taking up were devalued and even demonized when black women fulfilled the same roles. When coupled with pre-existing stereotypes, one of them being that black women are already naturally inclined to be overly assertive, the roles were not seen in a positive light. A white woman with a high-level, well-paying corporate gig was “making something of herself” and “engaging in an empowering grasp at grappling with patriarchy.” A black woman was simply acting out on her “natural” skill of being bossy (ahem, a boss?) and assertive, so there was no surprise. As white women continue to be portrayed as delicate flowers and black women the angry worker bees, these roles only seemed natural, leaving black female ascension in the workplace to be considered with far less surprise, awe, and admiration. That is not to say that white women in the workplace are not assumed to be bad attitude-laden, overly assertive, or power hungry, but such behavioral assumptions, as a result of white privilege, are associated with their being female as opposed to being both female AND white. Take the example of single motherhood and you end up with the same results.The expected behavior is not considered the result of some racial and gendered stereotype that follows them around at every turn on the page or click of the remote button.

It’s easy to get mad at Andrews and say that she is falling into the typical media trap here, but part of what she says in based in truth, and I don’t think that should be ignored. It’s just that people are generally lazy and state a problem, but never follow through with an explanation or a more guided understanding of what causes the problem and how it can be fixed. Usual answers about how to fix the BMG is simply for black women to be less selective about their mates, once again, a sexist and racist request. As some of our commenters mentioned, they found their mates in unlikely places and in terms of class, education level, or even interests, shared little with them. However, to make “lowering standards” a universal request for black women is problematic because a) it’s assuming that said woman is somehow not worthy of or should not be reaching for the best of the dating pool, b) that equals for said black women are clearly looking to date someone non-black, and c) because it seems to rarely be advice given to men, who are somehow left out of the whole wedding scramble to begin with and left to pursue marriage and relationships, if at all, at their own pace.

It’s also hard to ignore Andrews’ thoughts on stereotypes. The title of her upcoming novel speaks volumes on its own. Bitch Is the New Black is a telling statement. Could the real solution to the BMG and problem of black females being generally undesirable mates (if statistics alone are analyzed, without bearing in mind people who choose to remain unmarried and/or non-heterosexual couplings) boil down to squashing some of the stereotypes that have yet to un-stick? Self-fulfilling prophecy based on statistics, all the countless articles on black women and the BMG, the terrible media images of black women, and the lack of regard for and appreciation of black female beauty by American (and arguably just about every other) society do terrible things to one’s self-esteem. I leave my house every morning knowing that no matter how nice I look that day, how intelligent I am, how well I do my job, or even how polite I am, someone out there is going to see me and think black and female equate to bitch.

I was having a discussion with a friend of mine recently about relationships, and he (a black man) noted that he is hardly ever inclined to date black women because they are “too bitchy” and cause “too much drama.” I was quick to note that I was neither bitchy nor a drama queen, unless somehow provoked by drastic actions like infidelity or lying, and that I know women of multiple races who have equally as troublesome behavioral traits that are not regularly associated to their group simply because they are not black. My friend responded that I may be somehow different because I am southern, and that in his experience, black women meant trouble. Given, however, that I don’t wear a Rebel Flag t-shirt around proclaiming some ironic sense of southern pride, people who see me won’t know the difference. Beyond my statehood, I suppose I also have my light skin to thank for whatever favorable assumptions are made in terms of my appearance when positive. Ever notice that when two or more black women are characters in a film or tv show, the darker (and oftentimes largest) of them is often the loudest, meanest, or most dramatic? The lighter skinned black woman is often made to seem the most physically attractive or appealing based on personality.

Could it be that people were buying into these stereotypes, treating black women differently, and then the women hold their anger based on said treatment until the point of explosion, and thus the recycling of the stereotype? I often feel the need to actually behave more passively or politely than normal in some circumstances, particularly around people whom I do not know well, simply to avoid adding to the stereotype, censoring myself in situations when my innate “black bitchiness” (read: normal level of assertiveness) might actually do me some good. Are these articles simply adding to the cycle? Black women are not wanted, so they internalize that and put up a wall, behaving as if no one wants them, and thus failing to attract proper mates?

Beyond these questions, I also wonder if blaming black women is necessarily the path anyone should take when discussing this topic. Women should be viewed as individuals, and as Nadra mentions, many other women have the same hang ups and gripes as they search for men. Even though many more of my non-black female peers are in serious relationships, engaged, or married, that is not to say that the BMG rests as a fear solely for black women. Women of all races are raised to believe that relationships and ultimately marriage are the best way of achieving self-satisfaction and success thanks to being inundated by bridal imagery and tales early on. But black women are hit over the head with additional images that would give even the strongest person a complex including, but not limited to, criticism of typical physical attributes associated with women of African descent (hair, body types, skin color) and constant comparison to their non-black female peers in terms of behavior (general personality, sexual openness, intelligence, values and judgment). As physical beauty is often viewed as one of the key factors in snagging a male partner, it’s not surprising that black women like Helena Andrews find themselves not only second guessing their physical appearance, but also taking their reflection further when even the perfect “outside” doesn’t welcome men to get to know the matching “inside.”

So while I find Andrews’ piece problematic on many levels, I wonder if that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Is there a way that we can address this issue without turning into a game of black male slandering or black female blaming? Could a shift in the ways we think about relationships and marriage be at the root of the BMG, or is there some greater cultural task we need to tackle, particularly when it comes to images of black women in the media?
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originally published @ Racialicious on 12/16/09

Dear SNL, It's Time to Retire Virginiaca

2010-01-01T01:19:00.001-02:00

by Special Correspondent Wendi Muse

"There's mama drama at the mall!"

Do you ever just want to throw a very heavy object toward your television? I don't even own a functioning television at present, using my laptop instead to get caught up on all the shows I miss (thanks Netflix, ABC, NBC, MTV, etc etc), but I still want to throw something very heavy and with a lot of force towards the LCD screen when Keenan Thompson comes onto the set of Saturday Night Live. Most of his depictions of black people, be they male or female, are racist and steeped in tired, overused stereotypes. When I see Keenan in drag, however, I become even more enraged because, considering the already heavy dark cloud of negative stereotypes of black women in film and on tv, I don't think a black man needs to be adding to the fray simply because SNL hasn't cast a black woman since, to the best of my recollection, Ellen Cleghorn (it's sad that I even had to GUESS this!). Former cast member Maya Rudolph, who is of a multiracial background (she is the daughter of the late singer Minnie Riperton and producer Richard Rudolph), often played black female characters, but in a way that I felt was often humorous without being offensive. Thompson, however, cannot seem to follow in Rudolph's footsteps.

Thompson's most grave offense toward black women to date, in my opinion, is his portrayal of Virginiaca, a poorly behaved, inappropriately sexual black woman who's fallen into some money by marrying a wealthy white man. As a reference for those of you who cannot view the Hulu clips, in the typical "Shopping with Virginiaca" sketch, Virginiaca (Keenan Thompson,clad in an ill-fitting, tacky denim suit) takes her white stepdaughter (who now behaves in the same, stereotype-fulfilling way as Virginiaca, only it's *reeeaaally funny* because the actress is white and "acting black") to a retail store where they are both refused service as a result of their loud, outlandish behavior until Virginiaca mentions she is married to Cedrick Earlsworth Hasting, a white aluminum tubing magnate. Post name-dropping, Virginiaca and her daughter receive service, albeit at arm's length. All of this is the framework for the climax of the mother-daughter pair booty dancing and Virginiaca sexually harassing the white, male store clerk.

For longtime readers of Racialicious, you may know that I've mentioned my bone to pick with Keenan over Virginiaca before. The first time I saw Virginiaca was when Ellen Page was the special guest (the transcript which, by itself, is frightening enough, can be found here):

Then I saw it again (above) this weekend with Blake Lively of Gossip Girl and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants fame.

Sadly, there are more Virginiaca sketches than I thought. A quick search on the internet brings forth gifts of Virginiaca sketches that include Scarlett Johansson, Jaime Pressly, and another with Justin Timberlake.

The fact that the skit continues without interruption. I recall that following my having written the previous assault on the Virginiaca sketch, a few readers wondered what could be done. One option? Voice your opinion. If the Virginiaca skit bothers you as much as it does me, please write NBC and give them a piece of your mind.

SNL Executive Staff (for your reference):

Executive producer: Lorne Michaels

Produced by: Steve Higgins

Director: Don Roy King

Supervising Producer: Ken Aymong

Producers: Marci Klein, Michael Shoemaker

Head Writer: Seth Meyers

Writers: Doug Abeles, James Anderson, Alex Baze, Jessica Conrad, James Downey, Steve Higgins, Colin Jost, Erik Kenward, Rob Klein, John Lutz, Seth Meyers, Lorne Michaels, John Mulaney, Paula Pell, Simon Rich, Marika Sawyer, Akiva Schaffer, John Solomon, Emily Spivey, Kent Sublette, Jorma Taccone, Bryan Tucker (*note that Thompson is NOT one of the writers)

Writing Supervised by: Paula Pell

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NBC/Universial Executive Bios: http://www.nbcuni.com/About_NBC_Universal/Executive_Bios/

General Contact Form: http://www.nbc.com/contact/general/

Questions/Concerns email: feedback@nbcuni.com
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originally published @ Racialicious on 12/15/09

The Melting Pot 2009: Job Applicants Choose Assimilation as Means of Economic Survival

2010-01-01T01:18:00.000-02:00

by Special Correspondent Wendi Muse

When I hear the words Ellis Island, one of the first things I think of is not the New York point of interest or tiring travel across waters to reach the grand goal of the U.S. of A. and its related Dream. The first words that come to mind for me are “name changes” and “assimilation.” But with the recent economic crisis and the lagging recovery process, Ellis Island comes to mind. Only this time, instead of Eastern Europeans, Italians or the Irish knocking on the door of American opportunity, only to learn that their identities must be altered or ensconced, their traditional cultures erased for the sake of infinitely approaching some Nordic white ideal, the group scrambling for the promised land of economic security and job market acceptance is black.

That’s not to say that blacks in America have never sought assimilation as a means of achieving social acceptance and equality, in fact both during and following slavery, some black Americans employed various methods of mirroring the white majority as they recognized it could mean a chance at social and class mobility. Black immigrant groups arriving to America also faced a similar challenge. Having lived in countries where race-based terminology and categorization, media representation, and general opinion of blacks may have varied from those in the United States, only to arrive and gain an externally-defined identity based on perceptions of black Americans, black immigrants may also have felt or still feel the pressure to change or deny elements of their culture, nationality, ethnicity, and ultimately race.

In the aftermath of the recession, as the competition for the limited jobs that are available has sharpened, few applicants have room for error. Unfortunately for blacks living in the United States, one possible means of avoiding the potential disaster of not even getting a foot in the door at hiring companies is deleting any and all signs of their race. It is common knowledge that “ethnic sounding” names or, in other words, names that are not of Western European, particularly Anglo-Saxon origin, often lead to discriminatory hiring practices.* Even among these names, there are specific ethnic groups whose names are least welcome in the corporate world. Unfortunately, blacks are often the common victims of this discrimination, the bearers of African-American names, despite their qualifications, often being relegated to the bottom of the résumé stack.

However, most of the fears of being rejected from job opportunities are spread through anecdotes or are the result of self-fulfilling prophecy based on a perception of inadequacy from simply being black (i.e. assuming the hiring party is white and would not be interested in taking on a black employee, thus not applying for the job at all), research often following as a result. Several studies comparing the successes (or lack thereof) of blacks and their white peers have been conducted (particularly as a means of measuring the success of affirmative action policy implementation and its continued need), though all ended with the same result: even with equal levels of educational and occupational experience, white candidates are more likely to be hired following the interview process than blacks.

In light of these studies, the pressure of being hired during a recession, and the discrimination based on racial markers as mentioned above, the New York Times recently released an article on history repeating itself entitled “In Job Hunt, College Degree Can’t Close the Racial Gap.” In the article, one of the few attempts made by the Times to report on the effect the recession has had on those other than wealthy whites, author Michael Luo points out with frank honesty that the push for obtaining a college degree has done little to help blacks gain footing as they compete with other applicants. Any indication of their blackness on their résumé alone could be a hindrance to their job search success.

Noting the false sense of temporary confidence Obama’s success in being voted the nation’s first black President may have given Americans of all colors in terms of progress and hope for race relations, Luo explains that little has changed when it comes to racial inequity:

That race remains a serious obstacle in the job market for African-Americans, even those with degrees from respected colleges, may seem to some people a jarring contrast to decades of progress by blacks, culminating in President Obama’s election.

But there is ample evidence that racial inequities remain when it comes to employment. Black joblessness has long far outstripped that of whites. And strikingly, the disparity for the first 10 months of this year, as the recession has dragged on, has been even more pronounced for those with college degrees, compared with those without. Education, it seems, does not level the playing field — in fact, it appears to have made it more uneven.

Luo goes on to profile applicants who have resorted to referring to themselves in their résumés by names that they normally do not use:

. . . Barry Jabbar Sykes, 37, who has a degree in mathematics from Morehouse College, a historically black college in Atlanta, now uses Barry J. Sykes in his continuing search for an information technology position, even though he has gone by Jabbar his whole life.

“Barry sounds like I could be from Ireland,” he said.

This quotation by Mr. Sykes struck me as particularly ironic, and fit quite appropriately with my note that the process of “cleaning up” one’s ethnic identity in the present is a sign of social regression in the race relations continuum, particularly considering that the Irish once received considerable discrimination for not being quite the right type of white, if white at all. During the same time of the largest immigration of the Irish population to the Americas (1845-1849 as a result of the Great Famine), Dred Scott was suing for his freedom and his trial was going through state courts, and two decades later, black American slaves were given their freedom with the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment. Now, in 2009, a black American man hopes his name sounds more like that of one of the immigrants who were socially on as low a level as many of their black peers.

But with the unemployment rate for college educated black males 25 and older being double that of their white peers, 8.4% to 4.4%, respectively, the push to erase one’s blackness goes beyond name changes. Applicants have noted that any mention of black business associations, black fraternities and sororities, and any experience that may somehow hint at one’s racial background (i.e. writing for a black issues blog) could prove hazardous. To make matters worse, Luo notes, even Asian-American and Hispanic managers are more likely to hire whites than blacks. That is not to say that someone of non-white (Anglo) racial or ethnic origin should feel obligated to hire someone who is also nonwhite, but the fact that these practices reach beyond white managers and are committed by those who could potentially be more empathetic is alarming.

Other applicants in Luo’s article mention that if and when they get beyond the application stage and are actually called in for an interview, their chances at being hired do not increase. In fact, in-person interviews sometimes lead to more problems such as outright discrimination, shock and surprise that the applicant is black, and ultimately rejection for the position despite presumed stellar interviews and excellent applications. The rejection can be without motive, leaving the applicants to second-guess not only their skills, but also whether or not their race played a role in their not being hired:

Whether or not each case actually involved bias, the possibility has furnished an additional agonizing layer of second-guessing for many as their job searches have dragged on . . .

Many interviewed, however, wrestled with “pulling the race card,” groping between their cynicism and desire to avoid the stigma that blacks are too quick to claim victimhood. After all, many had gone to good schools and had accomplished résumés. Some had grown up in well-to-do settings, with parents who had raised them never to doubt how high they could climb.

Luo also mentions the impact of networking and connections that go beyond the typical hiring process. In spite of blacks becoming part of the ever-expanding American middle class as a result of more educational opportunities since the Civil Rights Era and subsequent increased inclusion in the workforce, one of the most damaging residual effects of segregation and social exclusion from whites (Jim Crow, anti-miscegenation laws, ghettoization of the black urban population by way of discriminatory housing laws and restricted covenant, racial profiling and imprisonment, etc), has been the fragmentation of black and white populations’ interaction (even with the end of its legal prohibition). By way of stigmatizing (legally and socially) black and white interaction, whites continued to align themselves with their own social networks and blacks were left to form their own, albeit less validated, community-based social networks and connections.

Edward Telles, author of Race in Another America: the Significance of Skin Color in Brazil, an amazing text based on his comparative studies of race relations in the United States and Brazil, notes that “Recent research in economic sociology shows that hiring, even in the modern employment sector in the United States, continued to be governed by social-network ties” (Telles, 163). I found that Telles’ observations about the Brazilian job market and related hiring practiced greatly mirrored those of the United States as reported by Luo:

Most recruiting and hiring for these jobs used networks and patronage systems. Such informal methods favor whites, so that employers often do not directly deny jobs to nonwhites. Rather, blacks and browns [note: people of multiracial backgrounds that include some percentage of African heritage] seem to be discriminated against by being denied access to these networks or they are less likely to know job sponsors. When they do have access, job sponsors and networks are likely to screen out nonwhites, and especially blacks, themselves. Job sponsors may mostly recommend other whites because they themselves prefer whites or assumer employers prefer whites. Similar, persons in networks with information about jobs, including those who currently hold such jobs, are also likely to recommend whites, especially because it may enhance their own status in the eyes of their employers. (Telles, 162)

In short, even before blacks can apply for a job, it is more likely than not to be discussed amongst and filled by whites. This is what might be the most frustrating aspect of the problem. The issue itself is hard to resolve simply because a big portion of the discrimination occurs by way of silent and often unintentional exclusion. Bias does not always play a direct role in the hiring or rejection of an applicant. Though hopefully with the continued participation of blacks in higher education and the corporate world, the networks can expand to include blacks or, at least, following the older model, blacks can continue to construct their own networks as a means of gaining acceptance into the higher levels of the formal labor sector.

One fear, however, is that such findings can be discouraging in terms of morale, possibly making self-fulfilling prophecy a recurring theme in the daily lives of black Americans. Another fear is that assimilation by way of identity erasure may become a normative means of achieving success, which is disturbing considering the advances so many people of color (including, but not limited to, blacks) have made without having to resort to it. What could this mean for future generations of blacks, and further, incoming immigrant groups to the United States, where pluralism is an accepted method of both governance and social interaction (at least, in public)? In some ways, is this fear of being initially “outed” as a nonwhite racial other, particularly a person of African descent, a sign that an American identity is being tightened in the wake of economic crisis?

*for more information, please refer to the study "Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?" from The American Economic Review

(Image: "Melting Pot" political cartoon)
--
originally published @ Racialicious on 12/7/09

Shopping with Squaws: Irregular Choice Gives Itself a Bad Name

2010-01-01T01:17:00.000-02:00

by Special Correspondent Wendi Muse

I have to give companies credit for coming up with unusual names for the merchandise. One such company that comes to mind is Irregular Choice, a flamboyant Britain-based shoe company who goes all out to wow consumers. With asymmetrical heels, bizarre accessories, and designs that stop traffic, Irregular Choice is the Lady Gaga of the shoe world. The company has worked diligently to combine a little humor, a lot of fun, and heaps of quality in its lines, year after year. With its flagship NYC Soho store, it graced American shores with one of the best British invasions since the Beatles. Let’s just say I’ve always been a big fan.

But every now and then, in their attempt to be cute, they sometimes go over the border of taste. And I am not just talking about the shoe designs. I am talking about the names.

On occasion, shoes pop up with ethnic names. Take, for example, their “Latin Lady” shoe from a previous collection. The black shoe was covered in tropical fruit (a la Carmen Miranda) and, while appealing to the eye, the name seemed a little off.

For this season’s collection, the mouth-open moment came with a (hideous) purse I noticed on the site. With its blue shredded shingles and background of miniature prints of cartoon natives, the “Squaw Shopper” takes the cake, winning an A+ in offensive. Maybe if this were the 1950s and this bag were geared to children it wouldn’t be so shocking, but in 2009, the jig is up. What’s most offensive is that they used the word “Squaw” in the name. They could have named it something else that touched on the whimsical indigenous theme without resorting to an offensive term. Maybe this is some sort of Thanksgiving joke I missed?

Although, offensive bag name aside, kudos for their snarky jab at MTV via men’s shoes “Justin Bobby” and “Prattster” (in reference to the “reality” show The Hills) and “Gangsta Grill” (referring to almost any popular rap song from 2006-07 that came out of the South).

Can anyone else think of a better name for this bag, if that’s even worth it?
--
originally published @ Racialicious on 12/2/09

New Moon: Old Story?

2010-01-01T01:13:00.000-02:00

by Special Correspondent Wendi Muse

Most people talk about the fans. They are typically teenage girls screaming, crying, fainting at the sight of the pallid Robert Pattinson (who plays the Byronic hero Edward Cullen, a vampire who strives to avoid his bloodthirsty desires for the sake of preserving humanity). Now with the post-pubescent buffing up of another of the film’s protagonists, Jacob Black, a werewolf of indigenous heritage whose newfound strengths provide him with the ability to preserve a treaty to quell violence between the werewolves and vampires (played by Taylor Lautner), there’s a new boy on the block for inducing total fan chaos. But with the onslaught of abs and a new love interest for Bella Swan (the pathetic protagonist and central female love interest played by Kristen Stewart), there is a recycling of roles for actors of color that are far from new.

If anything, the title itself adds an ironic twist to a tale that spirals into a stereotypical narrative to which we are all well-conditioned by now, both in films and other more readily-available media in our every day lives. Have you ever heard something along the lines of “dating someone who is [insert ethnic/racial group] ok, but you’d better not marry one!” or “Native Americans are so in touch with nature!”? Have you ever seen a film or tv show that relegated the person of color as the trusty sidekick, loyal friend, or temporary romantic plaything, only then to have the white hero enter in medias res and get all the praise and attention? Have you ever seen a piece from an ad campaign or historical policy discussions in which non-white people are portrayed as animalistic, in both their behavior, thought processes, and athletic ability? Have you, as a person of color, or if you are not, any of your POC friends, ever complained of feeling that their societal value was reduced to their physical appearance or a specific body part?

If you answered “yes” to any of the above, you have already seen New Moon.

I saw Twilight right before my return to the United States in July. My students had been chiming in on the constant refrain of “Teacher, you HAVE TO SEE IT!” that surrounded Twilight both in my classrooms and on blogs based in the States. I did not understand all the hype, but as a means of connecting with my students and not completely loosing my footing on the mountain that is American pop culture, I saw it (on my computer, for free, mind you) and actually enjoyed it. I was surprised by the fact that I, too, had been charmed by the allure of the glitter vamps and the romantic tale that unfolded from their presence in Forks (the northwestern town where all the magic happens). The movie was typical boy-meets-girl teenage fare, with the addition of mystery, rejection, and the little problem of the main love interests not being “right” for each other (in this case, because one of the parties is no longer human or alive in the technical sense).

In having seen Twilight, I felt the madness needed to continue. So on Monday night, with a little help from the internet and a pirate film site, I saw New Moon from the comfort of my home. Let’s just say I’m glad I didn’t drop the $12.50 and leave the house. The film was slow, the only action being choreographed quasi-violence and a lot of pining away for lost love. To summarize (spoiler alert!!!!!), Edward, as a means of aiding his family in their attempt at secrecy (people in Forks begin to put two and two together about Mr. Cullen’s seeming inability to age), moves away. With the email addresses, screen names, and cell phone numbers of her boyfriend and his family now defunct, Bella goes into a state of emotional catatonia, only to be awakened by occasional risky behavior (before which she always sees Edward’s hologram presence as a warning) and a motorcycle repair project with her trusty friend Jacob. In their growing closeness, and with the help of an amazing muscular growth spurt, Jacob becomes Bella’s back pocket boyfriend, except that there’s a tiny catch. Jacob and his family aren’t quite human in the technical sense either. They are shapeshifters with short tempers who turn into enormous wolves when provoked. Their main source of provocation? VAMPIRES! How fitting.

Edward later returns after a long period of hiatus (thanks to Bella who, despite having a caring, trustworthy, friendly, and ripped quasi-boyfriend Jacob, still goes after her old flame and his sister Alice, who had a clairvoyant vision of Bella cliff diving, and assuming it was suicide, told Edward she was dead) and Bella, now intent upon being turned into a vampire so she can be forever united with Edward without looking like a “cougar” as she grows old and he remains physically 17, basically dumps Jacob like a hot potato. Jacob, however, reminds Edward and Co. that if he or anyone bites a human, the treaty between vampires and werewolves in the region will be broken, and the vampire hunting werewolves with strike again to protect everyone.

How’s that for excitement?

But beyond all the drama, there is a story that we have seen played out countless times in every other movie, tv show, etc. that decides to employ a character of color, only to put them on time out when the fun really begins. Despite being abandoned by her (technically) dead boyfriend, Bella, in true masochistic form, continues to go after him, even though living and breathing Jacob is a better choice for a beau. Not only is he charismatic, attractive, and fun, he can protect Bella too, which seems to be at the crux of her very existence. Playing the damsel in distress is Bella’s forte, so Jacob could fit the bill as a boyfriend who would suit her most important need. Yet his big character flaw, beyond actually being interested in Bella, is the fact that he’s not white.

Yes, poor Jacob, as “beautiful” (Bella’s words) and awesome as he may be, is one of the Quileute, an indigenous group of the northern Pacific coast. While it’s not explicitly stated in the film that this is the reason Bella doesn’t continue the relationship with Jacob, any audience member who knows a little bit about American film already knows quite well that it’s a rare case when a main character of color, especially if surrounded by other main characters who are white, actually succeeds in the end and remains a romantic interest.

In terms of the other characters of color in the film…well…that’s a bit harder. The only other ones present are a) the other members of the Quileute, the main focus being the young boys going through the man-to-wolf initiation process, b) a black vampire named Laurent who is actually a villain and whom the werewolves later kill, and c) a few of Bella’s classmates who, in this film, are practically absent through the entire 2 hours.

I haven’t read the books of the Twilight series, and don’t intend to, but I am curious as to what happens next. I’m hoping that somewhere in the subsequent films, there will be a more positive and less-stereotypical outcome for the characters of color.
--
originally published @ Racialicious on 11/26/09

What Do We Want?

2010-01-01T01:12:00.000-02:00

by Special Correspondent Wendi Muse

One of the things that is constantly on my mind while I am blogging here is, “What do we want?” It’s a question regularly flung at groups outside of the dominant culture when they launch a complaint against some effort to appease them. But I, too, often ponder what the end result, the ultimate ideal, would be for people like me who write about race and the readers who digest the work and diligently comment. While I recognize that the question itself is huge and can have a whole slew of answers, I tried to come up with some of my own in order to get the ball rolling.

The sad part is that this was a practically impossible task. In attempting to answer, I simply came up with more questions.

How can I put into words the future that I want for children growing up generations beyond mine? How can my own personal wishes even be reflective of what may be useful, necessary, or even relevant in a time that I cannot see materialized in front of me?

But then I thought that maybe there was a way to synthesize some of the things that the voices here express all the time into a set of values that we want for the future.

1. Fair and Equal Media Representation
Let’s face it: people of color in film, print, and televised media are not fairly represented, if represented at all. We often fall into a set of stereotypes, simple tropes that have been regurgitated for centuries. Some of them are so widely used and accepted that they are sometimes completely impossible to discern, particularly by those who do not have a vested interest in studying, writing, or thinking about this stuff in the first place.

But even then, the frequency of these stereotypes is tiring and affects us all in ways that are beyond our powers to remedy just in creating awareness. In fact, sometimes, the awareness itself can be dangerous. It makes viewing any form of media a tiring process, one from which all joy has been removed, any element of comedy or surprise absent. Additionally, viewing films, watching shows, and reading the paper and magazines can make us hyper aware. We can then suffer from media fatigue, a side effect of which is perpetual unhappiness regarding any and all portrayals of people of color in the media, even the ones that may be worthwhile. We begin to pick apart even the most honest attempts at creating change or presenting fair portrayals of communities of color, which results in even more stereotypes, one of them being that people of color are constant complainers who can never be satiated.

My take-away is that people simply are not trying hard enough or that they remain unaware of the stereotypes they present in their work because it is so deeply ingrained in our collective unconscious. Stereotypes have become an inseparable element of our society. Until that is deprogrammed, an ideal in itself, and the end result is one in which people of color are proportionately and fairly presented in media, my job remains active.

2. Visibility and Equal Access to Resources
Because one of our main foci of otherness in the States is race, based primarily on our (in this case, US American) history of oppression, we sometimes become distracted from the other issues that impact our daily lives. The struggle for access to resources is real, and one that is suffered by multiple groups of people. The lines of otherness cross more frequently than many realize, exceptions of course being those who are directly affected. For example, take someone who is a poor immigrant of color with an untreated mental illness who participates in a non-Christian religion and identifies as transgender. There is limited written work on this person’s experience and even less recognition of the fact that ze may exist in our society. The sense of otherness results in invisibility. This person may fly under the radar of the organizations that may deal with race or gender or other identity politics, and certainly not be considered by more mainstream or government entities.

In addition to the issue of increased recognition by organizations for resources, there is the issue of very basic needs, like housing, education, and food. In our present state of affairs, these resources are placed very low on the priority list for the poor, for example, a population of which many people of color are disproportionately a part. As a result of multiple factors, some of them being negative overall opinions toward certain POC groups, unfair media portrayals, and ultimately a general disregard for the value of POC’s lives, their concerns are often overlooked and not addressed. One of the things that many people seek and have been fighting for over the course of centuries is an acknowledgement and granting of access.

3. To Be Seen as Individuals
In my personal experience, many people base their perceptions of people whom they do not know on what they have seen on television, in the news, or heard from others. Of course, their own set of experiences with people from certain groups also influences their behavior around them in the future. This is not an abnormal response, nor am I condemning those who take a Pavlovian approach to dealing with people who are different from them in some way. However, one of the main goals as expressed by both the writers here at Racialicious and many of those leaving comments is that this reaction is something that needs to cease in order for people who are not of the dominant culture to be seen as individuals, people with varying sets of values, ideas, and ways of life.

Whenever I see a negative image of black people or Southerners or women (in other words, sometimes watching 30 Rock makes me go into a figurative aneurism), for example, I get worried. I fear that when people see me, they think one thing based on a set of misconceptions, and correct and/or add on more with time, even as they begin to know me better. It’s something that I wish could be deleted from our way of thinking, this dominance of stereotypes. Some say that this problem can be solved via increased exposure to the “othered” group, but depending on the circumstances of that exposure, it may actually have the opposite effect, resulting in further gross errors in stereotyping of a group.

To further this idea, I also hope that one day, the behavior of various groups of color, the images in the media, and the individual interactions people have with each other will no longer bear the weight of being deciding moments. I want to see a society in which comedians can perform a skit related to a group of color, for example, poking fun at stereotypes, without worrying that a person of another group and/or the dominant culture and media will exploit that moment by cementing it as truth and not recognizing its comedic value and not anthropological importance. One day, can a movie like Precious, a comedian like Dave Chappelle or Margaret Cho, a reggaeton artist’s political affiliation, a lesbian’s voting choice all happen without being associated specifically with members of the group to which that person belongs?

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With all this said, I now wonder what your expectations, as readers of Racialicious, are at the moment. What are your personal hopes in terms of race or other identities that are often marginalized? Where do you see the country in which you live progressing or regressing to? And is there something you are doing personally to further these expectations?
--
originally published @ Racialicious on 11/13/09

The Brazil Files: Bela or Bust Part 3 - On Race

2010-01-01T01:10:00.000-02:00

by Special Correspondent Wendi Muse

Continued from “Bela or Bust Part 2 - On Class” . . .

“We always want what we can’t have,” so the saying goes, a saying that is most fitting to describe the intersection of race and the significance of beauty in Brazil. Though many Americans think of a raven haired, dark-eyed, sun-kissed, bronze “cutie with a booty,” the standard for physical beauty in Brazil is anything but. In fact, when it comes to looks, fair skin, light eyes, and straight, blonde hair spell attractive forwards, backwards, and sideways.

When asked of the women by my male friends, as I mentioned in the introduction of this series, my reply was often what they were not expecting to hear, nor were my descriptions of the food, weather, and my ability to walk around freely, unmolested by criminals. The Brazil so many people were expecting could not be found in the stories I told. But even I was in for some surprises, one of them being how white film, television, magazines, and many other forms of media happened to be.

The surprise was not that whites were all over the television. Brazil has a large white population, made up primarily of several generations of Italians, Germans, and Portuguese, not to mention Spaniards, Syrians, Lebanese, Britons, and a few more recent French stragglers. Yet the concentration of said whites is its highest in the southern region of Brazil which, as a result of having a less slavery-dependent more immigrant labor-dependent economy, happens to be more wealthy, developed, and progressive than most of the states in the northern region, where poverty is at its worst. The surprise for me was that in comparison to Brazil’s diverse population, even diverse in terms of what was deemed white, television did not come close. The majority of people who were protagonists on television programs, at least those set in Brazil and not including foreign-based film or television programs (i.e. imported American or European sitcoms and reality shows) were practically Nordic – light eyes, light skin, and light hair.

While Brazilian tv has become increasingly more diverse over the years, as has the business of product promotion and advertising, it nevertheless continues to rely on whiteness to sell an image of success, wealth, and happiness. When coupled with the reality that whites still hold the majority of the nation’s wealth and political power, this image is all the more unsettling. Not only does the whiteness serve as shorthand for all these things, but with class as a determining factor of general worth, whiteness comes at a special premium. It means you’re automatically beautiful as well.

If I had a dollar for every time someone fawned over olhos claros (light eyes) or loiras (blonde women), I would be a billionaire. Bottle blondes, or in other words, women with dark hair who ended up with that unfortunate orange hue on their heads instead of flaxen, sandy, or gold, could be spotted in high numbers, as could the men who broke their necks with their passing. But most of all, there is the business of hair straightening. If one is not already born into whiteness, and cannot fit into the quintessential beauty associated with those on the lightest end of the spectrum, hair is one way to come infinitely close.

The hair wars are actually alive and well in Brazil, much in the same way as they are here in the United States. Though more than 60% of the population has naturally curly hair, the majority, at least those who are women, pay thousands of reais (Brazilian currency) a year to make it straight. By way of a chemical straightening process called escova progressiva (known in the U.S. as “Brazilian straightening”), millions of Brazilian women can control frizz and relax curls. While other forms of relaxers are used, including those made popular in the United States within the black community (made of lye, hydroxide, and/or other chemicals sold in the form of a cream that is applied and then washed out, yielding straight hair for a month or longer, depending on the hair texture of the recipient) as well as the Japanese straightening technique (which involves the application of the chemical then aggressive heat setting with blow dryers and flat irons, yielding results that last for several months or until the onset of new growth), the escova progressiva and its various derivatives (escovas with special scents and ingredients such as the escova de morango (strawberry) or escova de chocolate (chocolate)) are the most popular and easy to find.

Despite its popularity, the escova progressiva had humble and somewhat suspect beginnings, having been discovered by accident when a funeral home cosmetologist spilled formaldehyde onto the scalp of a dead client, only to watch in awe as her curls went straight. In the early years of its development, attempts to concoct at-home mixes of the chemicals (one of which is formaldehyde in a .02% concentration) resulted in deaths, mainly due to an excess of formaldehyde in conjunction with allergic reactions to the same. But once the Brazilian government became involved and worked to regulate the use of the product (beauticians utilizing the technique should be trained and licensed to do so in addition to wearing a gas mask during the application and supplying a mask and goggles to their clientele), the process* gained widespread acceptance and even celebrity endorsement.

Nevertheless, the process in its various forms (from the most strong and aggressive that leave one’s hair completely straight to lighter versions that allow for lighter waves and slight curl patterns if left to dry naturally) has its opponents, and not just because of the potential health risks. Hair is political as much as it is an element of pop culture in Brazil. While many women opt to straighten their hair for the sake of manageability in the heat and humidity of some areas, there is also social pressure to straighten because curly hair, much like in the States, particularly if that curl pattern is tighter (Read: more “black”), is considered “messy” and “not professional.” Cabelo duro (a fairly perjorative term that means "hard hair," aka "nappy", in English) is considered plain ugly. Short hair, while increasing in popularity, is also sometimes considered too masculine for women, most of whom sport long hair (at least past their shoulders, but often longer), in addition to being seen as nonconformist in some regions. So you can imagine the impact of having a short afro or no hair at all.

Fortunately, cabelo afro (black hair, super curly hair, afro hair (the term can be used in several ways)), cabelo crespo (tight curls, super curly hair), black power (the term sometimes used for afros), rastafari (dreads), tranças (braids), and other natural styles of black African origin have become very popular in recent years (ironically, due mainly to and increased exposure to and the influence of black American films, tv shows, music, and other media). While there are still fewer natural options in the standard corporate workplace and these types of hairstyles are viewed as faddish and trendy, one can find people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds seeking and rocking these styles.

Special salons appeal to the demand and many natural stylists hold seminars and training sessions on how to create these looks, spreading the techniques throughout various cities and communities, a big step considering that natural styles and braiding techniques were at one time relegated solely to the North, where the majority of the African descendants of Brazil live. Now that natural hairstyles are en vogue at times beyond vacation season in Salvador (capital city of Bahia, a state with a high concentration of Brazilians of black African descent and the preservation of various African traditions and history), salons that specialize in such styles are becoming easier to find. There is even a national chain of salons that began in Rio called Beleza Natural (“Natural Beauty”) that specializes in curly hair and works to “reclaim” curls for women who have spent years chemically straightening them away (profile here in Revista TPM (in Portuguese)) by making the curls more manageable and defined (much in the same vein of Brooklyn’s Miss Jessie’s curl salon). Zica (pictured above on the left) the owner of Beleza Natural and former domestic worker recalls being ridiculed and teased for having wearing her hair naturally as a child, only to have the last word with her popular and quite lucrative products and salon.

But Zica’s story is not uncommon as natural (black) hair (along with blackness in general) carryies a certain stigma of being asociated with all things lower class, uneducated, and unrefined. While few will actually come right out and make said association, the fact that dark-skinned black women are relatively absent from popular media and that natural hair is rarely seen as more than an interesting fad, a stylistic experimental alternative, or simply a case of limited means to do anything else with it (read: straighten) is telling. The widely spoken praise of whiteness and unspoken denigration of blackness (using “black” in the Brazilian context here, not the U.S. American one) leaves few options to think otherwise.

Obviously the issue of race as it intersects with beauty in Brazil goes beyond simple black and white. Other racial and ethnic groups (Brazilians of Asian and/or indigenous descent in particular) have been attempting to gain more media visibility and access to and proper recognition in the fashion and media industries. But in terms of the most obvious intersection of the two subjects, hair is a battleground (beyond the tension on the catwalks, which are now subject to racial quotas as a result of the discrimination limiting models of color from gracing the shows), as is television, most notably novelas and reality shows, both of which tend to have predominately white casts, even if the setting is somewhere outside of Brazil or a diverse section of the country itself.

While Brazil is actively working to increase diversity in the media, the not-so-subtle signs that whiteness is a symbol of power, wealth, and beauty remain the most visible and unsettling for many groups of the population within the “pais de todos.”
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*As one who has undergone the process, I can speak a little bit about how it works. First, your hair is washed and deep conditioned (usually with a product rich in queratina (keratin), which strengthens the hair follicle and strands). Following this process, the chemical is then applied and the hair is blow-dried and straightened (in several passes) with a flat iron on a high setting. After the process, one is not to wash (or wet) his/her hair for 3 days (although there are other, newer forms of the process that allow one to wash his/her hair immediately following the session). During these days, one cannot use hairpins, barrettes, headbands, and/or anything that would restrict hair movement (including tucking hair behind one’s ears) as one then risks leaving an imprint and/or a bend in the hair until the next application of the product. In general, the results can last up to three months, depending on one’s hair texture (i.e. tightness of the curls, volume, thickness, etc). Clients are encouraged to use flat irons and/or blow-dryers / heat setting in order to prolong the results in addition to doing frequent deep conditioning sessions in order to maintain the structure of the hair and to seal in moisture. The process is also better for longer hair simply because it is easier to maintain and to straighten in the first place (with very short hair, you obviously risk scalp burns, etc via the flat iron).

In my case, I decided to have it done to control frizz. I had pixie cut short hair at the time and would end up going from Halle Berry to Sideshow Bob in a matter of minutes after I left the house with my hair wet. The process itself was a bit strange and reminded me of the infamous and slightly painful "Dominican Blow Dry" (anyone who lives in New York and has ever been to a Dominican-run beauty salon will know what I am talking about…ask if you don’t) plus a mask and goggles which, of course, made the process all the more…strange. Nevertheless, the results were great, though only for a short while as the process on shorter hair was not strong enough to withstand the 100+ degree weather. Frizz won in the end but I’d recommend it for people looking for a permanent straightening solution only if they happen to have long hair. However, as there has been little time for observing clients’ health, in the long run, there may be unknown risks that the gas mask and goggles won’t prevent. The other issue that has come up is the stress that it may have on one’s hair over time. Because the process itself and the upkeep involve heat (which is never exactly great for the hair) and chemicals, the hair itself is technically being damaged.
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originally published @ Racialicious on 9/2/09

Barack Obama: Black & Lucky

2010-01-01T01:07:00.002-02:00

by Special Correspondent Wendi Muse

I recall hearing once that success is where preparation and opportunity meet. Apparently this expression is not suited for the President of the United States. Obama's moments of success in office, according to some, are occurring simply because he is, well, black and lucky . . . just like Felix the Cat:

President Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. One of the best-loved cartoon characters of the 1920s, Felix was not only black. He was also very, very lucky. And that pretty much sums up the 44th president of the US as he takes a well-earned summer break after just over six months in the world’s biggest and toughest job.

This quotation comes to us hot off the presses and a hop, skip, and a jump across the pond from columnist Niall Ferguson of London's Financial Times. He has even blessed us with a nice little image in case some of the Financial Times readers are too young to know about the housecat named named Felix who is a cartoon and not a great club DJ:

"Felix the Cat, the wonderful, wonderful cat! Whenever he gets in a fix, he reaches into his bag of tricks!"

So IS President Obama simply black and lucky like our lovable cartoon friend? Or is there actually something he learned during his academic experience and political career that may have helped him along the way? I am not sure what to think, really, or even how I am writing this article. After all, being literate must be a good case a luck, right?

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For more info, check out these pieces in The Huffington Post and on The Cartoon Brew. Also, check out this follow up on the Joker piece: "Listen Up, Lou Dobbs: 'Socialist' and the N-Word" by Carlos Watson.
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originally published @ Racialicious on 8/13/09

The Brazil Files: Bela or Bust Part 2: On Class

2009-08-10T18:23:00.003-03:00

Continued from "Bela or Bust: Part 1: On Gender" . . .

Author’s note: My apologies for the delay between part one and part two! I have recently moved back to the United States and in between re-adjusting and job hunting, I had not had the chance or the mental clarity to sit down and actually write!

The popular anecdote goes “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” If I were to rephrase this expression to fit Brazil, I’d say “Beauty is next to Wealth.” Though Brazil has grown considerably with tourism, natural resources, and factory-based goods as its largest sectors of revenue, on the ground, the class divide is evident and going strong. One ironic way to overcome class and bridge the class divide, at least superficially, is through a well-kept appearance. I say ironic here because in order to appear a social or economic equal, one must continue to consume, thus depleting one’s income, even if it is far from disposable.

Luckily for many Brazilian women, maintaining one’s physical appearance is not so heavy a financial task. Even in large cities, one can get an amazing manicure/pedicure for less than $20 reais ($10 USD), a facial for $50 reais ($25 USD), a “Brazilian” wax for $15 reais (known there as “depilação de virilha”; $7 USD) and multiple sessions of lymphatic massage for $100 reais a month ($50 USD). In comparison to the cost of aesthetic maintenance in the United States, Brazilian women are the fortunate ones. In some ways, the cheap costs, even for the average Brazilian, allow for a democratization of access to beauty, whereas in the U.S., this is not so much the case. And when one can find cheap beauty related services in the U.S., the question of service, quality, and even employee rights follows the far too reasonable price tag.

With relatively equal access to stellar services, many women have access to maintaining an image that puts them physically on par with their wealthier counterparts. In other words, she may not be rich, but at least her looks are equal to if not superior to someone with greater material wealth. In the United States, this “phenomenon” of sorts, democratization and equality by way of the physical, can be witnessed in the purchase of clothing and vehicles by those of a lower income. As quality attire is not nearly as expensive in the States as it is in Brazil (due mainly to import taxation and trade issues) and the intellectual property rights of high end designers are often violated by chain stores like H&M and Forever 21, people of the working and lower middle classes have greater access to some of the same clothing styles worn by the rich. As wealth, at least in the past, seemed less of a precarious state in the U.S., the preoccupation with “looking rich” was not evident. In fact, I would go as far as to argue that in many cases, the wealthy in the States can be indistinguishable from the general public (look at stores like Urban Outfitters, which peddles the image of tattered, vintage, and reconstructed clothing at a high price). This is not the case in Brazil, where the wealthy can be spotted from miles away.

Beauty can also mean an escape for some Brazilian women living in poverty, hence the idea of being good looking and well-groomed being given such high cultural value. There are frequent favela (slum)-based beauty pageants, model searches, and even the same video model industry seen in the states, one of them being the ever-present competitions for the next “it” girl in funk carioca (known as baile funk in the U.S.). Named for the most abundant parts of their bodies, the Mulheres Fruta (“Fruit Women”) are famous for their physical beauty. Take Mulher Melancia (“Watermelon Woman”). Famous for her backup dancing for MC Creu’s “Dança do Créu” (NSFW) and her more than generous backside, Andressa Soares (pictured above, right, with Mulher Melão (Melon Woman), left) has been in Brazilian Playboy and even a European tour all as a result of her bottom. Amazing. But it sure beats poverty any day, I suppose.

While beauty may not involve a direct translation into fortune and fame, it nevertheless serves as a surrogate for wealth in the social realm, calling for positive attention that would otherwise be absent in the face of poverty. It also can become an exportable currency, a stereotype for which Brazil is famous (beautiful women), but one that has also led to destructive and exploitive relationships between women who use their beauty as a source of income and the tourists who flock there to consume it.

Even novelas, Brazilian soap operas, repeatedly regurgitate the same Cinderella stories, creating the framework for the myth that beauty is a ticket out of the slums (or at least can allow for a temporary vacation with a wealthy benefactor). But this dream, just as many other rags-to-riches narratives often do, falls flat when translated to reality. Class mobility, while a possibility, is a rare occurrence in Brazil. So even though beauty could be considered a temporary equalizer, the end result of glaring poverty and a large percentage of the wealth staying within a small percentage of the population is what continues.

Next: On Race (Part 3)
--
originally posted @Racialicious on 8/10/09

No Laughing Matter: President Obama Depicted As the Joker

2009-08-09T21:32:00.000-03:00

Since President Obama's earliest moments in office, one of the biggest issues on the agenda has been healthcare reform. Yet as the clock ticks, many Americans have expressed disappointment, asserting that the healthcare goals are far from having been met and that they may have even been poorly planned and misguided from the start. As a means of voicing criticism, the word "socialism" has begun to create a loud whisper, but the assertion is not without visual aids, the most recent of them being President Obama depicted as the Joker.

Some consider the image insulting and disrespectful in a general sense, yet others have alleged that the image is racist "because it shows Mr Obama as a black-and-white minstrel in reverse." Blogger Steven Mikulan of LA Weekly wrote:

"It has a bit of everything to appeal to the drunk tank of California conservatism: Obama is in white face, his mouth (like Ledger's Joker's) has been grotesquely slit wide open and the word 'Socialism' appears below his face . . . The only thing missing is a noose."

the artist of the image is unknown, but it has been found posted in cities like Los Angeles and Atlanta

Others, particularly those from more conservative circles, believe that the image is one of the first examples of tangible evidence that the public is suffering from national regret and a lack of belief in the hope-heavy platform around which President Obama built his campaign. Conservative blogger Thomas Lifson of the American Thinker wrote:

"It is starting. Open mockery of Barack Obama, as disillusionment sets in with the man, his policies, and the phony image of a race-healing, brilliant, scholarly, middle-of-the-roader."

What do you think? Is this image racist or is it simply a typical example of political satire? Beyond simply race, what other issues are important for us to discuss in relation to this image?

Hat tip to Adam over at Eyes on Brazil for this topic!

originally posted @ Racialicious on 8/6/09

The Brazil Files: Paper, Plastic, or Racist Caricatures?

2009-08-09T21:31:00.002-03:00

I go grocery shopping almost every day here in Brazil, but I rarely really study the packaging of the products I buy beyond checking out the price and the contents. However, a few weeks ago, while sitting down to remove my nail polish, I noticed that a grocery store purchase yielded a little more than I had bargained for: racist caricatures! Yes, ladies and gentelemen, racist caricatures, even on something as simple as nail polish remover!

After noticing this, I decided to take note of other products. Another one I found by accident happened to be on a small bag of rosemary I picked up to use at my friend's house:

...little Chinese man (chinezinho) rosemary, that is.

In almost every country, racist caricatures have been used to sell every day products, but to still see such images in circulation is a bit troubling. It's of little concern here in Brazil, but usually in the United States, these logos would bring forth quite a bit of criticism.

Have any of you seen any racist caricatures on grocery items in the States or abroad? How do they make you feel?
---
originally posted @Racialicious on 7/20/09

The Brazil Files: Bela or Bust Part 1 - On Gender

2009-08-09T21:28:00.002-03:00

Continued from "Bela or Bust (Introduction)" . . .

Author’s note:
I recognize that to say that the preoccupation with being beautiful for women in Brazil boils down to three separate entities is oversimplifying. Gender, class, and race obviously intersect constantly and are difficult to consider beyond their Venn diagram-like existence. Yet for the sake of clarity and hopefully accessibility, I have decided to discuss this topic in three parts: 1) gender, 2) class, and 3) race.

Despite Brazil being one of the most powerful countries in Latin America, it is still working to develop an image that coincides with the nations with which it frequently interacts for diplomatic purposes and international recognition. While issues surrounding class are certainly a cause for shame to the Brazilian national identity, one of the other issues on its pulse for change is gender. Brazil has undergone rapid change in the last few decades in terms of women’s equality, with women moving from predominately domestic roles to working beyond the home and holding positions of power. Yet even with these achievements, the obsession with physical perfection has not dwindled, though in Brazil’s case, advances in women’s rights and an extensive beauty regimen are not necessarily at odds. In fact, in an ironic twist, what some women in the United States may find as a sign of oppression has become a mark of power and success.

Having grown up in the South, I’m accustomed to seeing women spend hundreds of dollars a month on their appearance and hours on maintaining it, but when I moved to Brazil, I was sincerely shocked to see that in both small towns and big cities, full-service beauty salons were everywhere, including people’s homes. Many Brazilians know someone who knows someone who does waxing, hair straightening, and nails in the back of her house. As Brazil has one of the largest informal labor sectors in the world, beauty certainly makes up a large part of this statistic, mean that many women have additional job opportunities even when they remain in the home. From Avon, Racco, and Mary Kay sales to nail care and lymphatic massage, the opportunities for a supplemental income are endless and easily accessible for women of all walks of life.

An intense focus on beauty has also been a mark of pride for women, especially as they climb socially. With more women each year entering the workforce in Brazil, peer recognition and respect are contingent on appearance. As more women hold positions of power, the pressure to remain beautiful only grows, as it can sometimes guarantee a better position and internal advancement within a company. However, this is not a phenomenon that is exclusive to Brazil, as this situation is often repeated in the United States, yet to a less obvious degree.

At this point, some of you may be asking what exactly I am implying when I say things like “intense focus on beauty” or “extensive beauty regiment.” When I say this, I am talking about what we would consider “high maintenance” in the United States as the accepted norm for women’s appearance. A woman must always be “bem arrumada.” This means that even when one goes grocery shopping, heels, nice clothes, and styled hair is the norm. One of my students once told me that she felt absolutely dirty when her nails were not done, and another informed me she would never leave the house with wet hair because that was super “pobre” (“ghetto”). Sure, some of the beauty norms make total sense, particularly those related to hygiene and personal maintenance (i.e. frequent waxing) considering the heat and beach cultures of some regions of Brazil. There is also a cultural connection in that just as many Americans obsess over cleanliness, Brazilians often obsess about neatness. This desire to be neat and clean goes beyond the household and can be easily observed in people’s overall appearance. But in terms of the daily need to be basically perfect, a pressure that is placed disproportionately on women, there is certainly room for questioning and criticism.

I’ve seen girls as young as 4 and 5 wearing heels and getting their nails and hair done, as if even female children are to be part of the adult beauty pageant I see on a daily basis. A recent article in the Brazilian magazine Veja indicated that more and more each year, young girls are becoming beauty statistics as they frequent salons almost as much if not more so than their mothers. With the expectation for young girls to be well-groomed, there also comes a similar expectation for them to be well-dressed. However, as clothing here tends to be generally more provocative (read: lower cut, worn tighter, more revealing), that expectation is somewhat poorly placed if we’re talking about children. Clothing here that would not be well accepted in the United States, at least not for daily wear (i.e. clothes Americans would wear to a club) make up the every day clothing, even work clothes, in certain regions of Brazil, so there is obviously a cultural difference. But I am not alone in my statement here that clothing for young girls has become increasingly limited to clothing that too closely replicates the clothing of their mothers and older female peers.

Even the clothing for women, at least that which is cheaper and more accessible to the general public, is somewhat troubling in that the focus seems to be to reveal as much of a woman’s form as humanly possible, yet at the same time, to infantilize her. I once remarked that I was tired of seeing clothing made for “baby prostitutes,” as so many of the items available for women would be incredibly revealing yet covered in pastel bows, equipped with tiny pockets, buttons, or additional frou frou that made me feel more like someone who is 5 instead of 25. Of course, style is different everywhere, clothing trends change, etc. But I mention all of this because I think it goes hand in hand with the gender divide and the issue of beauty.

Brazilian men, who certainly are the benefactors of such beauty standards (i.e. economically) are not held to nearly as high expectations when it comes to appearance, and that relates to anything from physical care to clothing choices. It is arguably the same in the United States, though in both countries some men are beginning to become more appearance-focused. What is different, however, is that in general, women in Brazil (appearance-wise) tend to fit into a very specific box and men in another, the divide being so great that determining one’s sexuality (i.e. gay, lesbian, straight) can boil down to the simplest of things like if a woman’s nails are manicured or wears dresses out dancing (or not) or if a man cares about his weight and hair color (or not).

So while from a distance, the idea of Brazilian female beauty being that of heavenly proportions, in actually, women in Brazil just tend to work much harder on average than women in the United States and some other countries in the West. But that beauty certainly does not come without a heavy price, one on which one’s social acceptance and class mobility can depend far more so than elsewhere.

Next: On Class (Part 2)
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originally published @ Racialicious on 7/16/09

Dear Porn Industry, Must Interracial Porn Always Be So . . . Racist?

2009-08-09T21:25:00.000-03:00

*Warning - Links and Content NSFW*

For those of you who watch mainstream porn out there, I have an assignment for you.

Pull up any film or video clip in which the characters who are busy bumpin’ uglies are of different races and/or ethnicities. Now see if you can get through the full film or clip satisfying the following requirements:

1. The color, size, or shape of the characters’ body parts, particularly genitals, as they relate to his or her race or ethnicity is not mentioned

2. No racist epithets are uttered.

3. The race or ethnicity of the characters (including the white characters) is not mentioned.

4. The background music, setting, and general environment of the scene does not conform to a stereotype related to one or more of the characters’ racial or ethnic identity.

Did you pass?

After having written a previous piece on interracial porn for Racialicious, I ventured into the glow of the internet’s red light district one more time, just long enough to come up with my own version of the Bechdel Test. The Bechdel Test is a list of film requirements as designated in the lesbian comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. According to one of the characters, a film is not worthy of her time if it does not meet the following requirements:

1. It has to have at least two women in it,
2. Who talk to each other,
3. About something besides a man.

Sadly, most ladyflicks (Confessions of a Shopaholic), ladyshows (Sex and the City), ladybooks (The Rules), and even ladycommercials seem to be unable to meet this requirement. Almost everything that is geared to women in pop culture and advertising reduce them to man-obsessed, self-absorbed entities who do little more than shop, eat (or obsess about food) and pine away for some jerk of a man who doesn’t want anything to do with them, only to be reminded that he’sjustnotthatintothem in the first place.

Considering this test is generally quite successful in determining if a film has any substance, even if you are not a lesbian, I thought I’d come up with a porn equivalent. I previously expressed the need for there to be porn that involved people of different races and/or ethnicities but that did not focus solely on the actors’ races as a pivotal point:

Porn, though trivial in the eyes of some, makes us analyze our own perspective on others who are different from ourselves. Could there ever be a day upon which seeing a couple of different ethnic, racial, or national backgrounds in a sexual context does not evoke specific images from our damaged history?

Could one ever view interracial sex objectively, and even then, without thinking about the interracial element at all, and instead, simply seeing it for what it is: two (or more) people having sex? If one can derive pleasure from watching two people who appear to be of the same racial, ethnic, or national background in heterosexual porn without any additional bells and whistles (albeit through a highly sexist lens), why can’t the same be said of interracial sex? Why must it always be packaged as a spectacle or a pornographic sideshow, an abnormal act that requires additional dialogue and themes to remind us that this is something different and borderline perverse?

When I am in a relationship with someone who is of a different racial or ethnic background from myself, I don’t spend my time preoccupied with our differences, so porn that does is, well, a huge turn off. Mr. BlackSexxx, author of the blog Black Sexxxology, shares my sentiments:

I need Porn Producers to step up and make Porn for more than just the white dudes with fetishes. You have women who want to join you under this umbrella of Porn Watcher and don’t want to feel put out by an industry that calls them Black Bitches, Black Hoes or Black Cum Drippers.

He goes on to lament the difficulties in even finding people of color in porn without it being a caricature of sorts. Can we ever get past the stereotypes to just see good sex? But as Mr. BlackSexxx goes onto to point out in his pieces “Porn Musings” and “Interracial Porn: Are We Still Discussing This in 2009?” the focus of porn, like any other industry, comes down to supply and demand. And unfortunately, for both women and people of color (groups that are not mutually exclusive), there is little concern for their needs. The target audience has, and probably always will be, white males. And while the industry has experienced considerable growth in the gay and lesbian market, even these films relate to white males, be they gay, straight, bisexual, or questioning, because they, too, involve racist stereotypes and are not free of the same garbage seen in the mainstream heterosexual set. The porn itself, at least in the mainstream realm, tends to be created to appeal to one demographic and that demographic only, even if people of color are enlisted for starring roles.

Speaking of lesbians, I’ve noticed a growing trend in ~~the totally fake~~ lesbian porn ~~geared toward heterosexual men~~: racism! There is a new set of lesbian gangbang films that involve black “ghetto” women (their words, not mine) taking advantage of some innocent white woman they are hard-pressed to “turn out.” So in one swoop, we have racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. And I thought at one point that lesbian porn was maybe the last bastion of hope in the mainstream porn world (at least in terms of race). I suppose I thought too soon.

Anyway, I digress…back to my interracial porn Bechdel test. This test is rather difficult to meet if you are discussing mainstream porn. And trust me, I tried. Yet the inability for the porn industry to meet these simple requirements seems to be taking its toll on the actors as well. As Mr. BlackSexx in his piece “Porn Retirements – Just One Man’s Opinion,” many black porn stars may be leaving the business early because they were never in it for the long haul but only for quick material gain. Yet others may have simply gotten tired of being typecast:

I think this has to do with a number of factors but most importantly it has to do with the fact that producers allow black men and women to follow into that overly sexual stereotype that they want nothing more than to have sex with the women of white men. Or the fact that black women are merely looked at as unconscious sexual beings created to serve white men.

For those who don’t quite fit into this aspect of the interracial porn genre, getting work may doubly hard as well, even if being "different" means a simply stray from a stereotypical “look” as dictated by porn views, producers, and greater dominant culture:

Wrong as it is I believe this has happened because this business is controlled in most part by white men. White men will put on screen what they and their contemporaries feel comfortable with. . . I once read that Obsession [author’s note: NSFW] not get work outside of Urban Pornography because of the number of tattoo’s and piercings she has … but somehow Belladonna still gets works even though she his fully Tatted and seeming presented as sexy?

But that’s yet another problem with interracial porn. Not only is it limiting for its actors, it’s limited and one dimensional as a porn genre. When people think of interracial porn or even if one googles it, the results are mainly black/white pairings, and even then, mostly black men/white female pairings. The term “interracial” seems to be reserved solely for sexual pairings that have a direct connection to American history’s open preoccupation with sexual race relations. Black men = threat, white women = sexual innocence. Why is there so little diversity in the interracial pairings themselves?

This question ends up leading right back into the cyclical supply vs. demand issue that relates to what Mr. BlackSexxx previously mentioned. If the target audience and creators are of the same demographic and ultimately share the same racist and limited perceptions of people of color, there is only one option. But for those viewers who want something different in the interracial sex on film realm, there is a lot of room for variety, but still more progress to be made.

--

Hat tip to The Hathor Legacy for this topic suggestion!

originally published @ Racialicious on 7/10/09

A Tattoo's Worth a Thousand Words

2009-07-09T09:03:00.002-03:00

Take a look at this photo. What are your initial thoughts on this tattoo?

After being tipped by reader pinkyloveswhisky, I headed on over to the BMEZine blog to check out what all the fuss was about, and I tried to do the exercise I recommended above. What were my initial thoughts on this tattoo? First I thought, wow, this is beautiful and very well done. The colors and detailing are perfect. The necklaces are so realistically portrayed I feel like I could reach out and touch them. I thought of documentaries I had seen on television about people living in remote villages and where the origins of many of the forms of body modification we participate in today can be traced.

Then I read the statement made by the man who had requested this piece:

I, like so many of our community members, have been totally fascinated with tribal cultures and their ideas of body art and beauty. In all simplicity this tattoo is my way of paying homage and showing people what body modification means to me and showing where my roots in this industry lay.

He notes that the piece is not a reference to anyone in particular or any one specific person, but for him the piece represents a means of paying homage to the peoples to whom we owe the popularity of body modification.

I think his tattoo is beautiful and personally take no issue with it. It’s all the same if any other person got a portrait piece done of a famous entertainer or public figure. However, on the blog itself, many people took issue with Dave’s statement and his use of the word “tribal.”

Here are some excerpts:

max on June 13th, 2009 at 4:23 pm:
it’s a great piece! however, i don’t understand why people refer to body modifications as tribal. all that is doing is perpetuating racial stereotypes. take any african studies course (or any minority group for that matter) and open your eyes to the implications (direct or indirect) such terms can endorse. it simply does not do any justice for the ethnic groups it’s meant to portray.

Jon P on June 13th, 2009 at 5:53 pm:
I, too, don’t think referring to this type of imagery as “tribal” or the body modification they practice as “tribal” either. Describing an indigenous culture as “tribal” merely denotes the way they organise socially, it’s not a way of describing cultures.
It’s fine and dandy to pay homage to a particular influence you’ve had. But if you only know the culture through textbooks and National Geographic documentaries, then you can’t really know the culture at all. Seeing an indigenous person’s stretched earlobes might have sparked your interest in body manipulation and what not, but that’s not what a culture is about. An having a portrait of an indigenous person on your body just smacks of the antiquated “noble savage” concept which all of us trained anthropologists cringe at.
The tattoo itself is cringe-worthy. It’s like a piece of tourist art you’d buy on your way through Africa or something.

VOMIT on June 13th, 2009 at 6:25 pm:
I’m totally diggin it.
Max: MANY cultures participated in body modification, some just little things, others a lot. But in no way would I say that a small minority participated in body modification. I don’t see how referring to body modification as being tribal in origin is not beneficial. Why does it have to be either? It’s good to know the history of something you love and enjoy. If that thing is body modification then it makes sense to look back at past cultures and see how it all started and what form it took. I don’t think it necessarily has anything to do with understanding your own identity, not unless you are of tribal decent. Also I think the fact that you think saying something is of tribal origin will some how hurt the modified community or alienate us even more is a bit sickening. If anything, I would think proving that body modification goes back a long way in history would make people see it less as a thing just for freaks or weirdos.

The comments continued on like this for another few days, ending with the usual “you are being overly sensitive” meme:

Jon P on June 17th, 2009 at 4:46 am:
See, it’s a very ingrained attitude being exhibited here. The oppressors, or those who live from the fruits of oppression, will always belittle those who draw attention to, or seek to right the wrong of, their oppressive attitudes and behaviours. Call it a WASP culture or whatever you want, but the dominant White culture that controls how indigenous people live their lives will always see them as subservient and not quite equal. You can tell that by the way everyone dismisses the discussion surrounding the inherently racist/eurocentric nature of the term ‘tribal’.
Poo poo it if you will, but it doesn’t make it an less true or important.

socialcoma on June 17th, 2009 at 6:01 pm:
blah blah oppressors blah blah wasp blah blah racist blah blah eurocentric
just let the man enjoy his tattoo

As I said above, I think the tattoo is beautiful and I appreciate it for its artistic value primarily. The artist did an amazing job. From a personal standpoint as a person who has about half of her upper body tattooed (and always yearning for more body work), has had her share of piercings (from visual to well-hidden), and who is thinking about gauging her ears, you could say I am biased. I respect the personal choice to have body modification done and think this choice goes hand in hand with the art one chooses as well. My tattoo pieces, while not portraits, have incredible significance to me and tell stories of my family history and my personal growth. In terms of artistic choice, I do not think art has one specific owner. While a style of body modification may have begun in one place or another, that does not mean it necessarily belongs and must stay within said location of culture. Culture and art are mutable entities. They change drastically over time and with cultural exchange.

That said, I do not believe that borrowing elements from other cultures is a sin. I see plenty of Americans, for example, who get Japanese style tattoos, most of which became all the more popular with the introduction of shows like Miami Ink, a reality tv series that, without a doubt, led to more acceptance of body modification in American culture, and arguably may have led to its very demise as an “underground” or “alternative” choice. Many Americans have or have had some form of modification done to their bodies, and if it’s not in the form of art, it’s via nose jobs, breast implants, and Botox. Whether we like it or not, body modification is just as much a part of American culture now as earlobe stretching, neck lengthening, and disk insertion is/was for “tribal” cultures. As I note in a previous piece, “Coloured Ink: Is Body Art Just a “White” Thing?” cultural appropriation is far more a part of our culture than we realize,

“Body modification was once exclusively associated with indigenous groups in Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. The practice was, in itself, something besides skin color that assisted in the “othering” of native peoples during their first encounters with Europeans. But over time, due to influences in music, art, and pop culture, the association shifted. Once considered museum-worthy cultural oddities, mohawks, wooden disks, nose rings, and creative scarring techniques, most of which had significant religious or social meaning within certain groups, had become a popular aesthetic among whites seeking to “other” themselves as members of the “alternative” community. Young whites made a conscious decision to appropriate what was seen as foreign/different, as an homage to other cultures, and assigned new meaning to everyday objects (like safety pins) in order to distance themselves from the establishment and the dominant culture.”

Now back to the comments above and the use of the word “tribal.” I think the word has become synonymous with Eurocentrism and the imperial gaze only in recent years, as I recall “tribal” being an acceptable term in the 1980s. Much with any other word used to describe a culture different from one’s own, the word has undergone considerable changes in meaning as a result of our growing sensitivity in considering “otherness.” This, I think, is a good thing. We should be careful with the words we choose to discuss other groups, though certainly should not be made to feel self-conscious if a passé term is used. In my opinion, the man who got this piece was not meaning to demean or offend indigenous groups by using the word “tribal.” I would go as far as to say that the majority of the people who know the “right” and “wrong" terms to use in this case are people immersed in anthropological, critical race theory, or history work, not necessarily the average American.

I also do not consider this art piece an example of cultural appropriation. He had a picture permanently inked onto his skin, an image of someone else, and I judge this piece as I would any other portrait. If a white performer tattooed a portrait of Michael Jackson on his or her body as a means of paying homage to a man who influenced his or her career committing cultural appropriation or exhibiting Eurocentrism? If the performer goes on to say that black musical traditions have had a profound impact on his or her work, is he or she being offensive?

I am leaving this piece a bit of an open thread because I have already stated my thoughts on the piece. What are your thoughts, readers (on both the piece and the comments)?

originally posted @ Racialicious on 7/7/09

A Choice of Fabric or a Choice of Words

2009-07-04T15:29:00.003-03:00

I woke up a bit late on Friday morning, yet despite my tardiness, I decided to humor myself with the usual banter of morning television. While simultaneously slipping on shoes and attempting to do something with my hair without the help of a mirror, I used my free hand to change the channel to NBC for the Today Show with Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira.

On the studio stage stood about five women, all glowing, smiley, and decked out in lingerie. The catch? They were mommies-to-be. That's right. Bedroom chic for expectant mothers was the topic of discussion. Considering my complete lack of maternal instinct, I was tempted to turn the tv off when something uttered by the special guest stylist/fashion critic made me pause. While I don't recall the exact quote, I remember the camera zooming in on a black mommy lingerie model as the critic noted the joy and pain of an increased bustline and a larger bottom, respectively, with the onslaught of pregnancy.

Hmmm...

I don't know about you, but I wish my butt were bigger. Though it may seem trivial, the critic's assessment of preferable body type could be easily considered the norm for only a few groups, of which black and Caribbean Latina women would customarily not be a part. As a large backside is generally more accepted, if not a expected aspect of the black and/or Latina beauty ideal, I find it humorous, though predictable, that the white female commentator would disregard this, making her comment as if ALL women want smaller bottoms and bigger boobs. But things went beyond petty and got a little worse (aka I kept the television on for a few more seconds in order to watch the ridiculousness unfold) when the critic turned to the next model: a pregnant blond in leopard print.

The critic guided us, as she noted that the next model was wearing "ETHNIC" print, which is really hot in this season's lingerie lines. Last time I checked, leopard print wasn't an ethnicity, nor were the people where, say, leopards live, covered in spots themselves. Though an innocent and completely unintentionally offensive slip of the tongue, the critic's likening of animal print to ethnicity and, on top of that, the implications of the term "ethnic" (read: non-white; in this case, of African descent considering the type of animal print) indicate privilege and a disregard for the complexities of race. The Irish, for example, are made up of several ethnicities, as are many other groups of Europe, but their whiteness often shields them from receiving this moniker.

"Ethnic" is reserved for people of color. The term, while seen as PC and harmless, nevertheless evokes tons of images, often those relegating people of color to the lowest, most "primitive" of states. After all, tartan plaid isn't considered "ethnic," but animal print is? How is one to interpret this other than assuming that the person utilizing this term may have preconceived notions of or underlying biases against certain groups. And if not that, the use of the term in this way, on national morning tv, is an indication that the layers of meaning upon so many of the words we use can be easily ignored if the term is used in a lighter context. Will racist epithets become the racial categories of the future? Will they find their way deeper into our speech, songs, and media in the ways that "Eenie Meenie Mynie Moe" or terms like "Rule of Thumb" and "Gypped" (from "gypsy") have weaseled into the American English vernacular?originally posted @ Racialicious on 4/21/2008

Cocoran Goes Multicultural

2009-07-04T15:21:00.002-03:00

Take a moment to survey the photo above. This is an advertisement for Corcoran Group Real Estate found in the March 31, 2008 issue of New York Magazine. The text in the caption reads as follows:

At Corcoran, we understand that your home is the site of your family's future history. So we go beyond what matters now. We listen to what will matter tomorrow - the hopes, the dreams, the visions, the goals, and the thousand wished-for moments that define you and those you love. Then we help you find a home that's perfect for the family you are today, and for the family you hope to be in the future.

Live who you are.

corcoran.com

built to last

When I first saw this ad, I thought to myself, "Wow, they have a biracial couple in a real estate ad!" Next I thought, "Wow, the couple happens to involve a black woman and a white male as the couple. I rarely see that!" To go further, my final thought was "...and she has dark skin, too! Amazing!!!"

All of these thoughts happened in about a 5 second time period, mind you, but I thought they were worth noting in stages. For one thing, it's rare that you see interracial couples in advertisements, period, especially those selling the concept of family. According to today's media, family values and bonding are restricted to solely "monoracial" families and couples. Ironically, in the case of black monoracial families and couples, the matriarch always happens to have light skin and sandy corkscrew curls. You know- that generic, stock photo racially ambiguous black lady with the carbon copy children to match- hence my surprise when I saw the photo above as I flipped the page from celebrity gossip to info on the Bear Stearns debacle.

I was reminded of the recent Old Navy television ad featuring ebony-skinned black model Nina Keita with a white male (quasi-) love interest:

Needless to say, part of me was incredibly excited to see that Corcoran had tried its hand at relationship/family diversity. However, when coupled with the caption, the photograph takes on a slightly different meaning. Were Corcoran's expressed hopes for appealing to the family of the future meant to relate to the interracial pairing in the ad? Was Corcoran attempting to show that this family transcended "what matters now" when it comes to the role of race in relationships? Lastly, is their line "built to last" in any way linked to the assumption that those involved in interracial relationships are doomed to failure? Is the success of such relationships a sign of the future Corcoran speaks of?

Even gender roles in this ad are a bit inverted, with the mother posing casually in the foreground of the photo with the youngest child, while the father, in the background, speaks with and appears to prepare breakfast for his daughter. The mother's appearance is flawless and far from matronly, as her model figure stands out despite her four children!

What is this dream that Corcoran is selling in the ad? Is is one of interracial harmony or one of unrealistic expectations? I could be overthinking this, but I can't help but wonder if the wording and the photo, when paired, were meant to signify something beyond a comfortable home in a competitive real estate market. Their promises of the future most certainly relate to more than just a mortgage. What do you think?

originally posted @ Racialicious on 4/22/2008

Independence for Whom?

2009-07-04T14:56:00.002-03:00

Today is Independence Day in the United States. I say this as an American who is in her last few weeks in Brazil. After a year of having lived abroad, I can safely say that I appreciate many things about American culture and being American than I ever have in my life stateside. I also can say, without a doubt, that I speak more critically of certain elements of American culture ™ having seen it at play in another country and being disturbed by its affects (intentional and unintentional), some of them being the destruction of another language, the devaluing of one’s own culture for the sake of adapting to American norms (transmitted via tv shows, films, and music) and holding oneself to a different standard as a result of external cultural influences.

When I was younger, I used to take issue with Independence Day, my nascent race-related activism sort of rearing its head early on. I’d think, is America really mine? My ancestors were forced to come here against their will and when America gained their independence from Britain, my ancestors were not free in the least, nor were they considered Americans, much less humans. So the holiday, despite all the fireworks and fun, was hard for me to stomach.

Now, speaking as an adult, and an adult who has a little bit more appreciation for her culture as an American, my mind has changed a bit. I still take issue with America’s past of course, there’s no questioning that. However, as someone who has lived her entire life in the United States, being American is part of who I am. And part of that American-ness is founded in the laws, ideas, and ways of life instituted by my constitutional forefathers, even if they would rather people who look like me exist only as their personal property.

It’s a part of our history I have to accept as there is no way to go back in time and change it. It’s also a part of my history I have to appreciate for what it is. Without these ugly bits of our past, we may not have been able to progress into something better. Certain people were made to sacrifice and I am a beneficiary of such pain, suffering, and struggle for freedom.

Happy Birthday, America.

The Brazil Files: Colossal Ewwww: Playing Brazil an Insult to...Everyone?

2009-07-02T11:28:00.002-03:00

I hate to even give this guy web time, but here goes...

While doing some research on beauty industry revenue and plastic surgery in Brazil, I stumbled upon a little gem called Playing Brazil. At this point, I started holding back the bile coming up in my throat. It was hard, so I decided to channel my disgust in writing this piece, which basically wrote itself, meaning I just threw up in my mouth a little instead of puking up the contents of my entire stomach.

Check out the site introduction:

This website is a comprehensive guide to picking up brazilian women, for you the tourist. I’ve spent a long time figuring this out, so if you follow this advice you are seriously going to increase your chances of getting with a beautiful brazilian girl! There is also an easy to use phonetic Portuguese section, which is key for pick up. You will only need a few!

Lovely. It's not like Brazilian women don't already have a hard time. Now they have to worry about fighting off more nasty tourists looking to have a good time and charm them with their bad Portuguese.

The author also reminds us that, just in case we didn't learn this from the media, all mixed girls are HAWT!:

Forget Ronaldinho or Pele, Brazil’s best export is their women. brazilian girls are the descendents of generations of racial mixing. Up until the 19th century, Brazil was mainly composed of three different people; the Portuguese, Africans and the indigenous inhabitants. In the 20th century the country received a flood of many millions of migrants from Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Poland and Japan. This recent migration led to Brazil being recognized to have received the second largest number of immigrants in the Western Hemisphere after the United States. So this blend of precarious races mixed into this melting pot has produced an exotic beauty that can be described as a masterpiece, a gift from god which is quite simply unlike any other type of woman in the world.

Major ew.

But wait. Just like in one of those terrible 4 am info-mercials, there's more. Sooo much more!

Here are some of the author's tips on picking up women:

Brazil is not like Thailand, Australia or Ibiza in terms of sheer number of tourists. Brazil still struggles to fulfil its potential in the tourism industry. It still wrongly suffers from an identity crisis. This is great for you as its still absolutely an untapped Mecca. The ratio of local to tourist is still exceedingly high so no matter where you go in Brazil or when you go. You are a “luxurious commodity” to the girls and they will view you as exotic. USE THIS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE. Remember you are a minority as a tourist in Brazil and will be very different to the everyday sleazy Brazilian guys in the club or bar.

See? Brazil is vulnerable. Go exploit that, and tap some youknowwhat in the process!

Generally speaking within 2 seconds of entering a club or bar the whole place will know your foreigners. Your pale skin and different mannerisms will be enough to alert them a mile off that you are not local (which is good!), not to even mention the different language you’ll be speaking.

Man, being white and male and foreign in Brazil is AWESOME! I wish I had this magic power over Brazilians, too!

He goes on to warn his readers not to get sloppy drunk because it's not very common in Brazil (This part is true. Most Brazilians, while clubbing, stick to beer or lighter alcoholic drinks because, I don't know, maybe they want to actually have fun instead of spending the night vomiting. What a strange concept!) He goes on to talk about how feminism in Brazil makes it a straight, white, male tourist's playground:

Now if you’re not drunk you can give some serious thought to getting your Brazilian girl. Now there are two ways in which this can happen. The first is; she approaches you.
Yes, you heard right!!! She approaches you. Brazilian women and culture are very sexually liberated, and it’s not uncommon for a girl to approach you and with very few words exchanged want to then kiss you. They are very forward.

So if she is hanging around expectantly kiss her! Even if you’ve been speaking to her for less than a minute. Seriously, DO IT! It’s what she’ll be wanting, you’ll be able to see it in her eyes. So what are you waiting for?

This part is a bit true as well, though not in the way he says it. In Brazil, it's common for people at parties or in clubs to "ficar." The verb "ficar" technically means to stay, to remain, or to be located in a particular place, but it also means "hook up." Yes, "o ficar" is the Brazilian Portuguese equivalent of that vague post-peck on the cheek, pre-sex place that some older Americans and even the New York Times (is it just me, or is it not so awesome that the author's last name is Blow?!?!) waste their lives trying to figure out. But I will tell you one thing, in Brazil, it's not that deep.

"O Ficar" is simply making out with someone as if the world might end tomorrow, but after that, there is no guarantee that anything is going to actually happen. In the States, if someone were to make out with me like that, the expectation on both ends would be to go beyond just a kiss, but in Brazil, kissing people, even perfect strangers, is the norm (in social/pick-up friendly environments like clubs). And when I say this, I don't mean in it an insulting, judgmental way. It's just a cultural difference that many foreign visitors have trouble adjusting to and/or don't understand. The author of Playing Brazil is a perfect example. Sure, "o ficar" can lead to other things, but for some, it's just a way to ease the tension of meeting someone for the first time. Kiss first, chat and drink (and sometimes even the person's name) come later. That doesn't mean, however, that it's an invitation for easy sex.

Oh and last but not least, we must talk about the power of language:

So look to verbally seduce them. When you deliver your line in Portuguese i.e. “Oi, tudo bem?” Make sure you have a big smile on your face as it will portray that you’re a fun confident type of guy. . . By this point one of either two things will happen. Either she will speak some English in which case she will immediately start chatting to you in English as they are so keen to practice their English. If this happens then great you’re in. You will see how different Brazilian girls are compared to other nationalities; their enthusiasm is quite literally contagious!

So careful, guys. DO NOT learn Portuguese because you actually care about Brazilian culture or want to interact with people as humans. Learn just enough Portuguese to say hello, because that's all you will need for a night of panty-dropping excitement. Ok, full on upchuck. This is insulting to women, obviously. He insults Brazilian women by making them out to be "easy" (and not in the good, hey she is empowered and has agency and understands the role of sex in human relationships kind of way, but in the these women are like porn personified, naive, stupid, and easy to objectify kind of way), but he also manages to insult women of other countries by making this gross comparison between "us" and "them." He manages to insult Brazilian men several times on the site (they're stupid, ugly, sleazy). And all in all, he is a big insult to white men, tourists, and a whole slew of other people.

If I were to revise his site, I'd simply advise his readers that if they really want girls, maybe going to a foreign country they know nothing about in hopes of hooking up with the population of whom they might have an incredibly stereotypical view might not be the best way to do it. In Getting a Girl 101, I am not quite sure if being an ignorant jerk is part of the lesson. Man, gotta love the democratization of the internet.

originally posted @ Racialicious on 7/2/09

The Brazil Files: Bela* or Bust (Introduction)

2009-06-30T10:12:00.003-03:00

“So, are the girls hot?”

This is the most common question I receive from American men when I explain that I have been living in Brazil. These men come from all walks of life, are of various racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds, and of varying levels of education, exposure to other countries, etc. Long story short, this question seems to be on the minds of many men. It is, for better or for worse, a universal curiosity.

But in my response, I quickly put things in perspective.

"Well, for one, Ugly travels. I see just as many unattractive people in Brazil as I do in the States, and equally as many beautiful people on both sides as well. But I can safely say that the majority of women in Brazil work really hard to be beautiful, more so than the majority of American women."

There are usually follow-up questions about body types (butts being the primary focus, of course) and clothing styles (are the clothes all skimpy?) and I handle those accordingly. The preoccupation with appearance in Brazil-related questions is to be expected considering that one of the primary portrayals of Brazil in the United States relates to beach culture, scantily-clad women, and sex. But when one takes the time to consider the reasons behind the high standards of beauty in Brazil, it is obvious that there is more to being beautiful and participating in the process of achieving that than just a bikini wax or the perfect nails. Beauty in Brazil is a complex matter involving gender, race and, most certainly, class.

In terms of statistics, Brazilian surgeons perform cosmetic plastic surgery at one of the highest volumes in the world. According to the Brazilian Society of Plastic Surgery, 1,157,540 cosmetic surgical procedures were performed in 2007, placing Brazil behind the United States in the volume of annual procedures (the U.S. ranks number one with 1.8 million, a number that does not include reconstructive surgery or non-invasive procedures like botox injections). For 2008, the Brazilian beauty industry (and this number only accounts for formal sectors) recorded $21.7 billion reais (about $11.8 billion USD) and a 10.6% growth in revenue since 2007. Articles upon articles remark at the growth of the beauty industry despite the pending doom of the global economic crisis. Coincidence? I think not.

In the upcoming weeks, this 3-part article on beauty in Brazil will continue with analysis based on race, class, gender, and media. Be sure to stay posted for more!

-----

*Bela (yes, just one L, aka that is not a spelling mistake) means “beautiful” in Portuguese
**Pictured: Brazilian model Adriana Lima
***For statistical citations, please see the following:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/6430219/The-Plastic-Surgery-Capital-of-the-World
http://www.yourplasticsurgeryguide.com/trends/asps-2007.htm
http://www.esteticafacial.biz/cirurgia-plastica-0
http://www.revistamercado.com.br/vernoticia/45/2/

originally posted @ Racialicious on 76/30/09

Timing Is Everything: Nicolas Sarkozy Defends Women’s Rights by Restricting Them

2009-06-27T11:12:00.002-03:00

I must open this piece by stating that as someone who believes in equality between men and women, I would not be happy if my country or my religion or my culture told me I must dress or look differently from my male peers. I am not happy when it happens in any country, including my own, the United States. When I turn on the television and hear stories of women spending countless dollars to look like a certain celebrity or see magazines marketed toward women that encourage them to do, act, or look a certain way to garner more male attention, whereas men participate far less frequently in this charade, I am disgusted.So when Afghanistan was the country of the moment leading up to the September 11th attacks and America's subsequent response, I recall feeling angry every time I saw a woman in a burqa on television. My gut response was one tempered by the typical Western media approach to more conservative aspects of Islam. "Why must these women wear something covering every inch of their bodies, while men are left to dress according to their very whim?” I tried to put myself in these women’s shoes, knowing I would be incredibly angry if I went from wearing clothing I chose on my own to being forced to adhere to a new government policy that dictated my very move, even down to my personal style.I would feel trapped, limited, removed, alienated. I would feel separated from my former self, as I use my clothing and style to reflect my personality and my mood. Most of all, I would feel different, and ultimately inferior to the male peers with whom I was once, more or less, visually equal.

Yet now, as the burqa has resurfaced again in the Western media, my opinion has changed.

While looking for classroom discussion topics yesterday on CNN.com, I came across a piece on Nicolas Sarcozy’s recent statement on the use of the burqa in France.

"The problem of the burka is not a religious problem. This is an issue of a woman's freedom and dignity. This is not a religious symbol. It is a sign of subservience; it is a sign of lowering. I want to say solemnly, the burka is not welcome in France."

Reading this quotation alone sent a flood of opinions through my brain, one of them being “this is utter crap.” Clearly, the use of the burqa as mandated by law is not exactly fair to women, but to set a limitation on its use, especially in public spaces, is just as bad, if not worse.

With Iran in the news, our focus on the role of religion in conjunction with the government has been renewed, but has France’s supposed secular state opened up a new problem, perhaps one that demonstrates it is equally as dangerous to swing the opposite direction?

France, a prime example of secular statehood, is looking to cloak anti-Islamic rhetoric in the fabric of women’s rights. Though Sarkozy claims that his inquiry into whether or not a ban on the burqa runs counter to France’s constitution is being conducted for the sake of protecting women and not based on the question of religion, he is doing quite the opposite. Of course his inquiry has to do with religion. To be more specific, not only does it unfairly and disportionately target the French Muslim community (um, do you see anyone else wearing burqas?), but it also, in an ironic twist, targets women by limiting women’s freedom of expression (again, um, know any men wearing burqas?)

So while I understand and sympathize with the reasoning behind Sarkozy’s proposal, that being to ensure women’s equality, I completely disagree with the way he is going about attempting this grand charge. He is exhibiting behavior that is the perfect example of what the women of so many marginalized communities often complain: 1) he is attempting to fight their struggles for them and 2) he is galvanizing a small issue in a minority sect of a larger community. He is using an attempt to protect women’s rights as a means of limiting them.

Within this attempt, Sarkozy is also acting to push a bigger issue. His real hidden agenda relates to protecting the French, and further, European identity, in the wake of rapid immigration from former European colonies. He is employing the burqa issue as a symbol, a metaphor for a greater "problem." The general public is not as blind as he may think. And while some Muslims, including those active in French government, support this inquiry, their motives may be for protection and self-preservation more than anything else. Afterall, if you have a small thorn in your side, a splinter in the widespread acceptance of Muslim communities by way of a small, more conservative, and thus perceived as more radical Muslim minority sect, your community’s attempt to assimilate is going to be thwarted. By alienating the women within the population who choose, for whatever reason (one that is rightfully theirs and one the public should respect), to wear the burqa, one can distract the focus on Muslims to a focus on specific Muslims, the “other” Muslims who are different from “us,” the more assimilated, moderate, visually non-threatening to the European Identity types.

So sure, I would not want to wear a burqa, nor would Mr. Sarkozy, but that, as we all know, is completely irrelevant. It’s a distraction from the heart of the issue, which is xenophobic, anti-Muslim rhetoric to protect the European Identity as it crumbles to ashes. In a country where any religious clothing (down to a simple Star of David or crucifix necklace) has been outlawed from use in public schools and government jobs since 2004 and where even surveying the religious diversity of the nation is not allowed on a government level, this inquiry and potential future legislation is taking things too far. What a woman chooses to do in a public place, but on her watch, in her private time, even if that means adhering to something Sarkozy and his government may find objectionable and an affront to women’s rights, is her business. And no matter her ethnic, racial, geographic, or religious background, it needs to stay that way.

originally posted @ Racialicious on 6/25/09

OK DONE...sort of...

2009-06-21T19:26:00.002-03:00

ok, i've finished archiving the work i've done for racialicious. there are still a few articles missing that i need to add, and of course, anything forthcoming. in addition, i need to throw in the work i did for adam's old blog too sense along with the work i have done for the coup magazine.

it's going to be a long week.

The Brazil Files: Race & the Runway - São Paulo Fashion Week Dabbles in Color

2009-06-20T17:46:00.002-03:00

models Joseph Ackon, Samira Carvalho and Ronaldo Martins for Osklen

Yesterday afternoon, I was talking to one of my colleagues when I noticed one of the most beautiful black women I had ever seen in my life walk through the door. Despite the young students running around at her feet, she remained calm. She stood out among all the other parents awaiting their children as she was the youngest, the one with the most poise, and the darkest. Amid all the other white parents, this young woman, despite the simplicity of her white canvas jacket and jeans, called for the most attention. She was simply arresting. My first thought was, “wow, she could be a model.”

Yet this moment of wandering imagination was quickly squelched by the loud voices of two young and rambunctious pupils approaching from behind. I continued to watch as the two pale, fair-haired children ran to join hands with the woman who could give Iman and Naomi Campbell a serious run for their money, the contrast of their skin colors and body language putting everything in perspective. She was the children’s caretaker, their nanny, possibly the family maid. And that is exactly the social order in which she would most likely remain, for no matter the intensity of her beauty, in Brazil, her color would be a disadvantage - the mark of Cain, if you will. She was the color that I had heard some pray their children would not be. She was the color that stood as shorthand for crime and poverty. But in my eyes, she possessed a color that I quite frankly missed.

It’s rare that I see people who have very dark brown skin in the Southern region of Brazil, which is made up primarily of whites of European descent (the majority being of Italian. German, and/or Portuguese origin), Asians (of Japanese descent), and people one could classify simply as “Brown” or “Beige,” in that their racial background is multiracial and ambiguous or generally indiscernible (though this includes all of the aforementioned as well as African and indigenous origin). Though I occasionally see more blacks* in major cities of the south like São Paulo, they are few and far between in my neck of the woods. But upon seeing the woman who had come to pick up her charges, I was reminded of the simple fact that not only were people (especially women) markedly missing from the general population in the region in which I live, but they were glaringly absent from the fashion and beauty industry in Brazil.

A few moments later, I went upstairs to check my email, the UOL homepage reminding me to “VEJA DETALHES DOS LOOKS EXIBIDOS NOS DESFILES DE SPFW VERÃO 2009/2010.” Something had completely slipped my mind: It was São Paulo Fashion Week.

Though SPFW had just begun on Wednesday, it had already caused a pre-event stir thanks to allegations of racism on the runway. The fashion week runways in Rio, though particularly in São Paulo, were striking for something beyond the fashion. Instead of being recognized for innovative designs, the shows were marred by accusations of blatant discrimination toward and exclusion of models of color (in this case, meaning primarily models of African and indigenous descent). Despite Brazil being a nation with nearly 50% of its population composed of people with African descent (according to the 2007 study conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (O Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, or IBGE)), the catwalks were snow white. In a country as diverse as Brazil, it was a shock and metaphorical assault toward a large part of the population by way of their very absence from the nation’s most pivotal event in fashion and beauty after Carnaval.

After the allegations mounted to an all-time high during last year’s SPFW shows, particularly with the help of extensive coverage by Folha de São Paulo, one of the most widely circulated and influential papers in Brazil, the organizers of SPFW were taken to task by federal prosecutors. According to an official model count made by Folha reporters, of the 344 models who participated in the January 2008 SPFW shows, only eight of them (you read that right, eight) were black. Prosecutor Déborah Kelly Affonso, who is part of a group of prosecutors who concentrate specifically on the issue of social inclusion, initiated what would become the fashion equivalent of affirmative action.

“The percentage of black models at the event is far less than that of white models. The objective of [the public prosecution department for which she works] is to come to a consensus on social inclusion, to establish the minimum number of black models to participate in the shows,” noted Affonso.

As a result of this accord, SPFW was obligated to ensure that at least 10% of the models in each designer’s show were black, of African descent, or of indigenous origin, or otherwise risk paying a $250,000 fine. Considering the demographic profile of Brazil’s population, one would assume that meeting this newly established requirement would be easy. Yet some designers and stylists were less than enthused about the decision. Some denied all instances of racism, while others offered everything from straight up idiocy to petty, thoughtless excuses in order to legitimize and maintain their racist casting practices.

In reaction to the new racial quotas, one designer, Gloria Coelho exclaimed, “The quota can interfere with the work of the designer. Our work is art, something that has to convey emotion to which the people can identify.”

I suppose “The people” with whom she is talking about having this great connection are not the 50% black/brown ones. But Coelho does not stop there. She continues to put her designer shoe-adorned foot in her mouth.

“During Fashion Week, there are plenty of black people sewing, helping style the models, working behind the scenes, and making beautiful things . . . there are black assistants, black salespeople….why must they also be on the catwalk?”

And I thought I had heard it all when European designers gave the typical “but their skin color distracts from the clothes” response.

According to Coelho, having black people work in the background was enough. If their work is coming out on the runway (albeit under Coelho’s name, meaning they receive no recognition for their work), why must the people wearing it be black too? While I could mount a week’s long response to Coelho, I will refrain and restrict my grievances to the following:

Dear Ms. Coelho,

When people who share your skin tone or ethnic background become one of the poorest, underserved, and least frequently recognized, praised, or accepted groups in Brazil, or even the planet, give me a call. When you happen to live in a place where everyone from actresses and politicians down to dolls and cartoons look nothing like you, send me an email. When the people who look like you often portray maids, criminals or fools on tv, send up a smoke signal. Until then, please reserve your dismissive, self-serving, privilege-laden bullsh*t for someone who has the patience to listen and commiserate.

Sincerely,

Someone Black

SPFW organizer Paulo Borges is another one on the FAIL list, having made several contradictory statements regarding the quotas. First, he claimed that he had no control over which models participated in the shows. Yet in 2007, Luminosidade, an organiztion of which he is a part, signed an agreement to restrict the use of models with severe health problems (i.e. eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia or who were incredibly underweight) as well as models who were under the age of 16. Despite having been a part of this agreement and the organizer of Fashion Week itself, he has no say in who walks. . . Interesting. Then in hopes of distracting critics, he trotted out his adopted black son as a token of his being opposed to racism. Yet as noted by Folha, this decision is purely of personal political note and has nothing to do with the commercial side of his affairs. See! I am not racist! I have an ADOPTED BLACK CHILD! Cute.

Borges (right), sporting an Obama shirt (see? he's not racist!), pictured with actress Alice Braga (left)

Casting agencies obviously play a major role in this runway racial struggle. As they are primarily responsible for sending the models to meet and audition for the designers, they hold many of the cards. Anderson Baumgartner, director of Way Model, an agency based in São Paulo, explains that there are fewer black models in the shows because they do not usually fit the body type sought after by the designers.

“They are more voluptuous, sexier; lots of them have bottoms that are a little bit bigger.” Others think the problem may lie in there being fewer black people in hot spots, or high fashion areas in São Paulo. “People of African descent are not at the restaurants or at the places where the scouts search. You see fewer of them on Oscar Freire.**”

Needless to say, Gisele Bündchen was discovered while eating a Big Mac at a McDonald’s in a São Paulo mall. The excuse just doesn’t fly.

And while other designers, such as Alexandre Herchcovitch , São Paulo born and based designer and creative director of SENAC, a Brazilian fashion and design school, do not oppose the quotas, there is more to the story than simple opposing or supporting the government’s attempt to level the catwalk. Some black models, organizations, and agencies are not exactly welcoming of the change, though for very different reasons.

According to Folha, Hélder Dias de Araújo, head of a black modeling agency, is one of the only people to accuse of SPFW of racism outright, yet he discusses racism with a twist.

“Sure, there is prejudice. But it’s more social, class-based, than racial. If [we were talking about] Pelé or Barack Obama, no one would ignore [the problem].” Yet he notes that he is against the catwalk quota system, mainly because he believes that “Brazil must be ashamed to see that it is not a place for a ‘pure race.’”

In other words, in continuing the racist practices in the fashion shows, Brazil would be setting itself up for embarrassment. Why host shows with an all-white cast of models when it is obvious, widely-known, well-documented that Brazil is a place of great ethnic and racial diversity?

Others oppose the quota because they believe it is not enough to remedy the problem of racism and exclusion in the fashion industry. Organizations like Educafro (Educação e Cidadania de Afrodescendentes e Carentes) is organizing an all-black fashion show in Ibirapuera Park (where SPFW takes place) as a protest to the continued absence of black models in fashion. They have also asked for invitations to the SPFW shows, primarily to conduct their own black model count, a task they have little faith in the Prosecution’s Office to actually do (as of today, no such count has been planned by the government).

Both their and Araújo’s argument make this issue a bit more complex and raise more questions about how to deal with the occupational hazard of racism in the arts. In such fields, do racial quotas and affirmative action-like measures have a place? Do they somehow infringe on artistic freedom or, worse, do they inhibit the prospect of viewing the models as individuals instead of statistics? And what is to be done to ensure the inclusion of non-black and non-indigenous models? What about models of Asian or Middle Eastern descent (both groups make up a considerable part of the Southern Brazilian population)? Though SPFW has only just begun, there are still a few more days and many more seasons to come for the public to observe how this will play out. Yet as racial tension mounts throughout Brazil as a result of multiple government measures to create equal access for all its citizens, regardless of race, one has to wonder what the state of race will be in Brazil in a decade or two. In the meantime, I’m going to sit back, relax, and watch my people work it on the catwalk. . .
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*I am using the generally accepted Brazilian definition for “black” here. For more info on this, please see my piece “Busy Being Foreign”

**Oscar Freire is a street, and by extension, quasi-neighborhood, recognized as one of the most upscale areas in São Paulo. The street is home to many expensive and well-known designer stores and boutiques. I have visited this area several times and even as someone foreign, I have felt out of place as one of the few middle class, non-whites gracing the pavement. The class tension is so evident it could be cut with a knife.

***check out clips from SPFW shows here: Fashion4FunBrasil

For more SPFW coverage (in Portuguese), go here: SPFW on UOL

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Sources consulted and translated for this piece:

Fioratti, Gustavo. “Cota para Negros Mobiliza a São Paulo Fashion Week” Folha de São Paulo. June 17, 2009 (link)

“Promotora Quer Cota Para Negros em Desfiles” Folha de São Paulo (Online Edition) April 12, 2009 via Geledés Instituto da Mulher Negra Blog (link)

originally published @ Racialicious on 6/19/2009

Nostalgia: A Sport for the Privileged

2009-06-20T17:45:00.002-03:00

We all do it.

We fall in love with the beautifully enchanting portrayal of the past that we encounter in novels, historical fiction, and on the big screen. We get lost in the dashing gentry, the voluminous hoop skirts, the lazy Sunday evenings. This fantasy past, however, is quite far from the reality most of us would have encountered in the “good old days.”

In fact, if I were alive during the long lost past, I would probably be an incredibly unhappy camper.

But there was a time when I could not see the forest for the trees. I would sit there with my classmates penning my “If I were to travel in time…” essays for English class or fantasizing about the Baroque period in Humanities class. I would travel to the deepest, darkest Africa with Cecil Rhodes in my History class. Yet as I got older and became more seasoned in the realities of global race relations, the beauty of the past faded. I knew for sure that no matter how beautiful an outfit, hairdo, or even lifestyle may have seemed, my participating in the nostalgic longing to return to the past was, in fact, an art I had picked up from the privileged.

If I were to go back to any time in American or European history, even the 1980s (Reaganomics….) or 1990s (LA Riots, anyone?) at my present age, I would face considerable challenges as a result of my race. As a black person, I would not be provided the same access to a happy life. It would most likely be thwarted by systematic oppression or social alienation. And with the rights I presently possess, I would not be willing to give those up for even a minute of sipping mint juleps in the antebellum South or listening to a live concerto in 19th century France. The reality is that I would not be welcome.

Nor would many of my friends. My Chinese friends would have been entirely banned from the United States (Chinese Exclusion Act). My Japanese friends would have been suspected terrorists (Japanese Internment). And anyone with a drop of black blood…well, get to hoeing, folks!

I suppose that is the magic of history. We can imagine it as we wish. We can simply ignore the facts in their entirety and craft an imaginary, historical fantasy world catered to our specific interests, in complete ignorance of the plight of well, just about everyone except for wealthy, white, male, straight, Christian landowners.

But, for now, I’ll stay right here in the present and imagine a better future to come.

originally posted @ Racialicious on 6/15/2009

The Brazil Files: Busy Being Foreign

2009-06-20T17:44:00.003-03:00

Since I’ve been living in Brazil, I have suffered from memory loss. On occasion, I simply forget that I am black.

Let me explain . . .

I was born in the United States, in the South to be exact, during the early 1980s, to a mother with very fair skin who, along with her seven sisters and brothers, had witnessed and undergone Jim Crow segregation. My great grandmother and grandfather, a teacher and farmer, respectively, who both had dark skin, had given birth to a light-skinned child, my grandmother, who would then go on to marry a man of equally light skin who was raised to distrust black people who looked like his in-laws. My father, on the other hand, came from a family where the emphasis on high cheekbones and dark wavy hair was made more frequently than that of slightly flattened noses. We have Native blood, they’d say.

You see, colorism was alive and well in my family.

And yet years later, when I still feel compelled to remind my mother that her coarse, nappy hair is beautiful or that there is no need to insert the words “but” or “despite” as my family refers to model Alek Wek’s ebony-skinned beauty, I know that the remnants remain. At the end of the day, we are all of African descent, and in our slavemasters’, old legislators’, and white domestic terrorists’ eyes, we were all black. Yet within that category, we found various ways of re-categorizing ourselves to fit our own neat little model of racism. We created a home-kit, if you will, of silly divisions of what was acceptable and what was not in terms of appearance and behavior.

My maternal grandfather warned his daughters of the dangers of the villainous, malicious dark blacks. Of course, there were exceptions, my dark-skinned aunt and uncle being visible reminders of our inescapable heritage, and the only dark people my grandfather ever truly accepted beyond a superficial level (his race track buddies do not count). But for the most part, darker blacks were to be avoided, despite my family’s shared plight with them in a segregated south.

My mother, though quite young during the segregation period, still bears irrevocable memories. She has recounted stories of slapping a young white girl who had stared at her in a hospital bathroom because she had “never seen a Negro girl up-close before,” of thinking that “colored only” fountains would one day magically transform into a spring of rainbow-infused water, and of remembering her confusion as to why her older sister spent so much time “marching” in the street when she was not wearing her majorette uniform. And presently, in her work as a geriatric social worker, she is reminded of the divisions the period and the long-lasting subsequent effects they have had on the black community when her older, darker-skinned black patients assume she is “stuck up” or cannot be trusted because of her light skin.

Having grown up in a family like this, race inevitably became a daily topic of discussion.

Sure, we were undoubtedly on the privileged end of the spectrum. We had light skin, we were middle class, we owned property. My mother, father, and some of their siblings had coveted college degrees, no small feat for the select few blacks who made it through the southern university system in the 1960s and 70s. And even the family members who never made it to college still have successful, fulfilling careers of which they can be proud. Of course, my family, like any other, has its flaws, but nothing that was inherently linked to our skin color.

Yet again, race comes up all the time. My family holds the same hostility as other blacks towards those involved in the perpetuation of systematic, institutionally sanctioned racism. We are reminded of our race all the time by co-workers’ exclusionary behavior, by being followed around while patronizing clothing stores, and by merely having tastes, food traditions, and vernacular speech that differed from whites. Despite our color privilege, we existed in a third world of sorts, our own little space between “black,” as designated by whites, and “not quite black enough,” (or “almost,” as I was once called) by other blacks.

My going to a predominately white all girls’ school did not exactly alleviate this feeling. As the sole representative of blackness in my grade, I was a piss-poor example of the kind of black girl my white peers may have anticipated. I was not like the black people they saw on television, nor was I quite like their maids who, in some cases, had provided the only contact the girls had with other blacks. Yet despite my being “different” from other blacks, I (along with several of the black students from other grade levels) had to serve as a delegate for the race. I got the usual questions about hair maintenance, “ghetto” vocabulary words, and whether or not blacks are capable of tanning. Needless to say, the job was tiring.

Following high school, college led me to New York City where, despite the city’s never-ending layers of diversity, I was still confronted with lots of questions, comments, assumptions, and externally-assigned categories related to my race, the race of my partners, and the race of my friends. So considering my family background, upbringing, and personal history that warranted my admitted preoccupation with race, you can imagine my surprise at my ability to go days at a time during which I completely step outside of my skin and do not feel the often heavy weight of being a person of color.

That is the only way to describe my experience here in Brazil. I have never had so much time go by in my entire life during which I am not faced with unwarranted expectations, assumptions, and characterizations associated to my race. Why? Mainly because what I consider “my race” does not exist within the same box as it does in the United States.

In Brazil, the term “black” (“negro/a”) is often relegated solely to people of African descent who have much darker skin and/or used for political purposes (i.e. as a unifying, symbolic reference by people with invested interests in community building among blacks/Afro-descendants). So whenever I discuss race with my students (which occurs a lot considering that a discussion of race is inseparable from a discussion on American history and culture) and I declare myself as black, they get confused.

“But, Teacher, you are not black,” they often say, noting the lightness of my skin as the most salient piece of evidence. “You’re morena or mulata, but not black.”

Following their usual assertion, I have to explain that in the United States, the three terms are not mutually exclusive. As a result of the “One Drop Rule” and, later, the politicization of the term during the Civil Rights Movement, black was a term reserved for the majority of people who have African heritage in the United States, no matter the lightness or darkness of their skin. I then go on to cite the color gradation within my own family and that, in spite of their lightness, many much lighter than I, they still consider themselves black in both race and culture.

Considering that race in Brazil is dealt with mainly on a phenotypic level (based on physical appearance), you can imagine their surprise at what they consider an oversimplification of race in the United States. I recall once that when a Brazilian friend of mine came to visit New York, he remarked that he was surprised by the large black population in Brooklyn.

“There are soooo many black people here,” he proclaimed, leaving me a bit dumbfounded. “But you’re from Brazil. What are you talking about? There are plenty of black people there. Why are you so surprised?” I asked.

Then I realized; “Black” for him and “black” for me were two totally different things. In my eyes, he and I were both black, along with the other millions of people in Brooklyn whom he had singled out as having shocked him in their abundance and millions more brown-skinned people I had seen in Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Salvador in Brazil. Yet to him, “black” only meant people with very dark skin and decidedly black African features. That term was reserved for a very small group of people in Brazil, some of whom continue to be marginalized in many ways on account of their color.

“Espero que nosso filho não seja preto,” (“I hope our son isn’t black” — “black” in this case being referred to by way of the now offensive term “preto,” which is used sometimes to refer to very dark black people) I once heard a white expecting mother jokingly say of her soon to be born biracial child. The father, moreno. The grandfather, according to the couple, preto, hence the fear. While the statement was harsh and said a lot about Brazilian race relations, I cannot exactly say I was surprised. It is just that normally I am not privy to such racist admissions. As a result of my appearance, I had been cast in the shadow of privilege and provided a front row seat to the racism circus, a performance I often missed in the United States because I was still black there. At home, I was not placed in some imaginary bubble of protection simply for being a few shades lighter than some others. Black was black was black. Brazil is a different story entirely.

Here, I have begun to recognize that privilege takes many forms, all of them unwelcome on my part. For one thing, I am American. While this aspect of my being is not immediately recognized, as most Brazilians assume I am one of them and/or have a parent who is, once this fact becomes known, how attractive, interesting, and accepted I am in public places skyrockets in ways that would never happen if I were simply a brown-skinned Brazilian. In a country where many of the imports come from the Land of the Free including entertainment in the form of music and film, some of the most powerful mediums of cultural dominance, you can imagine what my presence means, whether I like it or not.

The other point of privilege lies in my appearance, at which I have already hinted. Being more caramel-esque than dark means I am afforded treatment that is strikingly different. I do not get followed around retail stores or profiled by the police. People who look like me are profiled in advertisements, have roles in novelas (soap operas), and are spokespeople for high end products. I am included in colorist, racist discussions and jokes as if people who have the same origin as I are separate species. I am pursued romantically and openly considered attractive by people of many different races. In relation to quite a few of the aforementioned, I cannot say the same with regards to my experience living in the United States.

The next aspect of privilege I have had to assess is one that is far more powerful than skin color and nationality: class. In the United States, I am middle class. Here, despite my weary checking account, I give off signs of wealth unintentionally. Clothes like those one could buy at H&M, Forever 21, and other popular chain stores are taxed to the hilt and marked up to the degree that they are almost inaccessible to anyone who is not upper middle class to rich. The same goes for items from Zara, which they have in larger Brazilian cities, but with price tags that would give any New Yorker, Lisboan, or Madrileña a heart attack. Electronics, international food, and even books can be added to this list of overpriced goods in Brazil, but to which I have easy, cheap access Stateside. With that said, my possession and consumption of the aforementioned put me in a higher class than many Brazilians who share my skin color, as the wealthy class in Brazil is decidedly white.

With all that said, there are other recognizable differences in the way race is dealt with in Brazil that allows me to take a mental vacation, including but not limited to, a heavy presence of interracial relationships (and not necessarily those of the same racial pairing), multiracial families, and phenotypic diversity within groups of friends of all ages, all things still seen in smaller quantities in the United States, even in major cities.

All of these things make it almost too easy for me to “forget” that I am black, to not spend my days preoccupied with my race as I do in the United States. Yet, there is something unsettlingly unhealthy about that, mainly because it means one of two things: the United States has a long way to go, or I am temporarily blinded by a non-existent ideal steeped in privilege. I am going to go with option two. Of course, the States has a long way to go in terms of improving its domestic state of race relations, yet one has to be careful not to read those in Brazil as being utopian, as they, too, have a complex and somewhat dark past, one of them being the goal of ethnic cleansing by way of miscegenation to which I often reference. I have enough common sense to read between the lines and assess personal situations from an objective standpoint, and this is no exception.

I find that many Americans of color, upon traveling to another country, often remark on the striking differences between the treatment they receive abroad versus the treatment they receive in the United States, myself being one of them. But we must also employ the critical thinking necessary to realize that our experience is through the tinted lens of privilege, be it via nationality, skin color, class, and any other unrecognized differences that set us apart culturally from our international peers. I have to recognize that while the story I tell of my experiences in Brazil as an adult may be different from the experiences I underwent as someone who grew up in the South, someone somewhere in Brazil has a similar story that is going unheard or unrecognized by the thousands of Americans who travel to Brazil and deem it a racial paradise, a vacation spot for the oppressed.

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*drawing courtesy of amazing French graffiti artist/cartoonist Fafi, whose work can be found here: www.myspace.com/fafinette

originally posted @ Racialicious on 6/3/2009

Relationship or Rorschach Test? Interracial Relationships and Societal Self-Projecting

2009-06-20T17:42:00.000-03:00

In a recent discussion about the content of Ciara’s video “Love, Sex, Magic,” in which the songstress collaborated with Justin Timberlake, many readers commented that the video itself served as a classic example of race baiting via sex and sexuality on the small screen. The video demonstrated what some considered a clear example of exotification and sexual exploitation of black women for the fodder of a white male audience. And again, in recent weeks, came the criticism of comments made by Kate, of the TLC show about adventures in parenting Jon and Kate Plus 8, who declared her attraction to, and arguably, fetishization (in the connotative sense) of Asian and Asian-American men.

These accounts garnered considerable attention from tv audiences, gossip column connoisseurs, and critical race theorist alike. Yet despite the aforementioned controversy, few considered the experiences of the interracial couples “on the ground.” In many instances, interracial relationships exist as some conversation piece or pivotal point for people who talk about race, but there is little attention paid to the simple fact that, like any other relationship, interracial relationships deserve the respect and courtesy of same-race relationships, respect in this sense meaning the right to exist sans accusations of racial essentialism and an excessive amount of societal self-projecting solely on the basis of the relationship being interracial.

In simply beginning an interracial relationship in the United States, one often suffers a considerable amount of social pressure, be it from family members, friends, or co-workers. When the presence of an interracial relationship is noted, its very existence at times solicits a barrage of questions in the minds of onlookers, one firing after the other. The questions range from the simple, “how did they meet?” to the complex, “do they really love each other or are they just together because they wish to rebel against social norms?” to the intrusive, “how is the sex?” Some of these questions are customary when considering any relationship, yet with interracial relationships, there seems to be an exceptional increase in curiosity, one that certainly rivals that of intraracial pairings.

And while there are plenty of unuttered questions, there is an equal, if not greater, number of unspoken answers, guesses and assumptions as to the many aspects of the relationship. In relation to interracial couples, the participants are rarely given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their reasons for being together in the first place, at least not in the same way as intraracial couples. For example, if one were to date someone of the same racial background, the issue of essentialism, the idea that one has chosen his or her partner solely on the basis of race and the characteristics one attributes to said race, is rarely considered. Thus we have the double standard. People of the same race could very well be dating each other for calculated reasons, one of them being race, yet this is rarely considered and applied to such couples. Only interracial couples fall victim to such assumptions.

Other assumptions include the possibility of one partner or the other wanting to make a political statement, to rebel against his or her parents, community, or culture, and/or to have a token member of another race to diversify one’s social surroundings. These, too, are rarely mentioned when considering the case of intraracial couples. In several recent articles about the “phenomenon” of first and second-generation immigrants of color choosing to date and marry “within” their race (1, 2, 3, 4), the issue of the couples’ having made this choice, clearly a political choice on their part, was not demonized or questioned in the same way it would be if, say, a person of one race chose to date someone of another race to make a statement as well. While this is not to say that the evidence of intraracial couples making this choice is favorable or ideal, it is important to note to show the pure hypocrisy evident in considerations of interracial couples’ respective choices.

Furthermore, there is the importance of appearance and physical features. Is one who has chosen a mate of a different race doing so because of an attraction to the physical features commonly attributed to said race? Could said attraction be due, in part, to stereotypes associated with someone of his or her partner’s racial group? These questions are also markedly absent when discussing intraracial couplings, though that does not mean such issues are not present in both types of relationships. If someone of one race were only to date members of his or her own race because he or she likes the features (and possibly thinks of stereotypes) attributed to said group, this choice is not so markedly isolated as a flaw as it often is when discussing interracial relationships. However, if someone of one race were to point out his or her attraction to specific features of another race, the person is often accused of combining stereotypes and physical attributes. This is not to say that this does not occur, as if often does, but to assume that it is always the case, and something exclusively associated with interracial couples is not only judgmental, but decidedly racist.

As one who has been involved in both interracial and intraracial relationships, I have experienced the aforementioned in both types. For example, I identify as black, and while dating another black person, the issues of skin color, hair type, and facial features came up quite a bit. To speak more specifically, I was lauded for these features being on the “good” side (in southern vernacular, meaning closer to white). My skin is light brown, my hair is curly, but not “nappy,”* my facial features render me somewhat racially ambiguous, and because of these features, I was considered attractive by my black partner. If the same features had been cited as defining points of my being attractive by a partner of any other race, people certainly would have called “foul.” On the other hand, in my experience, my features that could be attributed moreso to my being black and less so to the traces of European whiteness in my heritage have been more appreciated and accepted as beautiful by partners who have been of a different race. In cases like this, where do we cast judgment?

It is unfair to use interracial couples as scapegoats, yes, but it is equally as unfair to assign them with unrealistic expectations with which intraracial couples are rarely laden. The biblical analogy, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” comes to mind. Before we criticize interracial couples by way of, at times, assumed and unconfirmed flaws, we must examine our response to intraracial couplings that often go unscathed and without nearly as intense consideration.

Equally as important in this case is the need to avoid turning interracial couples into poster children or representatives for some imagined, racially democratic society. To assign more weight and social obligation to interracial couples is unfair and unwarranted. As someone who is presently living in Brazil, I have seen far more interracial couples in the 10 months I have been here than I have in my entire life while living in the United States. That certainly does not mean, however, that Brazilian concepts of race are perfect nor that racism is nonexistent. It simply means that at some point along the Brazilian cultural landscape, being in an interracial relationship became more socially acceptable, and at times even encouraged. Though even this example is not without its cause for concern (i.e. the fact that miscegenation with whites had long been encouraged for the sake of ethnic cleansing).

As with any relationship, there is often more to it than what meets the eye. And while I am certainly not discouraging the discussion and analysis of interracial relationships, I feel that our criticism at times should be curbed if we do not choose to assign the same judgment, expectations, and/or assumptions to couples who happen to be of two partners of the same race. People involved in interracial relationships are human beings, not objects, and we must bear in mind that they are not poster children on which society should feel free to project their own fears, insecurities, or dreams.
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*Before anyone jumps on me for using the term “nappy,” I should make it known that I do not assign negative meaning to that word and am the product of a mother who is a self-proclaimed possessor of “nappy” hair that I think is beautiful.

originally posted @ Racialicious on 6/1/2009

The Brazil Files: Link Love!

2009-06-20T17:41:00.000-03:00

For those of you who are interested in learning more about Brazil beyond what I cover here, which is mainly from the pop culture/race perspective, check out this awesome site: Eyes on Brazil . The author and blog moderator Adam covers many facets of Brazilian life and culture, and gives the perspective of an estrangeiro (“foreigner”) without patronizing, belittling, or exoticizing Brazil and its people. It’s also a great site if you have general questions about Brazil and/or want to work on your Portuguese as Adam is highly responsive to comments and posts short video clips on Brazilian Portuguese colloquial expressions and slang. Here’s a bit more about the site from the author:

Eyes On Brazil exists in order to give a deeper understanding of the Brazilian arts (as well as all things Brazilian) to an English-speaking audience. Personally, I’ve spent almost 10 years studying (and dreaming of) the sleeping South American giant known as Brazil. Seven of those 10 years were focused teaching myself Brazilian Portuguese, and as such, I consider myself fluent.

Adam also has sibling sites on Belem (Brazil), Salvador (Brazil), and even Colombia.Veja já!

originally posted @ Racialicious on 5/5/2009

The Brazil Files: Not So FIERCE - America’s Next Top Model Goes to Brazil

2009-06-20T17:39:00.000-03:00

Considering that I am presently living in Brazil, everyone and their mother sent me emails to alert me that this year the America’s Next Top Model “exotic” location was going to be São Paulo, Brazil. Of course, I was on it like white on rice.

I have previously covered ANTM’s behavioral faux-pas (read: extreme insensitivity in relation to the respective racial/ethnic/national identities and/or sexual orientations of the contestants, just to name one of many problems), but I felt the need to take another stab at their culturally-oriented failures considering I am living here in Brazil, visit São Paulo every other weekend, and could safely say, before even watching it, that it was going to end up a hot mess.

In light of the fact that some of the comments made during the show were quite obnoxious, I decided to return the favor. I say let’s squelch fire with fire, ladies. And no, I am not talking about the burning sensation during a Brazilian wax, which seemed to be about the only thing this season’s gaggle of beauties knew about the country that over 196,000,000 people call home.

I have decided to write a little ditty about my take on the show. Check out the clips to see for yourself. Footnotes are provided for additional information. I would have set it to the beat of “the Girl from Ipanema,” but I was too tired from watching the stereotypes and stupidity unfold before me to actually do that. Here goes:

In São Paulo, samba’s not the really the thing. (1)

But hey, at least the girls got flip flops with bling. (2)

Oh and Spanish, speak it they do not. (3)

And in São Paulo, it’s hardly ever hot. (4)

So if you really wanted a sun burn or a tan,

You should have gone to beaches of Rio, a clip of which they ran. (5)

And though capoeirista Eddy speaks quite clear,

They decided to run subtitles as not to offend our AMERICAN ENGLISH ONLY ear. (6)

And Carmen Miranda— for the eyes she’s a feast.

Yet too bad home girl is actually PORTUGUESE.

While made famous as the face of Brazil,

She cemented stereotypes and a fake idea of what’s real. (7)

“She’s always very sexy and Latin,” says Sutan (8)

During a photo shoot in the backdrop of which poor children ran.

A favela it’s called, “oh how cute!” (9)

Look at the poor people who have absolutely no loot.

“It’s touching to get a glimpse of how these people live” says Celia.

But oh, I’ve got some news for you, filha: (10)

On the outside, it may be ugly and covered in garbage galore,

But inside some houses, it looks more like home furnishing megastore. (11)

So don’t be fooled so much by the things that you see:

So-called Brazilian sex appeal or a non-existent sea.

Brazil is a country of its own and not necessarily what we want it to be.

(To watch the full episode, click here.)

1. Samba is actually not popular within every state in Brazil. Music tastes, in a general sense, vary from region to region and even city to city (i.e. larger cities vs. the interior, aka “the country”). In Brazil, samba is said to have originated and found its largest audience in Rio de Janeiro, and was primarily associated with Brazilians of African descent. While there are certainly samba clubs in São Paulo (city), the majority of the clubs for young people resemble clubs in any other large city (rock, hip hop/rap, electronica/dance).

2. The models received Havaianas (awesome, super comfortable Brazilian flip flops) embedded with Swarovski crystals. Value: $200 USD/pair

3. Employing a habit of many an uninformed tourist to Brazil, one of the models begins to speak Spanish to the cab driver escorting her around during a challenge. Many people still seem unaware of the fact that Brazil is a Portuguese-speaking country. If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me how good my Spanish was before moving here, I would be a millionaire.

4. It’s not hot all the time in Brazil, depending on where you live. São Paulo happens to be a city that actually gets super cold. Natalie, one of the models, continued to harp on her discontent with the cold weather, lamenting the fact that she would not be able to get as tan as she’d like. That’s why you go to the beach, honey (more on that in a sec). For example, today in São Paulo, it may rain and the low is 57ºF.

5. To further confuse American audiences, Tyra & the Gang run a clip of people on the beach in what looks like Rio de Janeiro. The state of São Paulo, of which São ‘Paulo (City) is the capital, has beaches, however, the city of São Paulo, mind you, is landlocked and does not have any beaches. But just in case people would get confused by seeing a city in Brazil that has nary a beach, they had to show one to appease the stateside audience.

6. Ok so first, capoeira is more of a northern Brazilian tradition. Much like the samba story, of course it’s practiced in Sampa (São Paulo’s nickname), but its origins trace back to Africa and have a greater link to northern Brazil, which happens to be where the largest concentration of Brazilians of African descent lives. Continuing on this note, Eddy, the capoeirista, speaks pretty clear English, but they still decide to provide subtitles for the dialogue. It’s like, um, it won’t confuse us too much if we hear English with a non-American accent. Not that difficult to wrap our heads around . . . or is it?

7. Carmen Miranda, referred to as “the Chiquita Banana lady” for the majority of the episode, was born in Portugal to Portuguese parents with whom she immigrated to Brazil as a child. Despite living in Brazil for almost her entire life, she kept her Portuguese nationality until death. Though stateside Carmen Miranda is arguably one of the most recognizable Brazilian celebrities, her legacy causes great debate because her image helped usher in and perpetuate stereotypes of Brazilians, particularly Brazilian women, as overly sexual and joyous at all costs. Her choice of costume is also interesting, as she often employed elements of traditional Bahian* women’s attire.

*of or related to Bahia, a state in the northern part of Brazil known and respected for its preservation of many aspects from West African cultures following the end of the slave trade in Brazil)

8. Resident ANTM makeup artist

9. The word "favela" in Portuguese means poor neighborhood or, in other words, “ghetto”

10. "Filha" is the Portuguese word for “daughter;” often used to mean “girl” or “honey”

11. There is a misconception that every neighborhood in Brazilian cities that has homes with slightly unkempt exteriors equates to being a favela. There are a few neighborhoods within Sampa for example, which look terrible on the outside, providing the backdrop of what seems to be a favela, yet once inside one of these homes, one may be pleasantly surprised. Just like in the States, home construction and upkeep is a costly and time-consuming task, and some people choose to forego it altogether until additional funds or time allow.

originally posted @ Racialicious on 4/29/2009

Fashion and Patronizing, Colonial Rhetoric, Take #758080

2009-06-20T17:38:00.000-03:00

So even though fashion designers have a tendency to appropriate and re-design fashion they witness during their world travels (or, cough, imperialist imaginations), the magazine writers and journalists just can’t seem to find the right words to characterize the collections. Instead of talking about geometric prints, the use of found objects as jewelry items, and color choices in a way that could be deemed appropriate and less offensive, they shade their words with sweeping generalizations and talk about “Africa” like a one trick pony.

In a recent New York Times fashion week photo spread entitled “African Influence on the Runway,” the first mistake made is the usual assumption that Africa is one big country. Morocco has a completely different fashion history from South Africa which has a different fashion history from the Congo, just, you know, as a tiny example. So in the title alone, they end up equating the diverse fashion traditions to one big imagined Africa. To make matters worse, the corresponding article is entitled “Out of Africa.” In reading the captions, I kept waiting for a punchline. The Times was just being ironic and funny, right?

Nope. They were for real.

Photo 1: a woman with crimped hair

“In the 2009 spring season, African style is a drumbeat through the clothes and accessories. Surprisingly it isn't about the ethnic. Instead, it is the sculpted geometric shapes of Africa and its rich spicy colors that are the strongest forms of identity. Couture coiffeur Orlando Pita created these sculptural silhouettes for Christian Dior.”

African style is a “drumbeat?” Come on, y’all, really? Oh and just in case we forgot, “rich spicy” is not a way to describe food. It describes a continental identity in its “strongest forms.” Barf.

But wait, there’s more. . . so much more!

Animal prints on dark-skinned black women also scream “AFRICA!” in a really cartoonish kinda way . . . I love pink African leopards, don’t you?

Next up, Photo 3: a woman who takes a modern approach to the mumps:

I love the pants. I hate the description:

“The colonial world has also been mined for inspiration. For Ralph Lauren, the colonial looks fell somewhere between India and Africa, with low-crotch pants- those in between sarouel and jodhpur styles that are so a la mode this summer.”

I love that the colonial world has been “mined” for inspiration. What an adorable reference to the suffering of thousands of people in sub-Saharan Africa from the introduction of British, French, Portuguese, and Belgian colonialism. What a blast! No pun intended!!!! Oh and just in case you forgot, India is a country. So is Africa, you know, that big country in the southern hemisphere.

Photo 4: Marc Jacobs gets “spicy” with African masks:

Ok, gotta admit, these are awesome. The writer thinks so, too:

“Shoes are leading the forward march of African style- if you can get your hands on them. When it appeared on the runway, who could have believed this fantastical footwear could be the hottest item for summer 2009? No wonder Marc Jacobs baptized this shoe "Spicy," giving a name to the shoe, as had previously been the custom with the now-fading it bags.”

Oh “African” style. . .

Nothing says “tribal” like a rouched burlap sack jumper dress!

“The most dramatic example of tribal fabrics was offered by the Japanese designer Junya Watanabe. He came up with bold prints in an African palette of big-sky blue, burnt orange, earth brown and leaf green. Those fabrics were made into pretty summer dresses.”

Next photo: Yup, every African woman I know has flowers growing out of her head. I haven’t been able to get it to work for me yet. Maybe it requires some special secret African recipe:

Photo 7: More headgardens!

Only this time, the cranial forest comes with jewelry made to look like it came from animals that are now endangered thanks to continued exploitation of Africa’s (continent or country? The mystery continues!) natural resources. We’ll look more “African” that way!

“Accessories with an African stamp work best for summer in the city, as seen at Marios Schwab. Bangles are everywhere, from wide cuffs to narrow bracelets, mostly in inventive modern materials to emulate the ivory and horn of now-endangered species."

I find it humorous that the only time we ever see any reference to people of color on the runway is when they are practically mocking the cultures from which they originated with outlandish re-creations of “ethnic” style. I think it is wonderful to find inspiration in various cultures’ customs and traditions, especially when it comes to fashion, but there are far better ways to discuss said inspiration without patronizing, belittling, or oversimplifying said cultures. To add insult to injury, even in fashion lines that claim inspiration from other nations, the runways themselves remain white as Siberian snow. Diversity seems to only be a possibility when the colonial imagination of the designer runs amok or if he or she is deciding in which nation lies the possibility of cheaper manufacturing. Sigh.

originally poste @ Racialicious on 4/23/2009

The Brazil Files: Without Limits

2009-06-20T17:36:00.000-03:00

Tim, a Brazilian digital communications provider (cell phones, internet service, etc), recently launched an ad campaign entitled “Você, Sem Fronteiras,” which means “You, Without Limits.” “Fronteiras” is a Portuguese word* that means limits, borders, or restrictions, and is often evoked in reference to behavior, culture, and access to resources. In this ad campaign, Tim is encouraging its current and prospective users to think of all three contexts.

The first page of the ad reads: “ALGUMA COISA ESTÁ ACONTECENDO” (“something is happening”):

The second page reads: “UM HOMEM NEGRO COM NOME MUÇULMANO É PRESIDENTE DOS ESTADOS UNIDOS” (“a black man with a Muslim name is the President of the United States”)**:

The third page reads: “O PRÊMIO DE MELHOR JOGADOR BRASILEIRO DO MUNDO É DE UMA JOGADORA” (“the award for best Brazilian soccer player in the world belongs to a woman”)***:

The fourth page reads: “QUALQUER PESSOA PODE CARREGAR SUA PRÓPIA REDE” (“anyone and everyone can access their own wireless internet network”):

The fifth and final page of the spread reads: “É TEMPO DE MENTE SEM FRONTEIRAS” (“the time has come to have an open mind / a mentality sans limits”):

When I first saw the ad, a series of thoughts crossed my mind, but before I prejudice you, the readers, with my thoughts, I wanted to hear your first impressions. I will leave mine later via the comments section.

*I translated the Portuguese to make sense in English, not word-for-word, as that never quite works!
**Clearly, here they are talking about President Barack Obama.
***On page 3, they are referring to Marta Vieira da Silva, a Brazilian female soccer player who is considered the best female soccer player in the world.

Advertisement courtesy of Veja Magazine, March 19, 2009

originally posted @ Racialicious on 4/10/2009

The Brazil Files: Is Racism Relative?

2009-06-20T17:35:00.001-03:00

As mentioned by countless writers who dare to venture into the dangerous territory of race and ethnicity, racism is a tricky animal. There are moments when racism stares one right in the face, begging to be confronted via the most obvious of responses, then there are moments when racism hides in the shadows, only to be perceived by the most observant, sometimes the victim alone. Yet what is to be done when considering racism when it has literally crossed borders, cultures, and history? Does it become a new species?

I was faced with this difficult question just last week. On Wednesday, I walked into our teachers’ lounge/meeting room to ask if anyone knew of any Asian restaurants in the city. This inquiry, by the way, is not completely out of left field. Brazil has a large and thriving Asian population, composed primarily of Japanese immigrants and their descendants, in addition to smaller Chinese, Indian, and Thai communities, and many cities in the region in which I live happen to have restaurants that serve Asian food or some Brazilian-Asian fusion dishes. The dialogue that followed, however, was far more out of left field than my request:

male, white, 25

Proceeds to do the “Miley Cyrus”

Laughs hysterically.

Takes a deep breath in order to remain composed.

“Miley Cyrus,” proceeds to laugh again.

so flustered at this point, because I am thinking of thousands of years of civilization, and how exactly to explain that to someone in 30 seconds)

Miley Cyrus,”AGAIN

Towards the end, I decided to return to the original subject to preemptively extinguish a potential fight.

So by this point, clearly I was fuming. But after the fact, I began to reflect on the exchange. Was I being overly sensitive? Did I miss something in my Brazilian history lesson about it being socially acceptable to derisively mimic people with Asian ancestry in public places? Was I being a “typical American” (read: over-reacting to the tiniest of issues)?

At first, I thought maybe so. I had carried around my own country’s baggage of sullied race relations and unpacked it in another place. I was analyzing the situation through the gray lenses of the United States and our racial past. But then I considered something that had a simple answer, but not exactly the easiest of solutions:

Is racism culturally relative?
The immediate answer is, “yes,” but in terms of addressing this version of cultural relativity or, in other words, the variation across different societies and cultures of what is considered of value, good/bad, and/or acceptable, there is no easy answer. Different countries may have similar histories, but the nuances of each nation’s respective past often yield a strikingly different present.

With Brazil carrying the heavy weight of being considered not only one of the most ethnically and racially diverse nations in the world, but also the most “utopian” in terms of race relations, to analyze the issue of racism becomes doubly difficult because to consider race at all is a bit complicated*. There are fewer fixed ideas of race in Brazil than in the United States. For example, there was never a “one-drop” rule here, nor was there legislated segregation following the abolition of slavery (though they abolished slavery in 1888, much later than the United States, many Brazilians cite the Jim Crow Laws when condemning the U.S. as a racist country). These factors, when coupled with pre-existing ideas allowing for slightly more social acceptance of miscegenation (“race mixing”), mean that race is a far more muddled category. Though complex, the Brazilian racial spectrum tends to be far more “open” in terms of racial categories and even provide for what one could consider racial transcendence, meaning that after a day involving a lot of sun exposure or a property inheritance, I can go from being considered one race to another.

The complexities of Brazilian racial history and general race relations I will leave for another article, as it is too extensive to discuss at this moment, but it is important to consider the aforementioned when thinking about whether or not the statements I heard and gestures I witnessed were racist or not. If I were raised in Brazil, there is a possibility that I may not have found my co-worker’s impromptu comedy routine racist, but I wanted to test this theory by running by a few of my Brazilian friends of various races.

The majority of my friends said it came down to a matter of city vs. country. In larger cities, much like in the United States, there is less tolerance for racial stereotypes and discrimination thanks to the increased diversity within the population who keep everyone, including the government, on their toes. Though there are residents of Asian descent in the town in which I live, there are thousands more in cities like São Paulo, which is where most of my friends live. They noted that the heightened political awareness and education level of larger cities may also be a determining factor in the response to my co-worker’s behavior.

But to add to this consideration, I also thought of how I deal with the majority of cultural norms I find outside of my comfort zone (i.e. female circumcision, socially sanctioned domestic abuse, or the exclusion of certain ethnic and/or religious groups from voting rights). I usually resort to using the Harm Principle, a concept coined by one of my favorite thinkers, British philosopher John Stuart Mill.

The Harm Principle rests on the basic premise that one should be allowed to do as he or she pleases, so long as his or her actions do not harm other human beings. In my own personal version of the harm principle, however, I extend the definition to go beyond the physical. I include the prospect of psychological “violence.” If you engage in an act of racism, by my definition, you are conveying a pre-existing stereotype you hold of one group of people in the presence of others. And even if those present are not of the group you seek to insult, the general affect on the listener is harmful because it results in the spread of stereotypes, which in turn can result in the spread of hatred and/or lead to discrimination (“Active” racism, i.e. legal restrictions for certain racial groups or hate crimes).

In other words, my co-worker passed my racism test. By considering all Asians to be the same, primarily based on a sole physical characteristic that most, though not all, East Asians share, and then, in addition, by relegating the cultural and culinary traditions of all East Asians to the same category, one that he then proceeded to ridicule, he scored pretty high on the b.o.b. (big ole bigot) scale. So while I fully recognize that race and the way we think about race-related issues varies across cultures, it does not mean, in my opinion, that we should give license to those who choose to engage in the perpetuation of stereotypes or complete misconceptions about one group or another. From one country to another, feeling as if your respective group is not considered equal or that your culture is somehow funny, strange, or insignificant in comparison is all the same: unacceptable.

originally posted @ Racialicious on 3/19/2009

The Brazil Files: Conflict of Interest

2009-06-20T17:33:00.001-03:00

Before I utter any statements of depth in this piece, I have to present a bias. Though not meant to offend those who believe in proselytizing, I find myself firmly standing on the side of those against it. If you feel that religion and/or a faith tradition of some sort is your source of hope, guidance for life, and possibly even your ticket to eternal salvation, so be it. I respect that, and I fully honor the right we each have to practice some form of the aforementioned. However, the second you start telling me or someone else which form is best (read: which version will prevent me from burning in hell for the rest of eternity), we've got beef.

With that said, I want to go ahead and put it out there that I take issue with the bulk of missionary work (past and present), especially that which takes place in developing nations. It is a reminder of the power of nations who sit firmly and comfortably in their G8 seats, spectators in a game of international tennis. Only in the case of missionary work, the victory comes at a higher price, one that can mean not only renouncing one's culture, but also one's religion (or at least denouncing it in public) as a means of attaining vital resources. This is not to say that missionaries have not done good work. There are countless records of missionaries who have helped others in excellent ways, minus all the religious rhetoric. However, even if the message of faith lies in no more than an utterance or the simple presence of the mission's name, missionary work nevertheless boils down to a political campaign in the name of God.

In light of my objection to this line of work, I find myself dealing with a mental conflict almost every day of my present job. My campaign has nothing to do with God, but in terms of international influence, the English language and American culture come pretty darn close. Though I have been teaching English in Brazil since July of 2008, there are still a few things about my current profession that rub me the wrong way. The source of my discomfort in teaching my mother tongue lies in implications more so than tangible, empirical evidence, thus making my inner turmoil all-the-more "inner." Much like a mosquito bite on the sole of your foot, my conflict has been an itch I can't quite scratch.

Before enrolling in the program in which I am involved, I already knew I wanted to live in Brazil for a few months to a year to have more exposure to Brazilian culture, particularly an aspect of it that involved more of the quotidian variety. I was looking to go beyond the favela-riddled, bikini-clad, beach bathing, rainforested Brazil with which we are presented on our television screens and in our Netflix queues. I wanted to be forced to speak Portuguese on a regular basis and pushed a bit beyond my comfort zone. I was not looking for a spoiled, privileged, escapist ex-pat experience of the Eat Pray Love genre.

The easiest way to achieve my goal was to teach English here, but I knew in the back of my mind, I would be presented with interesting challenges that I may not have faced if I had chosen another route to secure a job in Brazil. For one, I would have to be a de facto representative of American Culture ^TM. My language and my country would be placed center stage during class, but what Americans do, eat, buy, and think would be the main topic of conversation at all other times as well. I would be reduced to a living, breathing souvenir. Yet in actuality, I find myself to be a bit of a disappointment to my students and the Brazilian English teachers, not for lack of teaching skills, but for lack of conforming to their ideas of Americans and American life.

Before moving to Brazil, I lived in New York City for six years, so even my view of most Americans was one I took with foreign eyes. I often considered myself somewhat isolated from what most would consider "American culture" mainly because I had lived in NYC, which is clearly more of an international city than say Memphis, Tennessee, the city of my birth. I listen to Metronomy, Surkin, and J*Davey instead of Rihanna, Fall Out Boy, and Snoop Dogg (all of whom have achieved considerable success in Brazil thanks to MTV). I have a considerable amount of tattoos. I am a vegetarian who likes international food. I am agnostic. I am not a fan of Nike, Tommy, or any popular clothing brands. I am not a classic American beauty. And on top of all that, I am black, which still throws some people for a loop here in Brazil because most people assume I am Brazilian until I open my mouth.

Though Brazil's access to American media has expanded rapidly thanks to globalization, the films, music, and popular culture to which Brazilians are exposed is clearly the dominate culture, of which I do not really consider myself a part. The idea of Americans that many Brazilians have as a result of this type of media is not exactly the most accurate. We are considered arrogant, ignorant, and overweight on the one hand, but filthy rich, glamorous, and perfect on the other. There is very little room for anything from the margins, and even what is thought to be "alternative" is still the same old simulacra. Nevertheless, I have to put on a happy face and endure countless questions related to the subjects above, only to be followed by my response, which is usually something like "I have no idea who that is. I download my music from European blogs. Sorry!" or "Well, no, I don't eat bacon in the morning, because I don't eat meat, not even the white kind, which I know is not considered meat here."

And though the questions can be tiring, I can understand why they are asked. What is more exhausting is processing the reality that as a result of the onslaught and heavy influence of American mainstream media by way of music, films, and other forms of entertainment (including sports), many elements of Brazilian culture are becoming a non-entity in the eyes of many young Brazilians. Brazilian televised news devotes about a fourth of their broadcasts to American politics. Brazilian culture, as the world becomes flat and so easily navigable because of the internet, is being quickly altered to closely resemble ours. Unfortunately, I am caught in the middle. I represent another side of American culture, which can be a good thing for my students, but I am American nonetheless, and some will never see me as anything more than that.

I have somewhat come to terms with my curio status, and at times celebrate it, mainly when Americans show a sign of intelligence in their choices (ahem Obama), but other times, I feel that my presence symbolizes a modern neo-imperialism, though through culture and language as opposed to direct territorial or financial dominance (albeit, those still play a major part in the case of Brazilian/American relations). There are zillions of English schools throughout the country, some of which have a direct link to the United States Embassy, and many Brazilians see learning English as a means of improving their lives, especially in terms of career success. Many of my adult and teenage students alike say that they are taking English in hopes of securing a good job in the future.

Yet in this time of greedy linguistic and cultural consumption, I worry of the looming backlash. I have some students who explicitly reject any and all aspects of American culture and are generally disgusted by Americans, save me (as an exception because I am their teacher), but who are begrudgingly taking English as language skills are seen as one of the few ways to separate oneself from the competition. Even some of my youngest students admit that they are only taking English because their parents are making them, unaware that their budding skill may help them put food on the table in a decade or two.

Seeing this saddens me and further fortifies my personal belief that though clearly beneficial in the long term, teaching English is its own form of missionary work. The parallels to missionary work that are demonstrated in terms of some students' reluctance to learn when coupled with a frightening pressure to do exactly that in order to simply stay occupationally and culturally afloat worry me. In addition, access to recreational English classes are afforded only to middle and upper class Brazilians, which has previously caused a rift between some English teachers applying to work in Brazil and a few of the Brazilian consulate offices who believe that access to learning English and the skills thus acquired are deepening the divide between the rich and the poor. From what I have seen, I find it hard to disagree. And that's speaking toward language studies in both Brazil and the United States.

In New York City, maniacal parents have infants who can barely articulate basic monosyllabic words in English taking baby French and baby German so their children will have a better chance of entering elite, private academic and hyper-selective public schools, and even then, nothing is guaranteed. Yet in general, beyond the basic needs met by pre-vacation language book purchases, i.e. how do you say "where is the bathroom?" few Americans are breaking their necks to learn any other language, despite our growing immigrant population. We barely have a handle on English, so God forbid we make an effort to devote attention to some foreign "babble" that we don't need to speak anyway, right? "This is America. Speak English," so goes the motto. Yet in our stubbornness to learn another language and general indifference to the prospect of our society and culture changing dramatically as a result of immigration and the expansion of 2nd-generation families in the next few decades, we are doing ourselves a grave disservice.

As a teacher of English in Brazil who already speaks Portuguese, I am a rare breed. Even my students were shocked that I had taken a time to learn a language that, in their words, everyone always just confuses with Spanish. In addition to the language surprise, my students were also interested in the fact that I had been to Brazil several times before, and knew that Brazil was about more than Carnaval. But despite these differences, the things that set me apart from other teachers they had previously had, I still wondered if intent mattered at this point.

In being an "unusual" American to them, there is an obvious benefit, but the shame that sometimes comes with my nationality, due mainly to the international reception of our behavior and the aggressive promotion of our culture abroad, can outweigh any good I intend to do as a teacher. In recognizing the big picture, I may be overanalyzing, but in being a part of this neo-imperialist process, whether or not I have direct control in it, I still have days when I am uncomfortable with my work. I know that I am empowering my students with a valuable skill that will earn them considerable respect in the future, but I wish that more of my fellow countrymen were making an attempt to be more connected to the world as well, instead of continuing to spread American culture with their blinders on.

originally posted @ Racialicious on 2/23/2009

Series Introduction: The Brazil Files

2009-06-20T17:30:00.001-03:00

For those of you who are longtime followers of Racialicious, you may remember me as a Special Correspondent.

For those of you who are not, let me re-introduce myself! My name is Wendi Muse. I’m a graduate of New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where I created a major in “Legal and Cultural Studies of Oppressed and Marginalized Peoples,” aka I set myself up for a stint here at Racialicious. After having previously written exclusively for The Coup Magazine, I began writing weekly articles for Racialicious in 2007. My first article was about racism within the Craigslist personal ads, and the rest was history (you can check out my other Racialicious articles here.)

However, in July of 2008, I moved to Brazil to teach English and conduct research. Due to the simple fact that time did not previously allow, I was unable to continue writing here at Racialicious. Fortunately, I have a little more free time, and have come back to share some of my experiences in the magical world of race and ethnicity—Brazilian style!

Before I share my first piece, however, I caution readers that my articles are in no way representative of the entire Brazilian population, nor do I expect them to be a blanket portrayal of the thoughts of millions of people in the largest country in Latin America. That, quite frankly, would be impossible. I do hope, however, to put some myths to rest in addition to opening up the avenues of conversation surrounding race and ethnicity here at Racialicious. We often catch a serious case of myopia when it comes to discussing race in America, and it’s important that we hear the side of our friends down south, too. Their struggles, opinions, and perspectives are equally important and worth giving a listen as we try to make change here stateside.

With that said, I look forward to writing here again! Até mais!

Beijinhos,

Wendi

originally posted @ Racialicious on 2/18/2009

Are We Too Intense?

2009-06-20T17:27:00.003-03:00

While having dinner with a work mate of mine last night, I ended up discussing acceptance of whites into communities of color and vice versa in addition to interracial relationships. My friend, who is white, noted that I often “didn’t give people enough credit,” and made me to come to the ultimate conclusion that I have a rather pessimistic view of race relations in America, and quite frankly, within the world as a whole. As a black woman, I look around me and am constantly reminded that the group to which I belong is rarely seen as beautiful (unless enhanced by synthetic means of infinitely approaching whiteness), or intelligent, or responsible, or equal. But our discussion made me reflect on the source of my expectations for others.

Was I being harsh because of my personal experiences in which racism worked as a key element in rejection or could it be that people really had changed and I had not given them the chance to demonstrate?

Though the duration of the conversation was about 5 minutes, during most of which I fumbled for words, unable to fully explain my position on race relations in the United States and why I felt that blacks had decades, if not centuries, to go before we were going to be socially accepted or on equal par with others, I still thought long and hard about it hours later. I write this article now with the hope of working through some of the things my friend brought up.

While she was certainly a realist and did not think that America was all daisies for people of color, she noted that people are probably more accepting and less racist than I would assume. And considering she is white, she certainly may have heard some things from, say, other whites, that would be considered racist if they had really come up. But then I wondered, did she have this hope in the humanity and open mindedness of others because she had experienced less of their ugliness firsthand? Could it be, even, that they held their tongues unless somehow provoked by some event or an issue on the news, and she just so happened to not be there at that time to hear it?

The more and more I thought about her assertions, the more I realized that she was right. I wasn’t giving people enough credit. I was suffering from racism paranoia of sorts. A form of self-fulfilling prophecy, if you will, in which I assumed that others were racist, and so I didn’t approach them, befriend them, become close to them, or share as much of myself with them as my friends of color, or even more specifically, my black friends, because I feared the worst. I feared one day they would say something racist or betray my friendship or do something to make me say, “see I told you,’ and regret having befriended them in the first place. And eventually, as my close friend circles became darker and darker in hue or colored by some sort of adversity (i.e. class or sexuality), I recognized that I had placed straight, white, middle class folks somewhere on the perimeter, fulfilling my own expectation in the first place, if not allowing it. They only befriend or date white people, I found myself thinking, failing to realize that it was partially my own doing by removing myself from their presence or by assuming they would not be interested in me in any way except to treat me as some sort of token to write home about. My black friend. My black girlfriend. My believing that everyone was racist until proven otherwise was limiting me. It was making me become guarded. It was my way of protecting myself from rejection that wasn’t a given, but that I had experienced enough in the past to make me not want to taste its bitterness ever again.

I was recently reminded of the surprise element of racism between friends. A friend (ahem, ok, former) had posted a facebook status that read something like “gearing up for Memfrica.” For my non-Tennessean readers, “Memfrica” is a term some whites use to refer to Memphis. “Why?” you may ask. Memphis just so happens to have a very large black population (Memphis is 61% black/African-American, according to the 2000 census). Clever, huh? I decided to play dumb and asked my “friend” why she referred to my hometown by such a moniker. I wrote one her facebook wall the following message:

“Er…why do you call Memphis ‘Memfrica’?”

Innocent enough, right? My message was later deleted from her wall and I received the following message in my facebook mailbox:

“I am sorry if that offends you. It's what we call it around here. You have your beliefs and I have mine. There are stereotypes for reasons, and Memphis = not the safest of cities esp. for single white females.

We'll leave it at that.”

Interestingly enough, I never mentioned anything about being offended. Nor did I mention anything about my personal beliefs on Memphis or even Africa, for that matter. By golly, what could she mean by beliefs? And even on top of all of that, what the hell does a stupid racist nickname have to do with personal safety of whites in Memphis or Africa? I wanted her to just come out and say “I call it that because it’s full of n*ggers.” Instead she danced around the issue and couldn’t just tell me the truth. Why? Because I am black and she is white. It’s what clearly divided us, and it was a reminder of what unfortunately always will.

So bearing this in mind, I have to say, sometimes I still have this mini-intensity, this paranoia, this propensity for overanalyzing, this fear that someone who is my friend or my coworker or my partner, if different from me, may be thinking things he or she will never say until something somehow slips. I am hoping to eventually grow out of it or at least develop an ability to ignore the side of myself that makes me think of all these things. Maybe I will one day gain the maturity that older people of color have that allows them to filter out all the extra noise in their brains that makes them recall racism, so that they can just function without breaking down. But for now, it’s an intensity I am cursed with and that I am dealing with one day at a time.

___

Related Post - Anti-Racist Parent: The Racism Radar

originally posted @ Racialicious on 6/26/2008

The Implications of "Note to White People"

2009-06-20T16:53:00.001-03:00

by Racialicious special correspondent Wendi Muse, originally published at The Coup Magazine (blog)

In light of Reverend Wright's speech, which you can view in full via the post below, Washington Post guest columnist Jacques Berlinerblau, the program director and associate professor of Jewish Civilization at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., wrote an article entitled "Note to White People," in which he discusses the meaning, or lack thereof, behind Reverend Jeremiah Wright's recent comments. He notes the following in response to Barack Obama's mentioning that "Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear":

I was critical of Obama’s speech but it strikes me that this point, in and of itself, is true. Things are often said in African-American oratorical contexts—sometimes the most lyrical, provocative and over-the-top things—which are rarely intended to be marching orders. Those who hear these things may indeed be dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting, but they are acutely aware that they are not hearing fighting words.

Berlinerblau goes on to discuss his initial shock and discomfort at a meeting of racial Afrocentrists during a research project on African-American oratory with relation to intense and incensing speech used by the group leaders, only to be comforted by a friend who explained that their oratorical styles greatly differed from those in conventional (read: white) environments. In addition Berlinerblau asserts that while he recognizes that many black leaders may say things that could be interpreted as dangerous by the outside public, in the end, they are "just talking."

While the columnist assures his readers at the end that he is not on a mission to dismiss the power of speech in the hands of black orators, nor is he implying that black leaders' suggestions and calls for unity fall on deaf ears (he cites the highly successful community outreach performed by the Trinity Church congregation as evidence to the contrary), it is difficult not to come away from this article feeling a little raw for several reasons:

1) It speaks in general terms with relation to public speaking and presentations administered by African-Americans.

2) Despite its best efforts to show otherwise, it trivializes black speech and, in turn,

3) insults the intelligence of the black audience (by, in some ways, implying that while we may hear commands or assertions we should put to use, we ignore them or simply dismiss them in our own way of acting out #2 in this list).

4) Berlinerblau provides a white colonial gaze on the public black spiritual experience and subsequent personal interpretation of the same, rendering African-Americans a foreign/alien entity of sorts.

5) In hopes of separating himself from conservative observers, including Fox News and GOP leaders, who were critical of Senator Obama as a result of his membership at Trinity Church under the leadership of a reverend whose speech they found objectionable, Berlinerblau resorts to a subtle hypocrisy then takes on the role of educator to a white readership, which is troubling, as if he holds the keys to some unknown secret about blacks to which other whites have limited access and for which they must first consult Berlinerblau.

6) The article could also be used as additional support for those who consider every complaint of racism or bigotry toward the black community as a mere case of "crying wolf." After all, our words are "just talk," right?

In short, while Berlinerblau attempted to soften the blow unintentionally dealt to Obama by one of his biggest supporters, his own pastor, by way of his explanation of black speech, he missed the mark. His discussion of race and faith found itself in the familiar territory (at least to marginalized people) in which a person of privilege seeks to educate others of a similar background on the exotic practices of the Other.

Better luck next time, I suppose.

Check out the article for yourself here.

originally posted @ Racialicious on 3/27/08

Damned If You Do: Jews in the Spotlight, Stereotypes, and Identity (Full Piece)

2009-06-20T16:39:00.002-03:00

*Author's note: I began working on this piece around Easter, last month in March, hence the quasi-anachronistic opening. Also, to read the comments on the introduction of this piece, please go here. Lastly, please note that the thoughts and opinions expressed in the interviews completed for this piece reflect the sentiments of the interviewees and not necessarily the views or opinions of the author and/or Racialicious as a whole. OK, let's begin!

Despite all the Easter hype, I found myself thinking a lot about Judaism in America this past week. Eliot Spitzer, New York’s Jewish political golden boy and possible presidential hopeful, had been outed for a prostitution scandal, New York Magazine had run an extensive article on actress, singer, performer extraordinaire Bette Midler, Dick Cheney had traveled to the Middle East, one of his topics of discussion being the state of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the New York City version of Bravo’s reality show Real Housewives featured a Jewish-American family. It seemed as if everywhere I turned, I noticed some element of Judaism, be it people, politics, or general culture.

In the meantime, I also began to contemplate the state of Jews in the media, their portrayals therein, and how Jewish-American identity was being shaped as a result. Despite the frequent, conspiracy theory-steeped accusations of Jews having a media takeover, it’s quite a wonder that the portrayals of Jews, including Jewish-Americans, are not exactly the most flattering.

Take a moment to think to yourself of the Jewish stereotypes to which you have been exposed, or to go further, try to count the positive portrayals of Jews (Right off the top of my head, I can only think of Anne Frank and the cast of Fiddler on the Roof) in comparison to the negative ones. What do you come up with?

For the most part, the stereotypes people come up with are, for lack of a better phrase, "positive stereotypes" they see on television or through other forms of media, and those are the ones they internalize. The financially successful Jew. The hard-working, scholarly Jew. The Jew with entrepreneurial prowess. The Jew who is a survivor. The Jew who is politically active. Of course, turn those on their heads, and they easily become "negative stereotypes." The Jewish American Princess. The nerdy, socially awkward, neurotic Jew. The money-grubbing, "crafty" Jew. The Jew who plays the Oppression Olympics with the Holocaust as the ultimate social injustice. The Jew who is a Zionist fanatic. Hence the reminder that even so-called "positive stereotypes" can be one's worst enemy. In fact, they are central to understanding the media-based stereotyping that occurs in relation to Jews.

For one thing, according to the media at least, all Jews are white. They all blindly support the continued recognition of Israeli statehood, despite the limited connection they may have with the Middle East geographically or culturally. Also, all Jews, using media representations alone, are well off. If the caricature-like images of Jews were to fall from our television sets, they'd find themselves out of their element as there would be no dollar bills and diamonds to roll around in to pass the day. Just like any other racial, ethnic, or religious group, Jews are subject to intense criticism at the hands of the media, and in ways many of us lack awareness to notice, mainly because we have so deeply accepted the "positive stereotypes" that we fail to realize the power they have in bolstering "negative" ones.

A "model minority" of sorts, many American Jews, no matter the sect to which they belong, or whether they consider their link to Judaism as one of religion, one of ethnicity, or both, are lauded for their achievements while simultaneously being pressured to perform a stereotype to keep them up. For this piece, I spoke with several Jewish friends, two of whom took the time to respond to a set of questions on Jewish identity. In their responses, which read like a race and culture bildungsroman of sorts, Yael, a former college classmate and up-and-coming actress, and Alex, a co-worker, discussed what it was like to "come of age" as a person of Jewish heritage in America. I have included the full-text interviews at the end of this piece, as I feel their words most poignantly capture their experiences in ways that I would be hard-pressed to replicate in my journalism-meets-prose-meets-term paper blogging style. It simply wouldn't do their words justice.

Nevertheless, there are several unifying themes that appeared among the interviewees, as well as conclusions that could be drawn from personal observations and prior academic readings (including the highly recommended short essay "'J.A.P.'-slapping: The Politics of Scapegoating" by Ruth Atkin and Adrienne Rich) that deserve special attention:

1. Double Agent/Double Consciousness

As a result of many (though, obviously, not all) American Jews exhibiting physical characteristics we would now neatly categorize as "white" due to the politics of the melting pot era, there is the possibility of Jews being generally completely impossible to discern from the white population in the United States of predominately Western European (English, Irish, Scottish, French, Italian) descent. Yet this visual assimilation of sorts creates similar problems as it does for those who may be of one race or ethnicity, but who possess the ability (intentionally or not) to pass or be mistaken for another race and/or ethnicity, particularly for those who do not opt to dress in a way that conforms with religious requirements and/or reveals one's religious and ethnic affiliation (i.e. something as formal as the dress of the Hasidic Jewish population to a simple yarmulke or gold Star of David necklace). This ability to be viewed as simply "an average white person" can create interesting social and psychological challenges for white Jews, as they may benefit from white privilege, which I will go into later, but still bear the burden of anti-Semitism and a history of oppression.

In addition, the fact that many white Jews are simply viewed in the same way as other whites can often times mean white Jews (or Jews of color* in a white or POC group) are privy to "accidental" anti-Semitism that results from overhearing stereotypes, jokes, or downright hateful comments toward Jews with the offender not realizing the "average white person" before him or her happens to belong to the group he or she is in the process of ridiculing. Several of my friends recounted stories like this, with their serving as an unintentional "double agent" of sorts—appearing on the outside as an every day Anglo-Saxon and due to said perception, witnessing or overhearing comments as a result of an identity mix-up.

When I say "double agent," I mean a person who can appear one way on the outside, but not give away certain aspects of one's identity. It's not a term I employ to incite anger or evoke a Red Scare past.. In this act of "passing," if you will, be it intentional or otherwise, a Jewish person (white or of color) can hear an offensive anti-Semitic comment or joke and make the choice to either a) participate, b) dismiss it, or c) shock all the bigots by revealing his/her/hir identity and use their initial act of passing as a psychological weapon to deter said bigots from using similar speech in the future. The perpetrators of the anti-Semitism might give future comments a second thought if they realized that the Jews walk among us . . . ::cue Twilight Zone Music::

What a scary thought, eh? That one can actually commit a boldface ethnicity-based offense and, without warning, be taken down by the big reveal! [sarcasm] It could be that I am putting too much emphasis here on the ability to possess double consciousness as one with dual identities, but in the end, I think it lends itself as a powerful tool in both combating hate and possessing empathy for other marginalized groups.

*I should note that even Jews who are not white face this obstacle within their own communities of color, though the vitriol geared toward Jews in this case would most likely refer to white Jews, as the largest Jewish population in the United States happens to possess said phenotype. Nevertheless, the sting of anti-Semitism in this case can certainly be just as powerful, as it still means the denigration of one part of someone's cultural and/or religious heritage.

2. Self-Deprecation

Much like our other conversations here at Racialicious regarding race-related humor, the discussion surrounding Jewish comedy often draws attention to the thin line between funny and offensive, making the situation all the more difficult, as many of those poking fun at Jews, including Jews themselves, often resort to ridiculing privilege as a means of getting a laugh. Be it wealth (the usual subject) or frugality (to maintain said wealth) to the infamous subject of Jewish womanhood (from mothers to young, spoiled "Jewish American Princesses"), Jewish comedians (and comedians making fun of Jews) take the usual route of exaggerating a stereotype or drawing one fact out to the degree that it wreaks of excess. Yet again, much like with comedians from other marginalized groups, the humor surrounding stereotypes can grow to become a dangerous weapon once employed outside of their respective communities. The technique of ethnicity based self-deprecation not only presents stereotypes, but also fortifies pre-existing ones and provides the audience, who, in some cases, are not from within the community being discussed, with mental ammunition with which to continue an ongoing ridicule of said community in their own minds, until, eventually, their prejudice turns into discrimination.

But much like with any other group, self-deprecation finds its way into the home and daily conversation as well, pushing the envelope insofar as proper conduct is concerned. The joy with which some shared their JAP sightings here on Racialicious was a tad bit disturbing, but I do not take for granted the possibility that the term has been thrown around with such frequency that it is a part of the vocabulary for many people who fail to consider the underlying meaning or history behind such a term. And I dare say it may not be entirely their fault. One need only look to the "N-word" debate for evidence of this.

3. Simultaneous Shame & Pride

This theme came up primarily as a result of discussions surrounding Israel. In the face of ethnic conflicts erupting left and right, many young American Jews have mixed feelings on the Israel/Palestine conflict and the political debates which surround it. As a result of the countless atrocities occurring on both sides and the varied media coverage, aligning oneself with either Israel or Palestine may cause considerable ostracism and inner conflict. One the one hand, Jews are expected to support the actions of Israel, just as Americans are expected to support the actions of the American government as they are elected officials to represent us. In many ways, Israel is seen as the gatekeeper for an imagined past and the connecting point for a severed cultural heritage. As in all diasporic communities, the homeland, literal or figurative (in the case of nations that no longer exist) represents a satiation of longing, a location on the map that corresponds to the beating of one's heart. Israel is no different for many Jews. However, considering the media coverage that shows that Israel, in its dealings with Palestine, is far from ideal, it is no wonder that a chasm can form in one's own mind surrounding the issue. For many Jews, it's difficult to reconcile the concept of Homeland, a mythic, utopian place of cultural revival, with the concept of Reality that shows the Israel/Palestine situation is anything BUT clearcut.

This schizophrenia occurs within many marginalized groups, as we have all witnessed when the tables turn and one is expected to reflect on the actions of those who share his/her/hir identity. I've engaged in this frustrating activity many times, wavering between a complete lambasting of the group to which I belong and holding in my own anger for the sake of "protecting" or "shielding" my group from further external criticism. In the case of Jews who support certain provisions to secure the independence of Palestine, for example, the act of self-criticism, and some even argue self-hatred, could be considered to be at its peak, yet in this act, such Jews are also risking being misunderstood within their own communities, just as Jews who express continued support for Israel, may be misunderstood by those who have little or no connection to Israel in a cultural sense.

*Author's note: Please DO NOT turn this post into a bulletin board for you to express anti-Israel or anti-Palestine statements unless you are discussing this through the lens of media portrayals and how it relates to the formation of identity. Everyone already knows that discussions regarding this issue are difficult to have, but also happen to turn into cyclical nonsense that doesn't add much to the conversation. Please see our moderation policy for more details.

4. Precarious Privilege

As I mentioned earlier, the aspect of double consciousness that takes place for many people who are raised Jewish or who possess Jewish heritage, yet who can easily blend in with non-Jews, makes for a tricky existence. Quite frankly, it's a double-edged sword, making one's ability to assimilate more easily achieved, yet also rendering one's privilege precarious, volatile, and temporary. In noting this, the mention of Al Jolson in the comments from the sneak peak "intro" version of this post becomes all the more significant. Considering the anti-Semitic prejudice and downright discrimination (a la Jim Crow) in some parts of the United States and the world, it's no wonder that white Jews, just as the Irish or Italians who were also involved in or descendents of melting pot era assimilation, sought to differentiate themselves from blacks, Asians, and other groups who were incapable of assimilating fully on the basis of their appearance alone. This act of separation, in some cases, like Jolson's, more bold than others, could be considered a defense mechanism or a survival technique in an age of fierce job competition, scrambling for resources, and even government recognition. This, of course, is not to offer any excuse, but instead to explain some of the pre-existing tensions between white Jews and communities of color who allege that Jews benefit from white privilege without paying a price for their ethnicity and/or religious practices as other groups do.

Of course, there are many Jews who recognized that this historically slippery grasp of whiteness could be channeled for good, including those who worked alongside blacks during the struggle against Jim Crow segregation or those who have used their families' connection to the Holocaust as a means of understanding and empathizing with other historically oppressed groups.

5. Ethnicity/Religion Debate

There is little to be said in this category beyond what many of us may have already heard. It's a debate I hear quite frequently and on which I have little authority to present in full. But over and over, I hear people (of all backgrounds) assert that being a Jew relates solely to one's religion and that one cannot make claims to being Jewish as an ethnicity just as one cannot make ethnicity-based claims to being a Catholic. No one checks the "Baptist" box on the SAT, so why should Jews have the right to consider this aspect of themselves as a part of their ethnic identity? It's a debate that wages on, particularly when one considers which parent is Jewish or whether or not the person of converted or whether or not the person in question underwent Jewish rites of passage. Yet of the Jews I know, either practicing or totally secular, their Jewish heritage means to them in many ways what my experience as a person of color means to me. It's more than an accident or a characteristic worthy of media exploitation. Instead, it's a sense of being that one can always come back to even when ridiculed, challenged, and questioned to the degree that one can answer for nothing more than the term itself. It's something they were born with or something they chose to convert to, it's something that encompasses their family's traditions or the new ones they are making for themselves, and it's something that allows for a connection to their history. Being Jewish is a daily reminder that when it comes to identity, there's more than what meets the eye.
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Full-Text Interviews (with Alex and Yael):
1. Name/Age/Birthplace/Current Location/Occupation: Alex/ 22/ Lower Manhattan, NYC/ same/ Billing Analyst

2. Are you a practicing Jew? I wouldn't say so.

3. How would your characterize your experience in your faith tradition? I think that I pick and choose my morality and beliefs from Judaism, Quakerism, and other belief systems. My "faith" is pretty much something that I have created for myself, and is based in and on myself.

4. Do you identify with Judaism/Jewishness solely as a religion? solely as an ethnicity? or both? I identify with it as both a religion and an ethnicity. I was not raised in a religious household, but know some of the religious stories associated with Judaism, and the time and purpose of the holidays. However, since I was never really a practicing Jew, I think that I have always identified more with the ethnicity side of the "Jewish" label. My father's family is German Jewish, so the importance of acknowledging and appreciating the heritage behind our Jewish roots was always important, especially in light of the fact that the Holocaust essentially wound up wiping out a lot of our family based on their ethnic characteristics and behaviors. This combined with my childhood in New York City, blocks from the Lower East Side which was a Jewish neighborhood for so long, to create a profound respect for the heritage of the Jewish people, despite lacking formal education in the Jewish faith.

5. Does your family maintain a Jewish household"? No. My mother is an on again/off again practicing Quaker who has remarried a Jewish man, and my father is more into Ganesh. It was actually an incredibly sad moment when, while sorting through all of the books and keepsakes from my late grandmother's house, my Dad came upon a beautiful Torah, and realized that he should give it away, because none of us knew how to use it.

6. How was it for you growing up Jewish and within a Jewish family based on your surrounding neighborhood, social circles, educational background, and/or general community? Did your experience differ based on the different communities within which you were engaged?

7. If any of the aforementioned communities made you feel alienated, if at all, how did you "find your center," so to speak, as a Jewish-American? (i.e. Hebrew school, birthright trips, etc)

[answer to both questions] New York City is probably the best place in America to be labeled as a Jew. The city itself is overflowing with every ethnicity and religion, so it is not as alienating as other locations, and the schools get all Jewish holidays off (at least in part.) I don't remember feeling all that out of place during elementary and middle school, when I was at a small private school, because it was full of the children of artists and hippies and no one was particularly religious at all. We always sang Christmas, Chanukah and Kwanzaa songs at the Winter concerts, as well as songs about the solstice if I remember correctly. However, I was distinctly aware that most people were not Jewish, simply because everyone celebrated Christmas. And I know that I was a large proponent in my household for going deeper into our Jewish faith; I bought my father his first menorah as a Christmas present when I was six.

Religion did not really come into play until I was [in high school] . . . a massive public school that controversially admits students solely based on an SAT-like test. There, a much larger portion of my friends were Jewish, and very proud about it. They would have chats about kugel and apples with honey and their bar/bat mitzvahs, and at that point, I think more than anything I felt a little left out, since I had never had those experiences with my family that downplayed the religious and cultural traditions. However, once again, this was still a very accepting environment, most likely because of the NYC location.

When I went to [college] there was a much starker line between Jews and Non-Jews. The [Center for Jewish Life] had been recently built, and the center invited all Jewish students to Kosher meals, particularly on the Sabbath, for free. I was not on that mailing list. I guess I hadn't checked the "Jewish" box on my application- but then again, I feel like that is intrusive and way too hard to explain so I don't fill anything in for the "religion" fields anyway. [The college I attended] is known as a WASPy school- even though it does have a pretty large population of not only Jews but people of all religions (as I'm sure they proudly display in their diversity profile.) Therefore, to me it seemed like many of the Jewish people I knew were defensive about their faith, but I'm sure that was due not only to the [college's] environment but also the neighborhoods that they grew up in all across the country. At any rate, Judaism almost seemed like an exclusive clique that only key people knew the code to get into. My friends would proudly declare their trips home for Passover, or their Rosh Hashanah celebrations at the Center, and many boys wound up joining a traditionally Jewish fraternity in order to help preserve their cultural roots. At first all of this seemed a little bit much to me, but as I spent more time with my friends over the years, it became pretty clear why this was so important. I had many Christian friends who would make rude comments about Jews or Judaism- like "Ha ha ha did you remember to light your candles tonight?" or "Ugh, I can't stand that girl, she's so Jewish" or the most recent rebuff one gave to a guy hitting on her "Please step away from me: you're gross and you're probably a Jew." They don't think twice about these things, how they are marginalizing some of their best friends based on stereotypes and bias that was instilled in them from who knows where.
In these cases I feel stuck in the middle- torn as a person who is both excluded in a sense from celebrating many of the holidays of my heritage, and degraded because of my roots in the Jewish culture. With these two sides in mind, I don't know that I have found my Jewish-American center yet.

8. What stereotypes come to mind when you think of the word "Jew"? If you recall, through what medium did you first learn of these stereotypes? (film, tv, news, friends, family, etc) Let's see: cheap, conniving, manipulative, ugly, big nose, small, bagels, pickles, knishes, studious, Florida/New York/Long Island, JAPpy, loud... And most of them probably came from TV and friends. One that really sticks out in my mind was when my dad was appalled at the portrayal of the goblin bankers in Harry Potter: older, wrinkly, small males with long noses, small glasses, big ears...it was, upon second glance, the stereotype of the old Jewish miser.

9. Have you ever experienced anti-Semitic prejudice (thoughts and verbalization of hatred/dislike for Jews), discrimination (acting upon such thoughts), or challenges as a result of your faith/ethnicity? I've experienced unintentional prejudice, witnessed discrimination and challenges. I think this happens for a very simple reason: I don't "look Jewish." I have pale skin, blonde hair and blue eyes. If we were in Nazi Germany, I would have been the person answering the pounding on the door. Non-Jews think that they can speak freely around me (I've heard some really horrible anti-Semitic comments during sorority rush) and Jews assume that I am a WASP, so they leave me out of arguments and discussions on religion.

10. How do you feel about characterizations of Jews, American or otherwise, in the media and the arts (both fictional and non-fictional)? I always feel like Jewish characters in the media, whether their religious affiliation is stated or implied, is generally extremely stereotypical, and always includes some sort of negativity. Take for instance Janice on Friends- I don't think that her religion was ever state outright, but I always concluded that she must be Jewish because she fit the JAP stereotype to a T. Also, if you want to continue with that same show- Monica and Ross are from a Jewish family, but Ross's son Ben (whose mother is Christian) prefers Christmas to Chanukah. Ross winds up dressing as a "Holiday Armadillo" to show his son the importance of both sides of his heritage. This is the way that I think Judaism is generally portrayed in the mainstream: as an odd deviation from the norm.

11. Has being a Jew ever made you feel apprehensive about engaging in certain activities, social circles, etc (i.e. dating a non-Jew) and if so, what did you do, if anything, to combat this feeling? I actually feel more apprehensive about dating Jews rather than non-Jews, because I don't feel like I am Jewish enough. I try to explain and demonstrate how open and excited I am to learn new things about my heritage, but often, that's a make or break point.

Also, my senior year of college, I was required to attend an Easter Brunch at the extremely fancy hotel at [my college] with my roommate and her Catholic parents. I felt completely uncomfortable until I looked around the room and noticed many people in my same position: the poor little Jews who don't normally get to experience Easter Brunch whose friends' parents had decided to introduce into the grand tradition. It was comforting to see others in my same position, know they were feeling the same way, and just get beyond the bizarre scene that was unfolding around me.

12. How has being a Jew shaped your life decisions, if at all? The only real decision that I made based on being Jewish, (aside from deciding that I have to go on Birthright within the next year,) was when I decided to learn German. It may seem like a weird choice just on the surface, but the entire Jewish half of my family is German, and I desperately want to visit Berlin and tour through Germany to really understand where we came from, and what the history of that family was. My mother's family is mainly a British amalgam of Quakers, and I have their family tree back to the 1400s in a binder somewhere in my room. But the only information on my father's side was that many in my grandfather's family back in Germany did not survive the Holocaust, and that some ancestors on my grandmother's side were the first Jews to cross the country in a covered wagon. (For that reason I strongly believed that my family probably in some way owned the Levi-Strauss jean company for a lot of my childhood.) But anyway, this lack of solid information is a little depressing, so I've decided that I have to go and follow up on our family history.

13. In your job/ career, have you ever had to combat stereotypes/prejudice toward Jews, and if so, how did you accomplish this? I can't actually think or any experiences that would fall into this category.

14. Please comment on this statement by Fran Lebowitz (via New York Magazine):

Law & Order's Judge Janice Goldberg—better known as Fran Lebowitz—would throw the book at Eliot Spitzer if given the chance. "I think he should go to jail," she said at a BAM event on March 13. "I'm really angry. Because at first I didn't like him—I don't like rich people in politics—but then when he started arresting everyone on Wall Street, I loved him. Now I see I was right to begin with." Does she mourn his lost chance of being the first Jewish president? Nope. "In every generation there is a rich Jewish boy in New York that people say is going to be the first Jewish president," she says. "But this is never going to happen. Because people don't like Jews. You must have noticed that by now. And I will also tell you, as a Jew, I don't want there to be a Jewish president. We have enough problems. Imagine if they could blame this on us, too." Her advice for the new gov? "I would like for him not to commit a crime, okay?"

After reading this quote a few times with different reactions, I'm actually going to have to agree with Ms. Lebowitz on this point: I don't think America likes Jews. I don't think that most of the world likes Jews. And I think a lot of Jews don't like Jews. (For that reason I don't think Spitzer ever really had a chance at the presidency either.) But to address the last part, "We have enough problems. Imagine if they could blame this on us too," I think this is an often overlooked part of the Jewish experience. Jews are very concentrated in a few parts of this country, but otherwise serve the role of a token minority. They are looked to for explanations on all things Jewish, and often, are the only live basis for "Goyim" to base their knowledge of the whole Jewish race on. When I arrived at [college], one of my friends was placed in a room with someone who turned out to be the first Jewish person she had ever met. For the next year, everything that this Jewish roommate did that was annoying was attributed to the set of characteristics of all Jews. It took a lot of explaining and cajoling from myself and other people to convince her that this was not actually the case. However, in the larger picture, blame is a scary thing to Jews. The Holocaust is still very alive in the collective memory of the Jewish consciousness, when the downfall of the German economy led to blaming the Jews led to genocide. And the Jewish population is so small that one prominent member getting blamed for a large mistake could easily trickle down the rest of the group. It is a legitimate fear.
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1. Name/Age/Location: Yael/ 21/ Minnesota/New York/ Student & Actress

2. Are you a practicing Jew? If so, how would you categorize your practice (i.e. reform, conservative, orthodox, etc) Yes – between Reform and Conservative.

3. How would your characterize your experience in your faith tradition? I have strong faith though I disagree with many of the traditional practices.

4. Do you identify with Judaism/Jewishness solely as a religion? solely as an ethnicity? or both? Both. It is obviously a religion, though some don’t practice it, and it is most definitely an ethnicity. Look at an Israeli passport, under race it still says “JEW.”

5. Does your family maintain a Jewish household"? Yes. No one keeps Kosher anymore, but my father is extremely active and celebrates on Shabbat, and my mother follows many of the customs she grew up with.

6. How was it for you growing up Jewish and within a Jewish family based on your surrounding neighborhood, social circles, educational background, and/or general community? Did your experience differ based on the different communities within which you were engaged?

7. If any of the aforementioned communities made you feel alienated, if at all, how did you "find your center," so to speak, as a Jewish-American? (i.e. Hebrew school, birthright trips, etc)

[answer to both questions] I was lower middle class growing up and the other Jews I know were rather wealthy, so I always felt like I didn’t quiet fit in because our lifestyles were so different. That difference became more and more clear as I got older. However, when I was young I didn’t notice as much. I grew up with mainly black girls who had never known a Jew and I was often embarrassed. I never have dated or been attracted to a Jew and I think I do hold some shame around my ethnicity. I was seen as white by the blacks and other by the whites.

8. What stereotypes come to mind when you think of the word "Jew"? If you recall, through what medium did you first learn of these stereotypes? In 3rd grade a kid told me the Holocaust never happened and that it was [the] greedy, dirty, Jews that made it up. That was the first time. I didn’t hear much more until entering college . . . when I met a lot of kids who had never met a Jew. I hate all the questions sometimes. “So do you still celebrate Christmas?” Also, somehow people have decided that calling someone a “Big Jew” is acceptable if the person is religious, [but] I find it extremely offensive. The other thing I’m getting a lot now, as an actor, is comments about my physical appearance since I am short, curvy, and a bigger nose. Most of the stereotypes I have heard are from friends.

9. Have you ever experienced anti-Semitic prejudice (thoughts and verbalization of hatred/dislike for Jews), discrimination (acting upon such thoughts), or challenges as a result of your faith/ethnicity? Yes. I hear sly remarks regularly, but I also am starting to get “typed out” of roles that are non-Jewish because I am a Jew, when in actuality I look rather ethnically ambiguous. My friends that live in Paris tell me stories every day about extreme cases of anti-Semitism they have to face. I usually deal with rude comments more than anything.

10. How do you feel about characterizations of Jews, American or otherwise, in the media and the arts (both fictional and nonfictional)? I find the media's reflection of Jews extremely upsetting. Somehow it has become cool to hate Israel and support Palestinians if you are liberal (which I am) and it seems the media tilts it this way. Often people have no idea what they are talking about in regards to the war in the Middle East, and yet almost always side against the Jews. I can’t pick apart why exactly that is the case, but it is clearly due to the media's representation of us and is a large problem.

11. Has being a Jew ever made you feel apprehensive about engaging in certain activities, social circles, etc (i.e. dating a non-Jew) and if so, what did you do, if anything, to combat this feeling? Yes. Very few of my friends in college are Jewish and they often make rude comments (that they think are not rude) about my culture because they don’t understand. I have not yet dated a Jew, but in the past year or so, I decided that I don’t think I can date a non-Jew anymore. There is something only a Jew can understand that is becoming an increasingly bigger deal and affects my life more.

12. How has being a Jew shaped your life decisions, if at all? I am a Jewish educator, which is the best thing I have done with my life. . . I never thought I would be so involved and so excited about it. I am committed to teaching and supporting young Jews. Additionally, on a daily level, I try not to buy from stores that give money to anti-Israel organizations, which happens to be a lot more than you’d think! I also used to vote based on different things than I do now. Now, my number one political topic, when choosing to vote, is the candidates' feelings on Israel. As anti-Semitism gets worse internationally, it has become more essential for me to secure the safety of Israel.

13. In your job/ career, have you ever had to combat stereotypes/prejudice toward Jews, and if so, how did you accomplish this? Please see above.

14. Please comment on this statement by Fran Lebowitz (via New York Magazine):

Law & Order's Judge Janice Goldberg—better known as Fran Lebowitz—would throw the book at Eliot Spitzer if given the chance. "I think he should go to jail," she said at a BAM event on March 13. "I'm really angry. Because at first I didn't like him—I don't like rich people in politics—but then when he started arresting everyone on Wall Street, I loved him. Now I see I was right to begin with." Does she mourn his lost chance of being the first Jewish president? Nope. "In every generation there is a rich Jewish boy in New York that people say is going to be the first Jewish president," she says. "But this is never going to happen. Because people don't like Jews. You must have noticed that by now. And I will also tell you, as a Jew, I don't want there to be a Jewish president. We have enough problems. Imagine if they could blame this on us, too." Her advice for the new gov? "I would like for him not to commit a crime, okay?"

The country doesn’t like Jews, and I don’t think it’s much of a secret. However, who f*cking cares? If someone wants to be the President, no one with any sense should care what race, ethnicity, or religion they are. If they’re right, they’re right and if they’re wrong… people will go blaming the Jews for something, anyway. A Jewish president won't start or stop that.

originally posted @ Racialicious on 4/14/2008

Damned If You Do: Jews in the Spotlight, Stereotypes, and Identity (Intro)

2009-06-20T16:36:00.000-03:00

Despite all the Easter hype, I found myself thinking a lot about Judaism in America this past week. Eliot Spitzer, New York's Jewish political golden boy and possible presidential hopeful, had been outed for a prostitution scandal, New York Magazine had run an extensive article on actress, singer, performer extraordinaire Bette Midler, Dick Cheney had traveled to the Middle East, one of his topics of discussion being the state of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the New York City version of Bravo's reality show Real Housewives featured a Jewish-American family. It seemed as if everywhere I turned, I noticed some element of Judaism, be it people, politics, or general culture.

In the meantime, I also began to contemplate the state of Jews in the media, their portrayals therein, and how Jewish-American identity was being shaped as a result. Despite the frequent, conspiracy theory-steeped accusations of Jews having a media takeover, it's quite a wonder that the portrayals of Jews, including Jewish-Americans, are not exactly the most flattering.

Take a moment to think to yourself of the Jewish stereotypes to which you have been exposed, or to go further, try to count the positive portrayals of Jews (Right off the top of my head, I can only think of Anne Frank and the cast of Fiddler on the Roof) in comparison to the negative ones. What do you come up with? (to be continued...)

*pictured above: a Goblin Banker from Harry Potter (more on this later)

originally posted @ Racialicious on 3/25/2008

Sumpin' Turrrrble: SNL's Keenan Thompson Performs Minstrel Act

2009-06-20T16:35:00.001-03:00

by Racialicious special correspondent Wendi Muse, originally published at The Coup Magazine (blog)

I didn't get a chance to see the entire episode of Saturday Night Live this weekend, but I came across a segment clip from NBC's website that made my blood curdle. SNL's guest this week was the young actress of Juno fame, Ellen Page, whose comedic timing proved powerful yet equally disturbing in a piece with Keenan Thompson, the only black member of the cast (Maya Rudolph, who is half black-American, half white Jewish, identifies as multiracial), entitled "Virginiaca Goes to Baby Gap." You can see the full video of the sketch here, but I'll give you a little re-cap:

An overweight black woman who, only for lack of a better term, would be characterized as "ghetto" stumbles out of breath into a Baby Gap store (as it's on the second floor) with a pastry in hand. She practically sexually harasses the Baby Gap employee (played by Andy Samberg). Her step-daughter, played by Ellen Page, corn-rowed, permed, and wearing a tracksuit, enters the store, demanding to try on spandex pants she'd like to wear as booty shorts. Angered that the Baby Gap employee won't allow her to try on the pants for fear that she'll stretch out the merchandise (as it's meant for BABIES), Page's character and Virginiaca name drop (as Virginiaca's new husband is a wealthy white aluminum tycoon, the daughter of whom she has clearly "corrupted") in hopes of getting their way. After a slew of aural and visual stereotype guest appearances (including the "booty back and forth" dance and repeated overt and unwanted flirting with the sales guy), the segment ends with the sales person quitting and Virginiaca in all fours on a merchandise stand continuing her "booty back and forth" dance in the store.

While SNL has engaged in black/brownface before, including having light-skinned Latino Fred Armisen play presidential hopeful Barack Obama, and Darrell Hammond play Jesse Jackson and Geraldo Rivera,they were impressions, albeit good ones, and I never found offense in having the best cast members for the job portray important members of our society who happened to have darker skin than theirs. Yet when I saw the "Shopping with Virginiaca" sketch, which apparently is a regular segment on the show, I felt something different. Keenan Thompson, though black, was performing a blackface minstrelsy routine that went far beyond basic impressions of famous people. He was poking fun, sure, but in a way that ultimately cements what black women are and how we are viewed by the general public.

The routine was all the more significant in its meaning when I first saw it as I had just ended a conversation with a white colleague regarding how much I tire of the negative images of black women on tv that are so powerful that I can't help but wonder whether or not people expect this behavior of me when they see me on the bus, on the subway, or in the street, no matter how I am dressed, how I speak, my job titles, or what school I went to. The stereotype precedes me. It walks 10 feet ahead, greeting those who pass by before I can say a word. And shame on you, Keenan Thompson, for making the stereotype strong enough to tackle me down before I can open my mouth to interrupt its first impressions.

This is not the first case of BMID: Black Men In Drag to which I object, however. We have Eddie Murphy's racist, sexist, and size-ist portrayal of an overweight black woman named Rasputia in Norbit, his sad attempt at comedy that featured a thin, light skinned love interest played by Thandie Newton. Murphy's portrayal of middle aged and older black women in his Nutty Professor films can be considered equally incensing, as both the mother and grandmother of the Professor are either prudish or overly randy, respectively, and display little shame when it comes to bodily functions and even less concern about their personal appearance. Tyler Perry, known for his portrayal of an older black woman in his Madea series, can also be included in this category, as the Madea character, while at times inspiring and imparting essential wisdom with a certain sagaciousness that comes with old age, nevertheless fits the stereotype of an overly emboldened, loud, and larger-than-life black woman bearing an attitude bigger than her body.

Latoya Peterson wrote on this phenomenon in a piece entitled "Real Women (of color) Have Curves" :

. . . the whole idea of large black women as a stereotype has unfortunately already come to fruition. The antagonist/”female” lead of the recent movie “Norbit” cashes in on this oversexed, overconfident, over-sized black woman stereotype and was laughed at all the way to the bank. In discussing this article with a friend of a different race, she noted that it wasn’t just the size of black women that contributes to the stereotype - it is also the personality attributed to a black woman of that size. She rightly pointed out that black women over 200 pounds are normally portrayed in the media as being loud, sassy, and completely overbearing - a negative reinforcement to the positive body image many large black women seek to represent.

She goes on to discuss the general acceptance of women of color who happen to be "of size," and ultimately, much larger than their white female counterparts, for whom starvation is rendered the end-all, be-all as they infinitely approach the accepted social norms and expectations for white female beauty. Considering that the characterizations of larger black women tend to be negative and the very fact that many black women in the United States tend to be on the larger side, at least more so than white women, it's no wonder that the stereotypes are so disturbing. It's yet another way to create an identity pigeonhole, one coupled with physical and behavioral attributes that one needs not to look far to witness in media and then ultimately apply in real life, whether or not the associations made are accurate.

With that said, in reflecting on the SNL piece once again, I can safely say that I am more than disappointed. Will there ever be a time in which comedy can rely on more than stereotypes or humor at the expense of others to exist? I also wonder whether or not black women, their very femininity, intelligence, and happy existence threatened by such negative portrayals, will be able to face a day when others don't see the stereotypes first?

*SNL cast member Keenan Thompson pictured above.

originally published @ Racialicious on 3/6/2008

Color's in the Works on SATC, the movie

2009-06-20T16:31:00.000-03:00

I love Sex & the City as much as the next woman (well, ok, fine--only when I disregard the classism, sexism, and racism in the show, ahem), but I worried when I saw the extended trailer. Mainly because I will have to use more than one hand to count the female characters of color ever featured on the show:

Adopted daughter of Asian descent (Chinese, presumably, considering that Charlotte was hoping for a "Mandarin baby")

Carrie's personal assistant (why she needs one, I still can't figure out. Does this woman work…EVER?), played by Jennifer Hudson

I'm glad to see SATC hired these ladies to be in the film, yet part of me wonders whether or not their characters will end up much like the other POC featured in the television series (read: background extras or involved in the four women's lives for a brief period to satisfy their need for entertainment, only to disappear an episode or two later) . . . Will everyone want a Chinese adopted daughter as much as they wanted Manolos? Will they oversimplify issues involved with transracial adoption? And what about Jennifer Hudson's character--will she end up being written as a neo-Mammy, or is something more progressive in the works?

Click here to view the new extended official trailer.

originally posted @ Racialicious on 3/5/2008

Brown and Out of Town: a POC Traveler's Guide to Racism

2009-06-20T16:30:00.000-03:00

Author's note: Before anyone jumps all over me, I use "brown" here as a general term for people of African or indigenous American descent, not solely South Asians or Central Americans, though the article discusses issues for all POC travelers, not just the ones with darker skin.

Ah, Madrid.

I had decided that for spring break in 2005, instead of going to Memphis as planned, I'd take a week-long trip to Paris and Madrid instead. After all, in a weird twist of fate, the plane tickets to Europe were only about 100 dollars more than those I had bought to go to the place Elvis and I both called home. I figured as I could speak, read, and understand Spanish and French, I'd be fine. I'd been to Paris before, and loved it, and had heard awesome things about Madrid from my friends, so I thought, "Why not? Just breathe, and take a chance." So I did, though I wasn't exactly prepared for the less than warm reception in one of the liveliest cities in the Iberian Peninsula.

Paris was no problem, possibly due in part to the city's expressed love (read: borderline fetishizing) of black folks (Josephine Baker, anyone?) or the running assumption that I was Moroccan/generally North African and not a black American. Most people just treated me like I was French, before I opened my mouth, of course (despite my perfect French accent, my occasional pause to find vocabulary words from my high school French mental database was a dead give-a-way). No one was rude to me or my friend with whom I went out on occasion (who is half white American, half indigenous Mexican, and clearly "of color").

Madrid, on the other hand, completely did me in.

On a super basic level, I wasn't a big fan of the traditional Spanish food, and, instead, flocked to the numerous Middle Eastern restaurants like water in a desert mirage. And though I was only there for three days, these little hole-in-the-wall, family-run eateries ended up being my surrogate safe havens as walking around on the street proved, well, difficult. I would say the city, overall, was far from receptive. While I understood having a pride in being Spanish, or a Mardileño, to be more specific, what I did not understand was why that translated into racism. I faced constant stares, and I mean constant, many of which were steeped in anger or confusion, despite my more than proper attire (I was not one of those fanny pack-wearing, head buried in a map, incapable-of-speaking-the-native-language types of tourists, trust me). I was cat-called, a lot, and though I was conditioned to that from having lived in NYC for four years at that point, what I hadn't been exposed to was the overtly sexual racist epithets thrown my way (none of which I will repeat here). I tried to search the eyes of other people of color for an explanation. People of Asian descent seemed happy, even moreso there than in Paris. And people clearly from Africa also seemed OK, though I am sure their black skin proved problematic at times (look no further than the Madrid soccer related racism or even the recent Formula One racing incident in Barcelona). It was the somewhat racially ambiguous brown folks who seemed to run into trouble.

El Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Mexicans, and other phentoypically outcast Latin American immigrants (along with black Africans) held lower-echelon jobs and noticeably received stares and a little street harassment as well. Their spoken Spanish was a reminder of Spain's colonial past that history had erased, glossed over, or simply euphemized, much like textbooks of Japan, the United States, or any nation, and their appearance even more so—typically indigenous and/or African features blending with those of the Spanish conquistadores and settlers of yore rendering many of the Latin American immigrants who had come to Spain in search of work easy to spot. I noticed that Caribbean Latinos and mulatos caught hell too, receiving the same sets of glaring eyes that I did when on public transportation or simply andando a pié.

To put it nicely, it was an awkward existence I led, at best, ceasing my outdoor activities more or less once the sun set because I had been propositioned more than once in the day time, and didn't want to risk full on sexual assault at night due to my having been assumed to be a prostitute on account of my skin color. The hostel employees (all of Latin American descent) and the falafel bar owners loved me, but they were about the only ones in Madrid who made me feel somewhat human. On the cab ride to the airport, a place where I would later be racially profiled (read: separated from a line of a ton of other people, searched, forced to weigh my carry-on, a small backpack, and made to pay 60 Euros for it being a few kilos overweight on account of an art book I had bought for a friend from the Museo del Prado!), I vowed never to come back and counted down the minutes until I'd return to Paris for my departure to New York.

But during this cab ride, I learned a few things to which I was not initially privy prior to going to Madrid. The cab driver asked me how I liked Madrid, to which I replied, "I liked it, but I don't think it liked me too much," which led to our discussing (no kidding) race relations in Spain. The driver, born and raised in Spain, offered a perspective I had not fully considered. He mentioned the abject poverty and limited knowledge of Spanish that plagued African immigrant communities, and in many Spaniards' minds, the state, as they were paying taxes to support unwelcome refugees. He also discussed the cause for my frequent run-ins with men who had less than Puritan intentions in their approach: that many women from the Dominican Republic and North Africa became prostitutes in Madrid to make ends meet. His explanation for the differing treatment of Asians vs. people of indigenous or African descent boiled down to the ability to assimilate.

"They come here already speaking Spanish," he said. ". . . and with money" he added. He didn't agree with how I was treated, and noted that I "seemed fine," but was sure to note that "a lot of Madrileños aren't ready for that kind of change. The young people, maybe, but their parents and people my age, not so much. They think they are pure, and forget about the years the Moors were here. They want things to stay the same. Come back in ten years, and maybe things will be better."

Though I was back in Paris a few hours later, I thought about what he said for a while after that. While comfortably nestled in the plush leather-upholstered seats of the Swiss Air flight back to New York, I wondered if my little trip to Spain would have been different if I possessed a lower level of melanin, or even if I looked noticeably more African instead of bearing an appearance that confused people. Upon returning to the United States, the same friends who had recommended Madrid felt a tinge of regret for not having mentioned "the racism thing" or at least not having forewarned how it may have affected me. In retrospect, they all noted, as whites, they had never thought about it. They had only heard stories, those they had selectively compartmentalized in a place far away in the back of their brains because they didn't really have to worry about it in Europe or in the United States in the same way, say, someone visually different from the majority would.

The experience and the discussions I had in the aftermath of my time in Madrid made me reflect on the privileges, or lack thereof, we have while traveling. Though I had a bad experience in Madrid, that is not to say every person of color has a comparable story. In fact, I know a few black women who loved Madrid and who have gone back several times, stating that they experienced a few incidents of racism, but mainly that it was more an issue of mistaken national identity than anything else. I think, too, of what the cab driver expressed in relation to his (and, arguably, the city's) impression of Asians. Even my white friends had expressed a considerable sense of alienation in Madrid at times, not due to language, but mainly in relation to cultural differences or even physical ones (being super tall or Nordic in appearance, you name it). In looking back on the experience and after hearing those of others, I was able to put things more into perspective.

Even I am "privileged" (in a physical sense) in some locations, notably northern and central Brazil, where my appearance did not garner unreasonable attention, many assuming that I was just "one of them." I even thought of my experiences in the United States. I didn't feel as if my physically assigned racial characteristics made me stand out in some Brooklyn neighborhoods, whereas my white or Asian-American friends expressed extreme discomfort on account of stares and even statements geared toward them. I find myself losing sight of how powerful my appearance can be at the right place and at the right time, but never forget how much of a burden it can be in other situations.

In reflecting on my previous travel experiences as I prepare for an upcoming trip to Portugal, I began thinking about how many additional things I have to consider as a woman, and, in particular, a person of color before I travel. It's amazing how many things travel guides leave out when it comes to the treatment a person of color may receive in a certain country, how to react to incidents of racism, or even whether or not what you are experiencing has nothing to do with race and all to do with cultural miscommunication. Though maybe I should expect it by now as many of the travel guide writers are white. Then again, only white people travel, right? (kidding, though on average, whites DO travel more widely and frequently than blacks, at least.. . though, given, this could be due to a series of factors that would lead me into an entirely new post, so I'll shelve this for now).

Besides consulting the Minority Travel Forum on Rick Steve's Graffiti Wall with posts from travelers of color (including people involved in interracial relationships, who have adopted children of a different race/ethnicity from their own, etc), which I highly recommend, it's worth considering the following:

1. The travel guide will most likely leave out information about the reception, or lack thereof, you may experience as a person of color. This includes common words/sayings with which you may not be familiar, but that are actually not racist (i.e. if someone in the Dominican Republic were to call you "negrito" or "indio," it would not be meant as a racial slur, rather a term of endearment based on your skin color and/or heritage).

2. Expect the unexpected, and don't go into the situation assuming your experience will match those of your white peers and/or friends and family of color. Your command of the native language, body language, familiarity with the culture, style of dress, etc can alter how you are perceived and treated.

3. Don't always assume racism is at play. As a result of the history of the United States, people of color and whites alike have been rendered into sensitivity machines, often analyzing things at a level of sociological sophistication that may not be of issue in some other countries. Also, bear in mind that every nation has its own respective history and deals with race and ethnicity accordingly. Don't attempt to color their history with your own. Think of these things before you jump the gun.

4. Find out what you can do if you ARE a victim of racism. There are several anti-racist groups (i.e. SOS Racismo in Spain and Portugal) that hold workshops and do outreach based on race-related issues. Sites like this may be worth checking out prior to taking a trip.

5. Reconcile your prior experiences with those of the present. The United States and/or your home country more likely than not has witnessed acts of racism, many of which continue. Don't assume that it's only the country you are visiting that has problems. If we think of the Amadou Diallo case or the Jena 6 or Vincent Chin, the U.S. is a scary and ugly place for POC too. It doesn't make racism here or elsewhere any better, but it definitely makes you realize that every country has its problems, so you can't let a few instances of racism frighten you away.

6. If traveling by yourself and feel threatened as a result of your race/ethnicity, try to remove yourself from the situation, if possible and find a place where you feel more welcome. You may even want to try to get to know other people like yourself in that country, depending on the duration of your stay, to get tips on places to avoid, how to behave in the case of a threat, etc.

7. Do your homework. Before traveling anywhere, ask around and look up information detailing the experiences of people like yourself. As I mentioned before, their experience may not entirely mirror the one in which you are about to partake, but it may offer some helpful advice.

8. Have a good time, despite any adversity you may encounter. If anything, I learned to laugh at the experience in Madrid in retrospect, and in a weird case of Stockholm syndrome, have considered going back one day, though with a friend this time. If you have spent the money to go somewhere else, you might as well try to get as much out of it as you can!

originally posted @ Racialicious on 2/29/2008

We All Walk in Different Shoes: Kenneth Cole's New Campaign Steps Ahead

2009-06-20T16:29:00.002-03:00

A few weeks ago, while walking along the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, a well-known strip for the burgeoning fashionista or the credit card terrorist, I stopped dead in my tracks. Though normally oblivious to any movement around me on the streets near my office, especially as most of the foot traffic in midtown is comprised of the steps of awed tourists or jaded ladies who lunch, the one story-tall photo to my right as I approached the corner of 49th street compelled me to give pause. I had been rendered still by the image of a South Asian-American man dressed in red, black, and white wearing a turban. His right hand lifted to adjust his sunglasses in cool indifference, the handsome face was an unusual one—at least to be seen on an advertisement on Fifth Avenue.

Upon closer inspection, I learned the name of the bearer of these model good looks. “SONNY CABERWAL,” the sign read, “PRACTICING SIKH AND ENTREPRENEUR SPEAKING OUT AGAINST RACIAL PROFILING.” Caberwal, the North Carolina-born Duke University and Georgetown Law graduate and owner of Tavalon Tea Bar in New York City, was part of Kenneth Cole’s new campaign “We All Walk in Different Shoes.”

Cole, a New York based fashion designer known for his humanitarian efforts and philanthropy, was the first member of the fashion community to enlist in the global fight against HIV/AIDS in 1985, a time when little was known about the virus and even less was known about the people struggling to survive it. Cole decided to base his current campaign on the motto “25 years of non-uniform thinking” and what has become his most famous mantra:

“What you stand for is more important than what you stand in. To be aware is more important than what you wear.”

Via the Kenneth Cole website, one can learn about the individual participants in the campaign, all activists in their own right, ranging from the stories of partners – one a married lesbian couple, another a film-making duo comprised of an Israeli and a Palestinian—to the powerful stories of individuals, including those of Caberwal, whom I mentioned previously, Regan Hoffman, the HIV+ Editor-in-Chief of POZ Magazine, Aimee Mullins, Paralympic athlete and actor, and Patrick Sammon, the President of the Log Cabin Republicans, a group for conservative gays and lesbians. The real-life models for this campaign are of various racial and ethnic backgrounds, levels of physical ability, sexual orientations, and political leanings, but exist as evidence that anyone can look good in Kenneth Cole.

Though cynics could easily argue that this is simply an attempt by the Kenneth Cole label team to garner attention for their wares, the campaign takes the fashion industry a few steps ahead, primarily because it not only lends itself to encouraging activism and social progress, but also because it blatantly acknowledges that one can receive attention for a clothing or accessories line without relying solely upon an emaciated and predominately white fleet of models. I stopped in my tracks that day on Fifth Avenue because I was so shocked to see an Asian-American male involved in a fashion ad, but I still noticed the clothes. Despite what seems to be a popular belief in the fashion industry, his tan skin did not take attention away from the impact of the colors and fabrics upon it. Nor did Delmon Dunston’s wheelchair distract me from noticing his electric blue sleeveless shirt. In fact, his wheelchair, with its silver and black casing, allowed for a more dynamic color contrast. The clothing and accessories were enhanced by the models Cole’s team had chosen.

So as thousands of designers and modeling agencies around the globe continue to reject models of color, of size, or of varied physical abilities, Cole has provided his buying audience, or even those who just stop to admire the advertisements as art pieces, the opportunity to judge beauty for themselves.

To read more about the models chosen for this campaign, please click here.

originally posted @ Racialicious on 2/19/2008

Pampered Guilt: With Spa Treatments, Is There More Than What Meets the Eye?

2009-06-20T16:28:00.000-03:00

On Tuesday, I walked half a block from my office to get a manicure/pedicure. I had a gift certificate that I figured that I’d put to good use, especially considering that my nails were chewed down from a combination of stress resulting from the month-end close and my anticipation regarding delegate count announcements on CNN. That and my cuticles looked more like razed cornfields than supportive flesh thanks to my having recently moved to a new apartment. I was a hot mess, and I needed help instantly.

When I arrived at the spa, I thanked my lucky stars for the opportunity to have some time away from my corporate sweatshop, but felt that I might have stepped into another one—though this time, the roles were reversed. I was in charge. In some weird S&M-like twist of fate, the spa had transported me into another world, where dozens of women were present to meet my every need if I just asked, even if they could barely understand a word I said. My vocabulary for the hour was restricted solely to beautification terms, and little else could be said without getting lost in translation. My spa break had given me yet another reason to bite my nails.

On the one hand, I love being pampered, but on the other, I’m the type who would be likely to clean my house from top to bottom before the maid came, if you know what I mean. I say only possess what you could properly take care of on your own. It’s a personal philosophy I try to live by—one that inevitably haunts me whenever I walk into a spa. A terrible disease I have called OverThink takes over, making it hard for me to enjoy myself at time because I am constantly thinking that I should have run the blade a little closer to the skin on my left leg as to not annoy the masseuse or that I should have scrubbed my right heel a little harder in the shower this morning so that the pedicurist wouldn’t end up with huge biceps on account of all the elbow grease she had to apply to my feet.

But when I returned to work that day, with Essie-adorned fingers and toes, I realized I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. Other co-workers expressed feeling a similar anxiety when going for spa treatments, and just like me, the pedicure was sometimes the hardest part to endure. There was just something odd about having a woman nearly beneath you in a hunched position treating your toes as if they were solid gold, staring at you in feigned adoration as you massaged lotion in your calves, your conversations limited to “hard?” or “soft?” and “same color for your manicure?” At the epicenter of comfort, something placed us in a state of unease. Though being pleased, we felt a discomfort based on class, race, age, and/or language barriers, when applicable, that placed us in a position of power we hadn’t earned. Though in our discussions, my workmates and I agreed that it was the physical positioning of a pedicure that bothered us, we knew it went deeper than that, we just weren’t sure exactly how to say it.

The author of the blog That Black Girl attempted to explain how she felt in April of 2007 in an entry simpled entitled "Service":

i know this sounds weird, but something just doesn't sit well with me having someone black give me a pedicure. as far as portland goes, i haven't seen any other pedicure salons with black people actually doing the pedicures . it would just make me feel weird and i'm not sure exactly why. something about it seeming like servant type work makes it seem awkward for someone black to be serving me like that. like i'm being a house negro or something . . . i wonder if anyone else feels this way or if i'm just cookoo.

In several of the comments, readers complained that the author was being overly analytical about the situation or that she was too focused on race, but in my response, I attempted to expand the author’s thoughts by incorporating history:

i can understand what you mean, though i feel odd about receiving pedicures from anyone--no matters his/her race...and i LOVE pedicures. the manicures don't bother me, but there is something about the social implications of washing feet/shining shoes/doing some type of service that low to the ground in basically a kneeling position. i think that is what bothers me...the physical side of it...what message that normally sends to us. feet are considered dirty and cleaning them or the shoes people wear is considered to be reserved (esp. in the past) for a certain sector of society....the poor people, the immigrants, the uneducated, etc. so it's hard to break that association b/c it's been ingrained in us over time.

I went on to include personal experiences that further complicated my view on receiving service in spas:

manicures, on the other hand, don't make me feel weird. but the pedicure...so hard sometimes. i like my beautician. she's a year younger than me, has similar interests, and was born and raised in nepal. she always puts an interesting spin on topics as a result of her cultural upbringing and her experiences as an immigrant, so we talk about race and social status a lot. nevertheless, it's odd for me to have an intelligent, confident, interesting woman i would completely consider my friend if it were outside of a business relationship to scrub my feet.

Back in November of 2007, writer Emily Nussbaum of New York Magazine decided to tackle this issue as well. In the opening of her article “A Strangers Touch,” she endeavored to pinpoint the psychological games at play when one goes to a spa, especially one in which the person in charge of your service may be perceived as being on a different social level from yourself, at least bearing in mind the complex racial and class stratification in the United States, and to be more specific, New York City:

The first time I got a pedicure, I felt something similar: physical vulnerability, mingled with a lurid awareness of power—an Asian woman who didn’t speak English was kneeling in front of me, washing my feet. It felt distinctly slave and master. But that’s only true the first time you have a treatment like this. Pay once, twice, three times, and the aura of exploitation dissolves, and with it, the contradictions implicit in getting a massage, or a waxing, or a mud wrap: You’re naked, but nothing explicitly sexual is going on; the touch is intimate, but the toucher is a stranger. The name she tells you may not be her real name. What’s happening is not medical, though the props that surround you—the glass jar of blue fluid, the hygienic oven—encourage that illusion. And yet you are in charge: You’re the customer.

Nussbaum spends most of the article explaining how many New York spas, at least those that are more affordable to the average consumer (read: middle class) are little more than sweatshops with pretty, earth-toned façades, and presented instances of women who had challenged the system, like Susan Kim, who led a lawsuit against two Upper East Side spas in October of 2007. It’s undeniable that the spa industry has its flaws, just as any other, and it’s important that we not gloss over them. Though as I read the comments in preparation for this piece, I noticed that many readers accused Nussbaum of projecting her experience too heavily, applying it to her analysis. In other words, they thought Nussbaum had already come to a conclusion on the spa industry and was now looking for a way to support her conclusion by providing biased information. I wondered whether or not the audience had become so incensed because the subjects of her article were women of color and/or women within the immigrant community. Could it be that those commenting shared Nussbaum’s discomfort, but cloaked their own denial of privilege in vitriol?

In reflecting on Nussbaum’s piece and my own personal experiences, I realized that seeing women of color on their knees scrubbing my feet or shining shoes in the basement of D.C.’s Capitol building (an image so disturbing that it became the focus of my college admission essay) were not the only things that bothered me. I felt the same way when I saw women who looked like me pushing children who weren’t theirs in strollers in Washington Square Park as I changed classes or young women carrying thousands on grocery bags from a gourmet market on the subway to a neighborhood in which they were not residents. Something about it just didn’t sit well with me. I, of course, realize that we must all have a means of surviving in this country, braving its ragged economy in order to make a living. I also fully realize that those who work hard have a right to treat themselves every now and then, to reward themselves if they so wish. But honestly, what gives? Is there a way to mitigate the feelings of discomfort or utter awkwardness when at spas or in situations in which you feel that the services you are receiving are in some way demeaning?

It’s a difficult question to answer, as are most of the ones that plague me on a daily basis, but I make a concerted effort to avoid places of business that seem to make matters worse. If I feel that the employees are being mistreated in a spa or seem generally intimidated by their boss, I avoid the place. I do the same for places that reek of fumes upon entry or where a manicure costs less than what I’d normally tip the beautician for the service in the first place. Those are at least small ways I can avoid being in the trenches of employee exploitation. If the spa is nice and conditions seem conducive to a healthy work environment, then great. But in the back of my mind, just like Nussbaum, I wonder is it all little more than an act, one to keep us from running out the door, wet nails and all?

originally posted @ Racialcious on 2/08/2008

Interracial Porn: Holding Us Back While Getting Us Off? (Pt. 2)

2009-06-20T16:27:00.000-03:00

(. . . Continued from Part 1)

The hypothetical situation I posed above is clearly as far-fetched as Jensen’s advocacy of ending masculinity, but in the long run, especially with so many supporters of the eradication of race and the installation of colorblind institutions, could an erasure of race as we know it lead to an altering of our fantasies and their portrayal on screen?

My answer is a definite yes.

Without a doubt, the use of race in fantasy scenarios aids the process of arousal. Taboo elements in porn assist in the option of living vicariously through the actors/performers on-screen. Particularly with regard to race, as one’s race is basically immutable, certain attributes assigned to the actors’ respective sexual prowess or lack thereof are also seen as immutable, rendering porn actors/actresses of color mere props in a fantasy, just like whips, chains, or clamps would be in an S&M flick. Their race, as set by the film’s theme or as interpreted by the viewer, becomes a vehicle for the fantasy, used solely for the sake of helping the viewer achieve orgasm. Race becomes a fetish element, if you will, and porn writers, producers, and the actors involved use essentialization as a key part—without it, the fantasy of interracial sex dissolves.

The very fact that interracial porn is a genre in itself is telling. With porn categories often catered to the specifics needs (or assumed needs) of its viewers, sex between a black man and an Asian-American woman, as an example, becomes comparable to sex between a dom and a sub, simply another image to fulfill the sexual desires of the audience, though through considerably dehumanizing means. For example, just as women in straight porn films are often degraded, usually supplying self-deprecating speeches to mirror the verbal abuse of her male partner, interracial porn performers must do the same, often spouting out racist rhetoric that would make a Neo-Nazi blush, solely to bolster the element of fantasy.

Stereotypes replace basic dialogue, with the characters often addressing each other in race-based sexual terms, most particularly those which employ synecdoche (i.e. a black man may be referred to simply as “big black d*ck” or, as commonly seen in films featuring American men with Brazilian female sex partners, a Latina may be referred to solely by the size and shape of her bottom). And just as in “mono-racial” porn, third person becomes the most common form of address, with the actors often self-narrating, giving some of the actions a more disturbing meaning if the dialogue is racist (i.e. lines like “watch me make this Asian b*tch my little Geisha whore"). Violence is often combined with sex in hardcore interracial porn, closely correlating with mono-racial porn, yet when added with racism and verbal abuse, interracial sex in porn takes on a unique meaning, that being mainly that in order to have proper sex with someone of a different race, or to enjoy that fantasy, defilement is essential. And again much like its mono-racial counterpart, interracial porn employs exaggeration as a device to enhance scenarios further, though in a racial context, often with stereotypes, race-based monikers, and objectification at a heightened level. Even the racial differences themselves are greatly exaggerated and, many times, inaccurate (much like mainstream Hollywood films), with people of color fitting a specific and predictable description physically (Latinas tend to have dark hair, olive skin tones, and physical proportions that weigh heavily on the lower half, black actors/actresses usually have dark skin as to provide a color contrast with their non-black sex partner, etc), transforming race into not only a prop, as mentioned previously, but also as a costume and a landscape upon which the cinematographic foundation relies for stability.

By way of actions, words, and appearances, interracial porn feeds the viewer exactly what he or she wants by way of appeasing the need to see what he or she expects. Even though interracial porn relies on the taboo element for its very existence as a genre, the scenarios are rarely jaw-dropping in suspense. The viewer knows exactly what he or she will see without watching at all—mainly because porn happens to be a mirror of society.

Mainstream, mono-racial porn often parodies current events in order to place a fantastical twist on reality, and interracial porn frequently follows suit, though it leaves a more critical audience to wonder whether or not the exaggerated nature of most interracial porn is done as social commentary, exploiting the fact that interracial sex is such a taboo despite it being 2008, or possibly even to ridicule the audience that continues to reach a climax by way of almost comedic routines of cross-cultural interaction.

But in the end, it's quite difficult to separate the fantasy from reality in relation to porn, especially as so many porn scenarios, whether we like or not, end up coming full circle in our own bedrooms—even if we don't gain inspiration directly from porn. Porn imagery is all around us, but the issue surrounding interracial porn boils down to the age-old art vs. life argument. Has interracial porn taken on such a racist tone due to our society being racist? Or, consequently, is the taboo surrounding interracial sex only perpetuated by such films, through which the average American, more likely than not, completely uneducated on issues of race, may see his or her first person of color in a sexual context and/or first interracial sex scene?

It's a question that I continue to ask myself as I reflect on all the porn I had to digest over a series of months. Bearing this in mind, I return to my refashioning of Jensen's thesis to pertain to race:

Race, at least in the terms that we define it presently, supports a system of hatred toward people of color, as demonstrated in (interracial) pornography, and the only way to progress beyond this conveyance of hatred toward people of color is to eradicate the use of race in its entirety.

I have to say I agree. Race as a category, much like masculinity (and gender as a whole) in Jensen's eyes, is the result of centuries of pseudo-scientific tests rooted in blatant racism, hatred, and xenophobia. Whether we realize it or not, when we discuss race now, even in a considerably progressive way, we must use those terms that are undeniably linked to America's problematic past. Much like the excellent analyses of language that I have read over the course of the last few years in which the authors pinpoint elements of our speech that reflect the sexism, racism, classism, and heteronormativity of our society that remain, even as such –isms, at least on the surface, have drastically leveled off (at least in comparison to say, the antebellum period), my analysis here of racial terminology is also relevant. Racism remains in our racial classifications, and until those categories are destroyed and our society receives a complete overhaul insofar as how we consider phenotypic difference (i.e. if we were to discuss race without the terms so heavily relying upon stereotypes and hatred upon which many were initially based), we will continue to exist in a static position.

With regard to interracial porn, as it is, in many ways, a sexualized reflection of the state of race relations, I believe that the stereotypes will remain until we make the aforementioned (and long overdue, I might add) social revisions. Porn, though trivial in the eyes of some, makes us analyze our own perspective on others who are different from ourselves. Could there ever be a day upon which seeing a couple of different ethnic, racial, or national backgrounds in a sexual context does not evoke specific images from our damaged history? Could one ever view interracial sex objectively, and even then, without thinking about the interracial element at all, and instead, simply seeing it for what it is: two (or more) people having sex? If one can derive pleasure from watching two people who appear to be of the same racial, ethnic, or national background in heterosexual porn without any additional bells and whistles (albeit through a highly sexist lens), why can't the same be said of interracial sex? Why must it always be packaged as a spectacle or a pornographic sideshow, an abnormal act that requires additional dialogue and themes to remind us that this is something different and borderline perverse?

I'm not at all advocating the PC-ification of one's bedroom activities, but suffice it to say, I grow concerned when I can rarely find a person of color in interracial porn (even if the sex act is between people whom one would consider "minorities" and/or "of color") who is not rendered an object by way of fetishism or exotification, or a person of color in porn, period, who does not end up playing a role that is considered reflective of a stereotype. While the removal of these stereotypes, subjugation, etc, from porn may result in the dampening of a fantasy for many, I have to wonder what that even means for the viewer who relies upon such devices in order to enjoy what they see on the screen or the society that has created them. Can people of color only be truly enjoyed if being ridiculed or degraded? It's a tough question, but much like Jensen and his take on gender, I find myself coming back to it over and over again.

originally posted @ Racialicious on 2/1/2008

Interracial Porn: Holding Us Back While Getting Us Off? (Pt 1)

2009-06-20T16:23:00.002-03:00

I am by no means an expert on porn, nor do I pretend to be. Yet considering the volume of hits on xtube.com or youporn.com that could be traced back to my IP address, one would assume so. If not that, one would at least be able to mentally file away my name with all the other people in the “creepy” category. Some of you may be wondering about this new obsession of mine that has developed during my period of hiatus, but I can fortunately hold someone else partially responsible.

In November of 2007, Courtney, a contributing blogger for Feministing, reviewed a book aptly titled Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity by Robert Jensen. Much like fellow feminist theorist, the late Andrea Dworkin, Jensen considers pornography a visual manifestation of misogyny—hatred of women captured on film. With sexual arousal distracting the viewer, acts of violence and subjugation of women are interpreted through a different lens than, say, if they were portrayed minus the element of sex. Yet also like Dworkin, Jensen’s work borders on misandrist, stating as his major thesis that “If men are going to be full human beings, we first have to stop being men.” Using pornography as a microcosmic representation of the world as a whole, at least insofar as relationships between men and women are concerned, Jensen proposes that masculinity must be abandoned altogether as, in his opinion, it is inextricably linked to a world in which women are viewed as stupid, submissive, and deserving of abuse.

I agree with Courtney in her mention of the many loopholes within the book, in particular her comments regarding women who enjoy submission or even pain during sex. I also concur with regard to her discussion of images and scenarios within pornography playing out in real life. Many once-taboo subjects and sex acts, including, but not limited to, threesomes or multi-partner sex, anal sex, BDSM, and even the use and purchase of sex toys, have become mainstream. Porn is not entirely the culprit, but its proliferation has certainly aided Americans in their burgeoning sexual open-mindedness. With an orgasm only a click away, pornography has experienced a similar transformation to that of the music industry, with the creation of mp3s and pirate sites, and the film and tv industry, with the onslaught of youtube and bootleg dvds of sidewalk entrepreneurs.

After reading Courtney’s review of Getting Off (which you can read, in full, here) I wanted to take Jensen’s argument a bit further. Despite my disagreeing with him on some points, I felt that Jensen’s thoughts on gender roles in porn could be easily applied to the use of race in porn, particularly interracial porn. Following his thesis, in short, that masculinity by definition supports a system of misogyny, a characteristic clearly demonstrated in (straight) pornography, and the only way to progress beyond this conveyance of hatred toward women is to eradicate masculinity in its entirety, I came up with the following:

Race, at least in the terms that we define it presently, supports a system of hatred toward people of color, as demonstrated in (interracial) pornography, and the only way to progress beyond this conveyance of hatred toward people of color is to eradicate the use of race in its entirety.

The word “race” could easily be replaced with a term like “white supremacy,” but considering that several genres of interracial porn include couples of color (though considered different “races”), I felt it prudent to stick simply to “race,” as whites are not the only ones guilty of acting out on and consuming films related to such fantasies. Much like my research on Craigslist personal ads, I decided to search for films based on racial categories like “Latina,” “Asian,” “Black,” and “White.” Also, considering that there are several categories within each, I narrowed my search to nationalities and regions in some cases, searching for films based on categories like “Brazilian,” “Mexican,” “Chinese,” “Korean,” “African,” “Eastern European,” etc. The results were hard to stomach at times, but they were nothing short of the usual. My search provided me with a plethora of racial and regional stereotypes—all, of course, essential to one’s sexual prowess (or in some cases, lack thereof; the descriptions of “Mandingo” porn films often included a line about a white woman’s presumably white husband not being able to satisfy her).

The themes I uncovered were strikingly similar to those I enumerated in the Craigslist ad article, furthering my aforementioned statement on porn finding its way into real life, though with a few twists. For example, there were far more films with black women in submissive roles than I had expected, especially considering the stereotype of black women being incredibly domineering. Given, most of these films included multiple white male partners in a group sex scene, often with a description detailing the black woman’s sexual hunger, so the aspect of the stereotype regarding black female libidos was left in tact. Other deviations from the common stereotypes included black men in submissive roles (though these were more common in gay films regarding “homothugs” than in straight films). Also, bearing in mind that sites like youporn and xtube allow for the uploading of both professional and amateur films in full and clip form by members worldwide, certain American concepts of race had to be altered to accommodate more international ideas, for example “Asian” in England is a term representative of people of South Asian descent, whereas in the U.S., the term more commonly describes people from East Asia.

For the most part, however, despite the inclusion of porn uploaded from other parts of the world, racism was rampant in terms of stereotyping and essentialization. In accounting for the hundreds of hung black stallions, bored and docile white MILFs, barely legal, small-chested Asian “girls,” and desperate, sex-hungry Latinas longing for citizenship, I couldn’t help but wonder: if we rid ourselves of race, would porn like this exist? What would we even call racism at that point?

The hypothetical situation I posed above is clearly as far-fetched as Jensen’s advocacy of ending masculinity, but in the long run, especially with so many supporters of the eradication of race and the installation of colorblind institutions, could an erasure of race as we know it lead to an altering of our fantasies and their portrayal on screen?

To be continued next week . . .

originally posted @ Racialicious on 1/22/2008

Junk Prints: Anti-Racism You Can Wear

2009-06-20T16:19:00.001-03:00

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of enjoying the indie design fabulosity that is the Craftacular, an annual market sponsored by Bust Magazine. For those of you who may not know about Bust, here’s the mag in a nutshell: feminism meets DIY meets up-and-coming musicians, writers, artists, and actors. Thanks to Bust, I can now brew my own beer at home, knit an extra boob for bra-stuffing, and find local designers that understand my desire to buck the system by rocking a piece of unique jewelry to contrast with my boring corporate attire. I found quite a bit of that at the Craftacular on Saturday, but I also had the opportunity to meet a ton of really innovative designers. One designer that stood out in my mind, however, was Chanel Kennebrew of Junk Prints.

I would have passed up the quiet booth in the corner if it weren’t for the beautiful, multicolored, metallic vintage purse I glimpsed. It was a tiny north star in a room full of distractions—jewelry here, shoes there, and an overabundance of human bodies cum consumers all searching for the perfect holiday gift. I made my way through the crowd over to Chanel’s booth, and was immediately thankful when I saw that a) the purse was still there, and b) that the clothing she displayed was the long-lost fashion twin of Racialicious! Of course, she had lighthearted items such as her vintage meets modern mashup outfits and her decoupage covered journals, but what caught my really caught my eye was her t-shirt on celebrity transracial adoption: She describes her “Colorblind Glasses” shirt on her website:

Color Blind seem to be all the rage in Hollywood these days. I mean, international babies are sooo 'the new dog' (which was 'the new purse' in a not so distant past). Are Madonna and Jolie ready for the commitment? Ah who knows. Love is love right? You,my friend don't have to find a foreign baby to show your color blind spirit, nope, you show your spirit with this fancy pants shirt.

Chanel also designs digital prints that cover issues that would be quite familiar to Racialicious readers, for example, her “Silence” collection. The print entitled “Good Housekeeping” (pictured below) is described as follows:

Good Housekeeping critiques the magazine identity and questions the values that it imposes on racialized women in North America. The magazine identity is a contradicting ideology that promotes idealism through exploitation. The things that we (as the North American consumer) want are essentialized and viewed as ingrained desires. In actuality they are usually sold to us at the expense of ourselves. This can be seen throughout history as cultural appropriation, tokenism etc. The concepts of the magazine identity and media morals pose many problems for society in general. The affects are devastating for those that cannot be the ‘better self’ because society doesn’t recognize the existing racialized ‘self’. This group of images focuses an a group that will never achieve the magazine identity due to the fact that it has been excluded from it’s canon of idealistic values. They confront topics of identity, media values and the exploitation of women foreign to the mass consumer audience.

Lastly, check out her one-of-a-kind commentary a la t-shirt on the Don Imus debacle:

You know about Don Imus Right? He's the was the sports announcer that got fired for calling a Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos." He recently received a multi-million dollar contract and prime morning-drive-time slot on a radio station. Wow, well I've been working on a graphic for this for a while but the most complicated part of doing that is, how do I make the connection with wigs and historic cosmetic homogenizing techniques without glorifying that crazy dude. Not sure if I've figured that out so I'm trying out a few ideas on some gently worn thrift.

Chanel’s work is fun, but has a message as she fuses statements on our society with some pretty fun wares. I highly recommend taking a look at her website as well as her Etsy store. You can also friend her on facebook.com and myspace. So if you’re still looking for stocking stuffers for your friends who are a little on the intense side or who just happen to have everything, it’s definitely worth giving Junk Prints a looksie.

originally posted @ Racialicious on 12/14/2007

A Case for Hipsters (of color)?

2009-06-20T16:12:00.003-03:00

Lives in rapidly gentrifying neighborhood: check

Occasionally shops at Urban Outfitters, thrift stores, or grandma's house: check

Tends to party in other rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods on weekends: check

Is likely to know or at least recognize 1 or more people a week on Last Night's Party, Cobra Snake, or Blue States Lose: check, check, check

Spends more time per week changing hairstyle than showering: ok, ew, sooo NOT check

With the exception of the final point, I qualify pretty solidly as a card-carrying member of hipsterdom (*though, according to Carmen, the first rule of being hipster is never admitting to being one*). I'm what one could call a "conscious hipster," as oxymoronic as that sounds. I genuinely care about the world. I blog about race and gender, I recycle, I hold doors for the elderly. . . but I also devote a lot of time to fashion, music, and other facets of materialism on which I find worthy enough to throw money. Does that make me a bottomless pit of indifference? I think not.

Unfortunately, pop references to hipsters are never quite flattering and, to be honest, I think most of us "have it coming." After reading the piece on Wes Anderson, and the responses thereafter, I began to wonder whether my pending defense of hipsters had a future in the metaphoric trash heap. Afterall, this site, among many others, has been nothing close to forgiving for hipsters' behavioral faux-pas, including, but not limited to: political indifference (passed off as white liberalism), superficiality, aversion to personal hygiene, endorsement of the objectification of women under the guise of post-modern feminism, and an inexplicable hunger for overpriced clothing that looks as though it's been bought, sold, and worn three times over.

And more than anything, perhaps as a means of highlighting their flaws while simultaneously skirting the risk of inciting the wrath of equal rights groups or the anti-racist blogger community (*wink wink*), they are portrayed as overwhelmingly white.

The problem that lies therein, however, is that in this attempt to criticize a group that is considered to be teeming with silent predators to developing neighborhoods by way of its voracious consumerism in the face of poverty and quasi-colonial gaze, the people of color who make up a sizeable portion of the hipster clans in major cities are swept under the rug, virtually ignored for the sake of ease. Given, it's much easier to stereotype a group when they are all exactly alike, right? Yet once the idea of color or class or queerness ends up in the mix, the critics get a little vertiginous, as their previously asserted sweeping generalizations may end up pulling them into a vortex of inaccuracy.

I decided to do a little impromptu research into the history of people of color in the United States who would probably be considered hipsters, at least if they were somehow superimposed over a backdrop of post-millennial modernity. I thought of Pachucos (more on them in a sec), people of color who were members of the beat generation, the followers of and participants in rock in its earliest (predominately black) stages, and even my mother, who identified as a "hippie" during her college years (and sometimes still does, though, nowadays, more as an optional fashion statement as opposed to an indication of political voice). Long story short, they've been out there for quite some time— people of color trickling back into the movements to which they gave birth, later to be co-opted by whites, and vice versa, and it's still very much the case today. One particular "hipster" cultural movement, if you will, is one for which I have yet to find a name.

Hispanipster or Alterna-tino/a doesn't have a nice ring to it. I didn't want to try anything that even vaguely referenced borderlands or immigration because, well, those are overtly cliché and would be ripped apart by academics. So forgive me for having no name for a group of young people who identify as Latino who happen to have always been present and thriving despite receiving little acknowledgement by the popular media or the clueless general public. They're the Latinos Laura Martinez over at Mi Blog Es Tu Blog hints at when she writes open letters to advertisers, reminding them that "Hey, we're not all alike," the Latinos who comprise the writing crew over at Guanabee, and they're the Latinos I happen to call my friends and go out with on weekends.

And for the record, no, that was not a "Hey, I have Latino friends! Aren't I so awesome and knowledgeable about Latino issues?" plug.

I note the entertainment + friendship factor here because without them, I would never have been exposed to Nacotheque, the party founded by DJs Amylu Meneses and Marcelo Cunning (pictured below). According to their myspace page:

The music is an eclectic mesh of Spanish-language, rock n’ roll, new wave, indie rock, baile-funk, nouveau-eighties, electropop, disco, cumbia, and some hip-hop.

Nacotheque is beating the stereotype of parties that host Spanish-sung music and teaching the world what else is out there in the Spanish-sung indie/underground music scene. PAPERmag.com went so far as to dub Nacotheque as “The Spanish MisShapes”, but with more animated DJs and more fun party people. As Claire Frisbie from NYRemezcla.com explains, by blending their own backgrounds and musical tastes, “this dynamic duo have a knack for highlighting new music from all over Latin America and Spain, boasting an enviable collection of music, new and old, popular and obscure”.

And the founders have no qualms about making fun of the "scene" in which they play a significant part, as evidenced by the party's name:

"Nacotheque" is a made up name combining the words naco and discotheque. "Naco" in Mexico is a way to describe the Latin American hard-drinking, jalopy-tinkering working class – whom Americans would consider cheesy white trash.

Reviving a pejorative term for the sake of profit is not exactly an original idea, nor is an underground Latino dance-music-style culture. In fact, the U.S. has seen quite a few such movements over the years, including the Pachucos, whom I mentioned earlier, who are defined as:

Mexican American youths who developed their own subculture during the 1930s and 1940s in the Southwestern United States. They wore distinctive clothes (such as Zoot Suits) and spoke their own dialect (Caló). Due to their double-marginalization stemming from their youth and ethnicity, there has always been a close association and cultural cross-pollination between the Pachuco subculture and the gang subculture. For this reason, many members of the predominant (Anglo) culture assumed that anyone dressed in pachuco was a gang member.

The term "Zoot Suit Riots" refers to the violent conflict that ensued between white sailors and Pachucos following WWII in Los Angeles. Poignantly documented as a musical play by Luis Valdez and immortalized by Edward James Olmos' portrayal of the play's narrator El Pachuco on Broadway, the portrayal of the riots and its participants in Zoot Suit gives the impression that the expression of culture through music, dance, and fashion can bear far more meaning than its creators may initially intend or than its spectators may be willing to acknowledge.

For some of my friends, and many of the young people who identify with the partygoers to whom Nacotheque caters, there is significant meaning in music choice and fashion sense, one that is linked to their sense of Latinidad. Fernando, an Argentine who immigrated to the United States as a child, and who has the most eclectic album collection known to man, feels that his expression of self through style is indicative of something more than buying power:

I love being Argentinean—I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. But I do love breaking the stereotype. I love to be unique. I don't want to look like anyone else . . . or be anyone else. I don't want to be a FREAK, you know, but I have to be different . . . constantly changing . . . innovative.

Unfortunately, despite the growing Latino population in the United States, the media representations of the Latino community are anything but "different . . . constantly changing . . . innovative." Advertising agencies, tv show producers, and music executives cater to its Latino audience with blinders tightly fastened. All Latinos look the same, sound the same, act the same, and like to consume the same goods and participate in the same activities, or at least the average viewer/listener would gauge based on what the media tells us, including the Spanish-language networks, whom Fernando considers an ally in the continued perpetuation of stereotypes of Latinos:

[The typical ''Latino'' stereotype is] evident in any show or commercial you see on the Latino networks. For God sakes, they'll have a political commercial with reggaeton blasting in the background. Reggaeton does not appeal to all Latinos, in case they didn't know.

Expecting many Americans to have a firm grasp on Latino culture and history seems high, but not entirely, once you consider how quickly they learned and believed stereotypes about Latinos they gained from the limited media exposure time given to the group. Claudia, a visitor to the United States from Mexico, and frequent Nacotheque attendee recounts:

[People react in shock when they find out I am Latina] from time to time, yes. Mostly "you don't look Mexican at all" I can look Asian, European, or Latin—but from Argentina or whatever. Once a girl told me that it was a good thing that I was being told that I don't look Mexican because by Mexican they mean short brown and ugly.

Wow.

My friend Kristal, a Native New Yorker and fellow baile funk-o-phile shared a similar experience:

So many people have reacted in shock in finding out that I am Latina. I have always asked people why the surprise. The thing they usually cite is my light skin. Sometimes I am asked if I am Spanish or what kind of Latina am I. Where are your parents from? I answer Colombia and Puerto Rico. Aren't people black there? I mentally shake my head, but then go on to explain that Latinos are come in all different shades. That like the U.S., there was immigration from many countries and of course slavery of Africans and indigenous peoples.

. . . Plus I cannot tell you how many times drugs have been mentioned to my mother and myself. We just have to educate that person. Acknowledge that, yes, drugs have been a part of the turbulent history Colombia, but the country has so much to offer in terms of music, dance, science and environment.

Clearly, despite the prevalence of stereotypes, my Latino friends are able to bounce back, to challenge an interjection of ignorance (or even an intentional acceptance of stereotypes) and respond in a way that educates their interrogator. While it's rare that the public actually considers the work that people who counter stereotypes put out as anything but examples of exceptions to the rule, I find that many young people, especially by way of forms of cultural expression that are universal, are exploring how to bridge the gap between "international" and "domestic." Nacotheque and Latino hipsters ("Lipsters"?) are discovering, one party and one outfit at a time, that as trivial as their form of revelry may seem to the outside viewer, there is more than what meets the eye. While "breaking a stereotype," so to speak, is not something that is necessarily being done intentionally, especially considering that, as Claudia asserts, my friends and many others are simply "being themselves", it is inevitable that as more and more people who lack familiarity with Latino culture are exposed to people like them, the image of "Latino/a" that it set by the media will begin to erode.

Not only does their mere existence challenge stereotypes that emerge from the "outside" ("Oh my, a Latino who likes ROCK?"), but also those that are rooted "within" the Latino community, internalized and accepted as a part of what being authentically Latino means. Fernando, Claudia, and Kristal all noted that some people within the Latino community questioned their identity or connection to Latinidad as a result of their being "different," and at times, this question of authenticity came from members of their own families. Yet as my friends exist within what post-colonial theorist Homi Bhabha would call the Third Space, a sense of culture in which a synthesis of two or more cultures is key, little attention is paid to old binaries that constitute what is "American" and what is not. Claudia made an incredibly insightful note on how her sense of identity has emerged as a result of a rapidly changing world:

. . . my generation. . . I think it is more of a globalization thing. . . [has] more choices than the ones [my parents] had back then. It is not only "American" influences that we get today, [but influences] from all over the world. I grew up in Mexico and that's why most of my cultural influences are Mexican, but I have the possibility of traveling, of listening to music from all over the world, especially in a city as international as NY.

Globalization—the friend and foe of a post-modern existence. As it stares us in the face here in Claudia's statement, it makes me wonder what is to come of the stereotypes that we know so well and cling to so tightly, partly in fear of losing ourselves.

But as Kristal reminded me, stereotypes have their place too:

Nacotheque is fun because they celebrate these stereotypes such as the telenovela. They play theme songs from them and everyone dances to them and sings [along]. . .

And that despite their prevalence, there is still room to be yourself:

I get complimented on the fact that people do not think I look Latina! As if it will help me succeed in life. I usually correct them and say that I am proud to be Latina and then mention that Latin American Studies was my major in college that I love to speak Spanish and travel to Latin America...I tend to go on and on..

I make/made a conscious choice to speak Spanish. When I was younger, I did not want to speak it. I was somewhat embarrassed until my late teens when it hit that I should . . . really embrace my culture and be proud of it.

So next time you think of all "hipsters" as mindless, misguided, generic people ruining a neighborhood or two, remember this. What you may see is a fashion statement, sure, but there are politics that go far beyond a party or two. The very act of being oneself is not a trend, and despite appearances, my friends and I don't quite fit as neatly into the hipster mold as one may expect when they catch our vintage shoes or asymmetrical haircuts in a glance. I'm not acting as an apologist for the "bad" hipsters that are out there, but it's worth noting that (prepare for a cheesy line in 5…4…3…2…1) just like snowflakes, no two are exactly alike :-)

originally posted @ Racialicious on 10/19/2007

Making Africans Human, One Video at a Time

2009-06-20T16:08:00.004-03:00

Yesterday morning I was a bit reluctant to get out of bed and start my day.

Okay, VERY reluctant, so much so that I had to rely on the luscious sounds of early-morning video wakeup via the channel that only plays music between 4 am and 8 am before it mentally assaults you for the rest of the day with reality shows despite having the word "music" in its name.

Anyway, I was trying desperately to find something cheerful to wear in order to distract my co-workers from the less than excited expression I was most likely to bear for the rest of the day due to poor sleep when I noticed there was a very dark-skinned black woman on television with natural hair who was over the age of 40. I thought to myself, "Am I dreaming? A black woman in a music video who is fully dressed, whose face I see instead of her ba-donk-a-donk, and completely sans 10 pounds of extensions? Something must be wrong." I then noticed more beautiful brown-skinned people in the background listening to the woman speak and thought for a moment, considering that I heard no music, that I had somehow switched the channel to CNN without realizing it.

But I hadn't. I pressed the "info" button on the remote and the screen read "MTV: Video Wakeup 7:00 am – 8:00 am." Hmmm…what was going on? A few seconds later, I was greeted to the sounds of Fall Out Boy, the quasi-emo-pseudo-punk-hipster-teenie-pop band of "Dance Dance" fame and whose lead singer Pete Wentz has apparently been showing his pinga all over town. Despite all of the skinny-jean dropping, it looks like the group has been up to some good. Their video for "I'm Like a Lawyer with the Way I'm Always Trying to Get You Off (Me & You)" does a shockingly good job of what Bono and the Vanity Fair crew seem to have a few problems getting right: humanizing black Africans.

Fall Out Boy does a few things many other celebrities cum activists sometimes neglect to do (either out of ignorance, a bad publicist, or total lack of care…I can't quite put my finger on it) and that an equally concerned American audience tends to forget:

1. They establish that Africa is a continent in which there are many countries
The video takes place in Uganda, to be more specific, the Gulu Township in Northern Uganda, which, according to the film Invisible Children, a documentary that focuses on the forced conscription of children into the Lords Resistance Army, has become a place of refuge to avoid being kidnapped into military service. By taking two seconds to note the specific location in which the video takes place, F.O.B. (or the really smart people who did the research for the video) avoids falling into the trap of the "hey look, there are problems in the country of Africa!" camp. Thank goodness for that. Maybe now some of the kids who watch MTV on the regular will be more likely to pull out a map and locate Uganda or maybe "the South Africa, such as."

2. They provide the audience with characters with whom they can easily identify
The video tells the story of a young couple involved in a budding romance that is cut short when the male partner is abducted by guerillas. Though the couple is reunited in the end, one is given the impression that it was only fate that brought them back together as opposed to any of their individual actions. People of many cultures are familiar with this storyline as it is a common thread in countless love stories. Couple meets, falls in love, is separated by tragedy/conflict, and finally reunites by chance. Despite the fact that the characters in the video are black and Ugandan, audiences worldwide can identify with the situation. So many activists fail at this mainly because they focus so much on tragedy but very little on the commonalities between people facing extreme adversity and those on the other side of the globe who are not. The average American may not know what it's like to go hungry or to be kidnapped or to have a war going on in his or her backyard, but that same person is likely to have had a crush, to have dated, and to have something come between him/her and the person he/she loves. This tiny connection aides the process of humanizing the people to whom the outreach is geared and it's a vital step that's lacking in a lot of the more popular campaigns.

3. They do not portray black Africans as uncivilized/savage or identical
While the video demonstrates that many of the soldiers were once townspeople (and some are even children) just like the other civilians, the differences between the two groups are asserted by their proclivity to commit acts of violence. What's interesting here is that the director did not present the typical lumpen Africans swallowed by tragedy, but instead created characters, blurred the lines between good and evil, and presented the people as individuals. They did not wear loincloths or war paint, or carry spears. The land was populated with people and not animals (in a funny twist, F.O.B. band members performed in the grass as if they were the animal side chorus as opposed to the director utilizing the typical montage of lions, giraffes, and wild birds passing through the grasslands.

4. They provide their viewers with information on how to become more involved
At the end of the video, the website for the Invisible Children organization is displayed for viewers to get involved. How actively F.O.B.'s fans will apply themselves to helping improve the lives on Ugandan child soldiers is to be determined, but at least the band included the information so that the mental weight of the issue didn't necessarily stop when the video ended, leaving viewers to question "now what?"

So in short, I am proud of Fall Out Boy for taking a moment out of their busy guy-liner application to give MTV viewers something to think about and to do it successfully, without reducing black Africans to faceless nonentities in a public service announcement. The only weird part is that I noticed the organization they did a little advertising for is not the most diverse. The only person of color I noticed was an Asian-American guy in one of the pictures, but I couldn't find him among the staff profiles. And the section for the Ugandan staff of bracelet makers, management, and mentors are completely blank, meaning that they either haven't entered them into the system yet or they simply don't exist. Call me cynical, but I find it a bit odd that a group doing outreach within Uganda has zero Ugandan staff members and an all-white domestically-based group. Did all my praise for F.O.B. just fall through the floor?

originally posted @ Racialicious on 9/27/2007 (unfortunately, the video has been removed from youtube)

No Tequila for me, thanks...

2009-06-20T15:59:00.002-03:00

This post won't be deep.

Nope, not nearly as deep as the disdain I have toward Tila Tequila (trademark) and all the other televised, world wide webbed, and radio-aired exploitations of women. And as a person who identifies as a bisexual woman of color, I'm disappointed that images perpetuated by the media, by attention hungry faux-lebrities like Tequila who cling to stereotypes as if life itself would dissolve if they failed to exhibit characteristics oft-associated with their respective background by people on the outside looking in, are the ones everyone likes to remember.

Tequila is not the only one for whom I reserve such hatred, but she just so happens to be in the forefront of my mind because the garbage that is MTV (which I admit sometimes satiates my desire to indulge in a guilty pleasure or two…like, OMG, THE HILLS!) is airing a new show of hers very soon. The title? "A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila." The premise? Tequila comes out as a "bisexual freak" (her words, not mine) and has a Flavor of Love-esque harem-fest, only this time, with (straight) men AND (lesbian) women (hmmm what about bisexual men and women? Wouldn't they want to join in too?) Jon Lafayette at TV Week reports:

“Tila Tequila made a name for herself by doing things her way, captivating legions of fans online, both men and women. Now she is taking that attitude and sex appeal to her own TV series where she is looking for a mate...by again, captivating a group of both men and women," said Tony DiSanto, executive VP of series development and programming for MTV. “The show is a rollercoaster ride of drama, conflict and emotion, busting stereotypes and challenging the norm—proving that the rules of attraction are made to be broken.”

Busting stereotypes? The only busting I can see going down on that show involves silicone and a push-up bra. If anything, the tv commercial clips for the show highlight a few stereotypes that, just in case the American public (straight and gay) didn’t already hold enough negative stereotypes of bisexuals, most of us can't forget:

1. They are polyamorous. All of them.
2. They have to decide whether or not they like men more or women more.
3. They choose their mates based on sex appeal, as sex will be central in the relationship.
4. They are freaks (in the bed…and, well, in public too).
5. Volition to engage in group sex is a prerequisite. They never have one-on-one sex.
6. They cause strife within the lesbian/gay community and the straight community because they can't make up their minds.
7. They dress provocatively (see points 3 and 4)

Don’t get me wrong. I am sex-positive, meaning I respect the individual decisions that one makes with regard to his/her/hir (for you gender neutral folks) sex life. If someone likes sex, I say good for him/her/hir. Be adventurous. Be bold. Think outside the box. It's just sex, afterall, right? BUT when a certain sexual behavior is permanently affixed to any group, it rubs me the wrong way.

We've had similar discussions here at Racialicious about the sexualization of women of color and cross-posted a NinjaPants article by Pat M on the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality here:

Tila Tequila is a little bit of a different story; her “I Love U” gives us an image of Asian America in music that gives us something to argue about. Her bipolar “I love you” and “I’ll fucking kill you” , her alternating “I’m what you need” and “Gimme what I need”, her riding crop and her submissive moaning; all of these link back to classic images of Asian women as dominant and submissive, “dragon ladies” and “geisha girls”.

Tequila's media presence begs the question: are we continuing to be forced to view ourselves via stereotypes, are we involved in the creating the stereotypes, or are we looking for stereotypes to pin on someone who may just being her/himself? It's hard to tell.

What is pretty easy to tell, however, is what MTV is doing with the previews for this show alone (though I guess I will have to wait until the full-length show airs to find out if my fear is correct):

Presenting stereotypes of Asian-Americans: 30 seconds
Presenting stereotypes of bisexuals: 30 seconds
Presenting stereotypes of women: 30 seconds
How long the aforementioned stereotypes remain in the minds of the public, to the point that they bring out prejudice, discrimination, and general hate: basically a lifetime
How many years such stereotypes will continue to be perpetuated: end unknown

So while this post, as I warned before, is not deep or intensely researched in the least, it makes me think of why I am even writing it in the first place. Will there ever be a time when I don't feel like people who identify in similar ways as I do are forever trapped in stupid caricatures of themselves, forced to either be thought of in that way by others or to mimic them on their own for others' entertainment?

Can someone just put me out of a job already?

originally posted @ Racialicious on 9/21/2007

Bigot-Proof Vest: Are You Wearing Yours?

2009-06-20T15:57:00.001-03:00

The definition of racism is very broad:

rac•ism –noun
1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.

3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

Yet I noticed in many of the responses to Latoya’s post "4th Generation Racist: Can You Be Anti-Racist If You're Anti-White?" , a few comment posters focused more on the subcategory of racism listed as #2, mixed with a little bit of #1, as opposed to remembering #3. I say this because I saw many people discussing the so-called technical “inability” of people of color to actually be racist.

They are not the only ones who think this way. I see it quite often in written work, both casual and academic, by people of color and white allies. However, I am going to go out on a limb here and respectfully disagree.

People of color can most certainly be racist, and denying that sets back some of the anti-racist activism that we rely upon for change. Just because we are "of color," I don't believe that we are all equipped with some immunity, some bigot-proof vest, that guards us from taking in and arming ourselves with racism as a weapon against others. If we buy this, it allows us to continue to a) think of whites as the only “enemy,” people of color as the only “victims” of oppression, and b) to lie to ourselves about a fictional binary with whites on one side and people of color on the other, people of color usually being portrayed as infallible, when it couldn’t be further from the truth. It also sets us back because it places blame on one group while simultaneously deflecting from the internal problems we need to work out to achieve a greater sense of POC solidarity.

In addition, by denying that people of color can be racist, we are discounting the experiences of people for whom intra-racial hatred is a very deep-seated issue. It reminds me somewhat of the discussions of statutory rape in which the female is the perpetrator of the crime, the male the victim. Because we are not conditioned to hearing such cases of role “reversal,” because women don’t fit into our typical idea of a sexual predator, and because men are seen as the dominant sex, to think of women as perpetrators of sexual assault and/or coercion tends to throw us off, often with the press ignoring the fact that a crime was committed at all and instead focusing on some distracting factor like how “lucky” the victim was to have an older woman come onto him or how “hot” the criminal is. The rape/sex offense becomes trivialized by way of our collectively internalized gender norms and we lose sight of what really happened.

I think accounts of racism that whites may experiences from people of color and/or racism between people of color are treated in a similar way, at least if we do not consider it racism in the first place. Some argue that if we are not in the position to wield power, then we technically cannot be the carriers and perpetrators of racism. I cannot speak for all people of color, and certainly do not claim to do so in this post, but I know plenty of people, myself included, who can cite instances of racism involving other people of color, not necessarily just whites, the usual villains in accounts of race-based prejudice and discrimination.

Though this seems somewhat counter to the usual assumption that the South is "more racist" than the North, I experienced more discrimination and witnessed more instances of racism in New York City than in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, most of it intra-racial conflict, in fact. It seemed that while many of the whites I encountered may have held internal racist beliefs, they rarely acted on them in such brazen ways as the people of color who bore hatred for other groups of color (again, not a sweeping generalization here, just a recounting of my personal experiences). Examples include being spit at when walking through Chinatown with my Asian-American ex, seeing older black women glare at black male/white female interracial couples, overhearing an Eastern European woman express her disgust that an Asian man who was lost in the subway station did not speak English, and being stuck in a car with a South Asian driver who hated Hasidic Jews (so much so that he failed to yield when they were crossing the street).

It seems that as a result of our being at constant competition for the same resources, relations between people of color are made even more intense (in comparison to their relationship with whites). The scramble for the top becomes one that involves climbing over others, even if it means co-opting the racism they may have learned from whites (or, in general, West-controlled media sources . . . i.e. the purveyance of negative stereotypes of blacks by way of news reporting, tv shows, and music abroad in the same vein of negative stereotypes of Arabs here in the U.S.). But I am apprehensive to blame whites or even the West for all of these stereotypes, especially considering that some racism existed in some cultures long before contact with whites. Cases of colorism provide an excellent example. Of course, colonialism aided this desire to have lighter skin as it became synonymous with institutional power and presence, but it has origins in class stratification (darker skin = more exposure to sun by way of hard labor). If such standards are carried over into relationships with say, darker skinned peoples of the world, for example, if a person of Japanese descent held prejudice against a person of Pakistani descent based on skin color, is this not racism? What would we call it if it is not? Would we have some ready-made excuse for the hatred simply because the person exhibiting such beliefs is considered a person of color (in the United States)?

I also wonder whether or not we would be heavily relying upon Western concepts of race to even misdiagnose racism when it is right under our noses? In assuming that people of color cannot be racist (toward one another or whites), we are disregarding the varied global concepts of race. Who is "of color" in the United States may be "white" in terms of power elsewhere, as I touched on in a previous post. This being said, that individual may have never experienced oppression in his/her society of origin, and may consider him/herself to be superior to one group or another based on that very fact. Of course, this may change dramatically once the person moves to another country, city, or community, but that does not mean that he or she will all of a sudden share a sense of solidarity with the oppressed that he/she once rejected as inferior, nor does it mean that those feelings will subside due to the lowered social status.

So while this is more of a glorified comment than a real post, I just wanted to add my two cents to the discussion in a more formal manner. I look forward to reading comments that expand on both my points and the comments left on Latoya's post as I sincerely value the element of discussion here on this site.

originally posted @ Racialicious on 9/13/2007

Picking Up the Pieces

2009-06-20T15:56:00.001-03:00

"Eh, you don’t really have a culture."

It stung to hear that, all the more so to hear it from my boyfriend at the time, who is also a person of color. Though he identifies as ABC (American-Born Chinese), my ex was considerably privileged. He had a history to speak of, ancestral accomplishments to go on, and the written records to prove it.

The month of this discussion? February. Black History Month. The 28 days of the year that “my people” are celebrated for their accomplishments on a national level. Given, “his people” had a month too, but for the most part, he personally was never accused of having no culture, no past, no history. Quite the opposite. Americans were still fixated on an Asia of the past, and one very far away at that. Though my ex was a student at the same college as I, was completely "assimilated" (read: no accent), and defied pretty much all stereotypes about Asian-American males (including his body type), he was still mistaken for the take-out delivery man on occasion as he waited for me in the lounge of my dorm. That’s how much history he bore on his skin, I suppose. So much history that peers my age failed to notice the glaring differences between him and the thin, middle aged men who brought them cheap Japanese food in the middle of the night on bikes.

But there we sat, having a discussion that would nearly lead to a break up. One that was a reminder of how so many people elsewhere felt about the miniature chunk of time given to celebrate the same few brown-skinned people we come around to every year. You know, MLK, Rosa Parks, and Frederick Douglas.

“Black people don’t really have a history,” he said with a straight face.

It wasn’t a new revelation. I had heard it somewhere before, though not as bluntly put. It came in the form of the motivation for late middle school/early high school angst, a time when I was really discovering my otherness. As the only black student in my class of 47 at my predominately private white all girls’ school in the south, let’s just say that my hair got touched a lot. All the residue from being treated as a social experiment had begun to build up, and every day was becoming a struggle to avoid putting all those young ladies in a mental compartment set for Siberia and jumping ship to start the first chapter of the People of Color Panthers (I had to find an inclusive term to incorporate my Asian-American friends somehow). But I held back and channeled my frustrations into working myself to death, each day becoming a test, an exam, some sort of demonstration of my self-worth, through which I could outshine the people whom I knew would one day get ahead because of their connections or the last name they had inherited from their fathers, but who, in that historical moment, were my equals.

This sense of overachievement was not exactly forced upon me by my family (my mother always encouraged me to simply do my best, and my family, while proud of my accomplishments, cared more about the new boy I was asking to the spring dance than the college scholarships I was wracking up). It was a reflection of the pressure I put on myself. It all started with the infamous 9th grade “Family History Project,” sponsored by my English class, for goodness’ sake, the very same class in which Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was discussed via literary devices, no mention of characters’ use of “nigger” or the mistreatment of the black Africans until I raised my hand and asked (colonialism was discussed only upon provocation).

We called it “FHP” for short. The acronym was penciled in at the top of all our in-class writing assignments about the progress we were making on the project. It was the name of the special segment we had dedicated to genealogy software during our computer class. It was on the binder I had devoted especially to the discovery of all the people who had come before me. But they also evolved into three letters I dreaded to hear. They were a reminder of the complex that had begun to form long before the project existed to prove it on paper: that black history was one of slavery.

When FHP was officially under way, I recall that the first big problem I encountered was that the genealogy software was useless for me. As my fellow classmates traced their history to William Shakespeare, Lao Tzu, and Queen friggin’ Elizabeth, I hit a serious dead end at my maternal great-great-great grandparents, whom I already knew about from family discussions but who were not even listed in the virtual directory we had consulted. I also couldn't pinpoint a place of origin. The best I could do was assume West Africa, as additional information was nowhere to be found. My family tree was more like a porch-front shrub. Needless to say, I spent the first few weeks of that traumatizing little project with a severe sense of insecurity because my ancestors’ names had been changed, erased, lost at sea, beaten out of them. As opposed to being bestowed upon their offspring as a gift, last names were a reminder of a past as human property. The white people in my family’s history, though they may have had some connection to the same European greats to whom my classmates found links, would remain phantoms, their liaisons with my black ancestors having been illicit. The Cherokee family members, while mentioned in a hodgepodge packet one of my distant cousins had put together for one of the enormous family reunions we had every few years, were equally as difficult to trace due to migration, name changes, things not being recorded. History has been passed by word of mouth, and someone with the telephone had cut the cord along the way.

It was an early lesson privilege before I even learned what to call it.

Beyond the three “super blacks” I mentioned earlier, my U.S. history books only mentioned us in three chapters. Chapter One: Triangle Trade. Chapter Two: the Civil War. Chapter Three: Civil Rights Movement. My group's past was punctuated by death, rape, war, and struggle. Honors World History and Ap European History repeated more of the same - a study of the world from the view of European eyes. Africa was rarely mentioned, nor were global indigenous nations (I only learned about *some* of those during Spanish class).Until college, I thought that only black people and American indigenous groups had this problem, especially considering that's all that had ever been said about them. Learning about the diasporic peoples of other parts of the world taught me a lot about the meaning of written history vs. a shared past. I was exposed to the historical fiction and BBC interviews of Guyanese author David Dabydeen as evidence that African and indigenous slaves (throughout the Americas) as well as the South and East Asian laborers in the British colonies of the Caribbean and South America had quite a lot in common when it came to recovering their past. Records and names had gone missing or were poorly cared for, deteriorating in storage rooms in the sweltering tropical heat. Families were divided and displaced. And, of course, the luxury of re-telling stories to pass history via oral tradition, a practice upon which many enslaved/indentured peoples had to rely, only belonged to some. In some cases, people were so traumatized by their experiences that they chose not pass anything along, and others died before they could bear children, reducing their lives to fragmented anecdotes retold by acquaintances, their family oceans away.

Dodai over at Jezebel touched on this issue in a recent post on a British woman’s heirloom wedding dress, inserting some social commentary along the way:

For her recent nuptials, a U.K. woman named Charlotte Middleton wore a wedding dress that had been in her family for 97 years -- and she was the sixth bride to wear it! The embroidered silk dress encrusted with pearls was made in Hong Kong and first worn by Charlotte's great-grandmother Pauline in 1910. Charlotte's mother Lucy wore the dress in 1975. We're not so jaded that we don't recognize this as awesome. Although rather privileged. If your great-grandmothers were slaves, for instance, like some of ours were, you don't have these kinds of stories. But congrats to Charlotte!

Though the final remarks in this short piece were said somewhat tongue-in-cheek, it’s clear that bitterness about one’s lost history finds its way into the lightest of subjects for some people, myself included. I was reminded of it every time I struggled with my multi-textured hair, looked in the mirror, was asked about my background, and even, at times, when I wrote my last name, which I love, though knowing that it is of British origin makes it seem more like the tag in the back of a piece of clothing or the stamp on a product than an “honorable” surname. I was also reminded every time I was told to “just get over slavery” or that “racism doesn’t really exist anymore” or asked “when will black people just be happy?” As insensitive and incensing as such questions and statements may be, they are included within the content of some of the comments on Dodai’s piece. Readers questioned her decision to have a last word on the piece, to make them swallow the bitter pill of reality alongside a story of one woman's joy.

Their thoughts reminded me of the complete and utter discomfort we as a nation have with discussing the truth about our history. While people of color are accused of being overly sensitive, jumping to conclusions, and incredibly regressive in our obsession with the past, those accusations could not be projected towards us if there were no catalyst to compel such alleged behavior. While we are expected to take the literal lashings of the past and the figurative tongue lashings of the present, modernity has given way to a society that is anesthetized, temporarily asleep with lies as its lullabies, comforted by its own ignorance and shifting of pain to those who are forced to remember. There is a privilege in having a charted history, but even more so in the ability to assert that what little remains of history for others is not worth your time because it's too painful to acknowledge.

As I've gotten older, I've come full circle—now less embarrassed by my family's completely muddled history and more proud of the mess that fate has dealt us. Like the child who smiles after sullying his Sunday best after a run-in with the wet lawn, I have learned to worry less about the arbitrary significance some assign to things and gained the ability to make fun of myself, minding, still, not to trivialize my history, but to turn it on its head to place value on the positive aspects of the pain.

I feel that we should acknowledge that slavery and other forms of oppression have left many of us with permanent scars, even if we may not have been the direct recipients of such abuse. The experiences of the past express themselves in the present, whether we want to acknowledge them or not. As many people can attest, the dark past manifests itself in words, in art, in science, and in almost every other facet of daily life, sometimes as a surprise and sometimes as expected, so it only reinforces the darkness when people pretend that its some sort of paranoia they should dismiss. It's not just collective unconscious occurring when people who have been historically oppressed feel that it's still happening today. It's very real.

But the question I am left with as I try to pick up the pieces, to reassemble the history I have been told by so many is worthless, not important, or simply a case of mass misfortune, is how does one reach those with their eyes shut and their ears covered? As Paul Gilroy (author of The Black Atlantic) and other academics who study diasporas have asserted, the arts offer one opportunity to confront the past and share it with those with little to no experience or involvement therein. But as art can be so easily dismissed, exploited, or improperly interpreted in the artist's absence, I wonder what else is out there. I feel that best option I have, especially as an American (as we are often told we are a young country with no history), is to be a part of making my own history. Now that I have the opportunity to undo some of the damage that has been done to my sense of self due to greater social ills, I hope that it can continue with others after I am long dead, a butterfly effect so that a girl like me in the future will be able to look back with pride and the privilege to acknowledge that her past IS important and have no one left to tell her otherwise.

originally posted @ Racialicious on 9/06/2007