The student protests of the University of New Mexico's seal continue:
Abolish the Racist Univ. of New Mexico Seal
Native American students hold rally, demanding UNM’s seal be abolished
Protesters confront UNM leader over seal
Finally, university officials respond to the controversy:
University president doesn't see seal that excludes Native people as racist
Protest of UNM official seal attracting attention from administrators
Meanwhile, myopic Latinos refuse to acknowledge the indigenous part of their heritage:
Latino students at N.M. University upset over possible revision of Spanish seal
Because having a European or white heritage is better, I guess.
Showing posts with label Latinos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Latinos. Show all posts
May 03, 2016
March 03, 2016
Diversity lacking at 2016 Oscars
Chris Rock’s Oscars didn’t “fight the power”: A night of crude jokes and cynical deflection is a poor way to show progress
Rock's big night shows us Hollywood wants it both ways—for movies to be powerful art and blameless entertainment
By Arthur ChuThe stage was set with Chris Rock’s opening monologue, which, while it certainly directly addressed the #OscarsSoWhite issue, made two breathtakingly tone-deaf arguments in quick succession: One, that the Oscars (and representation in entertainment media in general) is really not that big a deal, and two, the reason people are making a stink about it now is that we are no longer dealing with things that are big deals, like the actual violence and murder protested by the 1960s civil rights movement.
This was an incredibly stupid thing to say. The fact that #OscarsSoWhite has trended in tandem with its preceding sister hashtag #BlackLivesMatter isn’t exactly subtle to anyone who’s ever glanced at so-called Black Twitter. (Which Rock clearly has, given his much-appreciated last-minute shout-out to #BlackLivesMatter at the end of the ceremony.) A #BlackLivesMatter documentary addressing the violence and murder going on in the streets right now was commissioned by HBO as a direct result of the uncomfortable negative attention #OscarsSoWhite put on the film industry.
Acting like caring about day-to-day violence in the streets and the impact media and culture have on that violence are somehow mutually exclusive—a common, frustrating, tired argument anyone who talks about racism in media will inevitably see dozens of times in the comments section—ignores history.
It ignores the many, many arguments that have been made about how the excuses made for the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown frequently come verbatim from untrue stereotypes out of TV and movies, how the only way Darren Wilson’s description of Brown as a “demon” who was “bulking up to get through the bullets” could possibly make sense to anyone is after a lifetime of media portrayals of the scary superhuman black man. It ignores Martin Luther King going out of his way to call Nichelle Nichols and tell her not to quit “Star Trek” because having a black woman on TV who wasn’t a domestic servant mattered. It ignores the ongoing civil rights protests around the Oscars back in the 1960s and ’70s, including Marlon Brando making history as the first and only best actor winner to boycott the ceremony, sending American Indian Movement activist Sacheen Littlefeather to accept the award in his place.
It ignores the fact that at the very moment Chris Rock was talking, there was a “Justice for Flint” fundraiser going on in protest of the Oscars, hosted by two black prominent filmmakers snubbed for best director nods who used #OscarsSoWhite to bring attention to the cause of a predominantly black community whose water was literally poisoned. 8 Reasons Why I Hated Chris Rock's Oscars Monologue
Opinions about the funnyman's opener ranged from "he told the truth" to "I laughed at parts," to "it sucked." Here are eight reasons why Akiba Solomon wishes it never happened.
By Akiba SolomonOne: Rock was foul for saying that Jada Pinkett Smith was only boycotting the Oscars because she wasn't invited. I can see why some see Pinkett Smith's actions as calculated and insincere, but Rock didn't say that. Instead, he reduced everything—the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag, the boycott and the alternate events (including one starring his brother)—to the sour grapes of a self-centered, spoiled, unqualified Black woman. It was also dumb. Because Jada Pinkett Smith can get into the Oscars.
Two: #OscarsSoWhite isn't some silly little hashtag. This year, people of all races have used it to talk about the problems large and small with an awards show that nominates strictly White actors across 20 categories. Plus the hashtag, news coverage and discussions provided Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the Black woman who heads up the Academy, with the political cover I believe she needed to change membership and voting rules that have grossly privileged elderly White men for years.
Three: Claiming that Black people care about #OscarsSoWhite because we have nothing real to be mad about was hostile to the truth. Here is a man who made an (uneven, sexist) documentary about Black hair in 2009 because his daughter was sad about not having "good hair." But in 2016, Rock knows nothing of contemporary Black struggle? Like, when people say "Black lives matter," does he hear, "Tekjjdioj gj()gui p;/00+"? Does "I can't breathe" bring anything to mind? How about "Sandra Bland," "Michael Brown," "Eric Garner" and "not guilty"?
Four: Using the image of a Black grandmother hanging from a tree as a punch line was blasphemous. This country has never atoned for its history of lynching, castrating and fatally dragging Black people from pickup trucks. Nor has it meaningfully addressed the burning of entire Black towns, race riots and other lynching-adjacent crimes. Commentary: Joe Biden wasn't as funny at the Oscars as Chris Rock, but at least he didn't make an Asian joke
By Dexter ThomasAs the show progressed, some people who were watching used Twitter to ask why Chris Rock wasn't talking about all underrepresented people, instead of just black people. This has been a point of concern for a while, as some have assumed that just because the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag was started by a black woman, it must be black-focused, though the originator has repeatedly clarified that she was speaking of inclusion for all people.
The argument spun off into a separate conversation under the #NotYourMule hashtag, as people argued over whether black people should need to stand up for other people of color at every opportunity.
And really, Chris Rock shouldn't have to deal with this criticism: While he may have focused on the lack of opportunities available to black talent Sunday night, he is on record talking about diversity issues in Hollywood that go beyond black and white. In 2014, he wrote in the Hollywood Reporter:
But forget whether Hollywood is black enough. A better question is: Is Hollywood Mexican enough? You're in L.A, you've got to try not to hire Mexicans. It's the most liberal town in the world, and there's a part of it that's kind of racist—not racist like "... you, ..." racist, but just an acceptance that there's a slave state in L.A. There's this acceptance that Mexicans are going to take care of white people in L.A. that doesn't exist anywhere else.
That insight was nowhere to be found at the Oscars on Sunday when he made a cheap joke about Asian child labor. The Oscars’ awkward & insincere masochism: Why the #OscarsSoWhite ceremony felt like such a disappointment
Last night's show was defined less by Chris Rock's uneven hosting turn than by the Academy's cognitive dissonance
By Jack MirkinsonWatching this extended masochism session was a strange experience. We were told, time and again, how wrong the Oscars had gotten things, and then another award was given out and the violins swelled and an oh-so-worthy Oscar moment was had. The show was desperate for us to know how sorry it was to have failed us so thoroughly, but it also wanted us to remain utterly devoted to both the people who did get nominated and to the broader idea of importance and integrity of the Oscars. The cognitive dissonance seeped through the entire night.
One thing that really didn’t help was the ceremony’s complete tone-deafness about any diversity that didn’t fit into a black-white framework. Rock did a bit about Asians—using children, no less—that was so off-key, so glaringly unfunny that you wondered how it had gotten through in a year when the show was trying to prove that it had its finger on the pulse. Aside from winning director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu and a couple of short film awardees, Asians and Latinos had virtually no presence for the entire evening. It was, to say the least, an odd choice. After Oscars, Hashtags Ask: Does One Minority Group Have to Fight for Another?
By Karen WorkmanNo sooner had the curtains closed on the 88th Academy Awards, which was punctuated by Chris Rock’s scathing but broadly praised opening monologue on racism in Hollywood, than a new battle had reached a fever pitch on social media. And it had its own hashtag: #notyourmule.
Some viewers took issue with what they saw as the narrow focus of Mr. Rock’s opening monologue, which skewered racism in Hollywood but, they said, ignored the concerns of Asian, Latino and other minority artists. Others slammed the comedian’s bit involving Asian children posing as accountants as reinforcing negative stereotypes. Summing it up
Critic's Notebook: Chris Rock's Monologue Is All #OscarsSoWhite All the Time
By Daniel FienbergFor viewers who think that Academy Awards diversity is not a problem at all, it was presumably way too monomaniacal, especially if you were hoping that Rock would unload on Donald Trump for a few minutes just to soften the blow of Jon Stewart's absence from late night.
But for people who think this actually is a serious thing because movies are supposed to be a reflection of society—and the Oscars are supposed to be a reflection of the best in movies—the actual effectiveness may have been mixed. Rock attacked the problem, while minimizing it; announced the racism, but made it seem benign and friendly; offered solutions, but the main feigned solution was black-only categories like "best black friend" ("And the winner for the 18th year in a row is, Wanda Sykes!"). Comment: For more on the subject, see Asian Jokes at 2016 Oscars and Recapping the 2016 Oscars.
Rock's big night shows us Hollywood wants it both ways—for movies to be powerful art and blameless entertainment
By Arthur Chu
This was an incredibly stupid thing to say. The fact that #OscarsSoWhite has trended in tandem with its preceding sister hashtag #BlackLivesMatter isn’t exactly subtle to anyone who’s ever glanced at so-called Black Twitter. (Which Rock clearly has, given his much-appreciated last-minute shout-out to #BlackLivesMatter at the end of the ceremony.) A #BlackLivesMatter documentary addressing the violence and murder going on in the streets right now was commissioned by HBO as a direct result of the uncomfortable negative attention #OscarsSoWhite put on the film industry.
Acting like caring about day-to-day violence in the streets and the impact media and culture have on that violence are somehow mutually exclusive—a common, frustrating, tired argument anyone who talks about racism in media will inevitably see dozens of times in the comments section—ignores history.
It ignores the many, many arguments that have been made about how the excuses made for the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown frequently come verbatim from untrue stereotypes out of TV and movies, how the only way Darren Wilson’s description of Brown as a “demon” who was “bulking up to get through the bullets” could possibly make sense to anyone is after a lifetime of media portrayals of the scary superhuman black man. It ignores Martin Luther King going out of his way to call Nichelle Nichols and tell her not to quit “Star Trek” because having a black woman on TV who wasn’t a domestic servant mattered. It ignores the ongoing civil rights protests around the Oscars back in the 1960s and ’70s, including Marlon Brando making history as the first and only best actor winner to boycott the ceremony, sending American Indian Movement activist Sacheen Littlefeather to accept the award in his place.
It ignores the fact that at the very moment Chris Rock was talking, there was a “Justice for Flint” fundraiser going on in protest of the Oscars, hosted by two black prominent filmmakers snubbed for best director nods who used #OscarsSoWhite to bring attention to the cause of a predominantly black community whose water was literally poisoned.
Opinions about the funnyman's opener ranged from "he told the truth" to "I laughed at parts," to "it sucked." Here are eight reasons why Akiba Solomon wishes it never happened.
By Akiba Solomon
Two: #OscarsSoWhite isn't some silly little hashtag. This year, people of all races have used it to talk about the problems large and small with an awards show that nominates strictly White actors across 20 categories. Plus the hashtag, news coverage and discussions provided Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the Black woman who heads up the Academy, with the political cover I believe she needed to change membership and voting rules that have grossly privileged elderly White men for years.
Three: Claiming that Black people care about #OscarsSoWhite because we have nothing real to be mad about was hostile to the truth. Here is a man who made an (uneven, sexist) documentary about Black hair in 2009 because his daughter was sad about not having "good hair." But in 2016, Rock knows nothing of contemporary Black struggle? Like, when people say "Black lives matter," does he hear, "Tekjjdioj gj()gui p;/00+"? Does "I can't breathe" bring anything to mind? How about "Sandra Bland," "Michael Brown," "Eric Garner" and "not guilty"?
Four: Using the image of a Black grandmother hanging from a tree as a punch line was blasphemous. This country has never atoned for its history of lynching, castrating and fatally dragging Black people from pickup trucks. Nor has it meaningfully addressed the burning of entire Black towns, race riots and other lynching-adjacent crimes.
By Dexter Thomas
The argument spun off into a separate conversation under the #NotYourMule hashtag, as people argued over whether black people should need to stand up for other people of color at every opportunity.
And really, Chris Rock shouldn't have to deal with this criticism: While he may have focused on the lack of opportunities available to black talent Sunday night, he is on record talking about diversity issues in Hollywood that go beyond black and white. In 2014, he wrote in the Hollywood Reporter:
But forget whether Hollywood is black enough. A better question is: Is Hollywood Mexican enough? You're in L.A, you've got to try not to hire Mexicans. It's the most liberal town in the world, and there's a part of it that's kind of racist—not racist like "... you, ..." racist, but just an acceptance that there's a slave state in L.A. There's this acceptance that Mexicans are going to take care of white people in L.A. that doesn't exist anywhere else.
That insight was nowhere to be found at the Oscars on Sunday when he made a cheap joke about Asian child labor.
Last night's show was defined less by Chris Rock's uneven hosting turn than by the Academy's cognitive dissonance
By Jack Mirkinson
One thing that really didn’t help was the ceremony’s complete tone-deafness about any diversity that didn’t fit into a black-white framework. Rock did a bit about Asians—using children, no less—that was so off-key, so glaringly unfunny that you wondered how it had gotten through in a year when the show was trying to prove that it had its finger on the pulse. Aside from winning director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu and a couple of short film awardees, Asians and Latinos had virtually no presence for the entire evening. It was, to say the least, an odd choice.
By Karen Workman
Some viewers took issue with what they saw as the narrow focus of Mr. Rock’s opening monologue, which skewered racism in Hollywood but, they said, ignored the concerns of Asian, Latino and other minority artists. Others slammed the comedian’s bit involving Asian children posing as accountants as reinforcing negative stereotypes.
Critic's Notebook: Chris Rock's Monologue Is All #OscarsSoWhite All the Time
By Daniel Fienberg
But for people who think this actually is a serious thing because movies are supposed to be a reflection of society—and the Oscars are supposed to be a reflection of the best in movies—the actual effectiveness may have been mixed. Rock attacked the problem, while minimizing it; announced the racism, but made it seem benign and friendly; offered solutions, but the main feigned solution was black-only categories like "best black friend" ("And the winner for the 18th year in a row is, Wanda Sykes!").
August 11, 2015
My take on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
The Unraceable 'Kimmy Schmidt': Does Tina Fey's New Show Have a Race Problem?
With Jane Krakowski playing Native American and an Asian character right out of "Sixteen Candles," "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" is almost begging to be labeled "problematic." Is that so bad?
By Sam AdamsTiny Fey isn't a creator you naturally associate with provocation—a Shonda Rhimes, a Lena Dunham, heck, a Lars Von Trier. But "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," the 13-episode series she created with Robert Carlock for Netflix, has been slapped with a scarlet P for "problematic," especially for its treatment of race.
On Vulture, Libby Hill took issue with the "Kimmy Schmidt" subplot involving Jane Krakowski's Jacqueline, a stressed-out Manhattan trophy wife who it's eventually revealed is Lakota, a refugee from a Native American reservation who's been passing for white for decades. Jacqueline's parents are played by Native actors Gil Birmingham and Sheri Foster and, within the context of "Kimmy's" generally farcical tone, the show works to ground the character in something resembling respect for Lakota culture. But for Vulture's Libby Hill, that doesn't offset an initial decision that seems arbitrary and ill thought-out:
Carlock positions the decision as a narrative choice. But this specific backstory is most frustrating because it doesn’t serve a purpose, either narratively or comedically. There must be more compelling (and funnier!) ways to give Jacqueline a backstory that don’t require sloppily marginalizing a group of people who are already as marginalized as you can get. It’s especially disappointing because "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" so deftly integrates race in other instances, mainly in the latter half of its first season. The most prominent example comes when Kimmy’s African-American roommate, Titus, gets a job that requires him to dress as a werewolf. The punch line: He discovers he gets better treatment from strangers while in a monster costume than he does as a black man. The point is sharp, and it works largely because Titus is the one pointing out the discrepancies. This is precisely what isn’t happening when it comes to the dynamic between Jackie Lynn and her parents.
In the Washington Post, Alyssa Rosenberg countered that the show is careful to make sure the joke is always about Jacqueline's own discomfort, and the contempt for her Native American she's internalized from the culture at large: She changed her name from Jackie Lynn, she explains, because it's "a cheap stripper name. Jacqueline is an expensive stripper name."
Going beyond Jacqueline, a BuzzFeed roundtable between Anne Helen Petersen, Ira Madison III and Alex Alvarez concluded that "Kimmy Schmidt" has "a major race problem." On the one hand, Madison says, "Kimmy Schmidt" has already developed Titus Andromedon (Tituss Burgess), Kimmy's gay, black roommate, more in one season than "30 Rock" developed Tracy Jordan in six. But at the same time, there's "Kimmy's" Dong (Ki Hong Lee), a Vietnamese immigrant who seems like a deliberate callback to "Sixteen Candles'" notoriously racist caricature, Long Duk Dong.
IM3: I know next to nothing about the intricacies of Native American culture and even I was like, um, this doesn’t seem…right? And just like Dong, it was a bunch of jokes that we’ve heard before but said in a winking, “isn’t it funny, we get it’s racist!” kinda way. Like, OK, cool. But in the real world, if a white person says those things to me, it’s a microaggression and I’m most certainly not here for that. So why is it OK when the white person puts those words into an actor’s mouth and just has them say it on TV? What’s the difference?
AA: Right. I hate couching racism under the term “hipster racism,” because, like, it’s the same thing. You’re saying the same thing. The result is the same. It’s racism whether or not you “mean” to be racist. Rob's review
My initial take while watching the show:
Watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (no relation). Waiting for the jokes to kick in after the first 15 minutes.
I guess the first episode is mostly setup. The humor must start in the second episode.
I hope the Hispanic maid reappears. Since the idea that she'd go to the cult leader for a job interview and stay voluntarily for 15 years, without even learning English, is flatly racist.
So Kimmie supposedly went underground at age 13 or so for 15 years? Y'know, 13-year-olds actually know a fair amount about the world already. Like you don't take a backpack with $13,000 to a dance club. Candy stores sell unlimited amounts of candy that you can eat for dinner if you wish. Horse-drawn carriages aren't some weird form of horse enslavement. Etc.
Maybe this hyper-naivete was funny the first time I saw it on The Beverly Hillbillies 50 years ago. Although that was never the funniest show either. But I'm not feeling it as a source of humor in 2015.
After the first three episodes...I didn't find the show at all funny. Most of the characters are caricatures, starting with the naive and optimistic Kimmy the repeated-rape victim. The gay black roommate loves Broadway shows and The Lion King. The old people--the landlady and Kimmy's first "date"--are a cat lady and a senile old coot, respectively. Jacqueline and her daughter are spoiled rich white people personified--even though Jacqueline is supposedly Native.
Then there are the minor characters. Besides the Latina maid and the Indians, there are the Hispanic performers dressed as a mariachi band. And the Korean mourners at a funeral. They're not strange, exactly, since they don't say anything. But they let Titus, a complete stranger, sing in their midst. They seem to be stereotypical Asians who'll passively let someone take over their ceremony because they don't know what's going on.
Hip to be racist
I gather Kimmy Schmidt's racial portrayals get better later on. But if it takes you six or seven episodes to get race reasonably right, I'd say you've failed.
"Hipster racism" seems like the right label for what's going on. I can imagine the writers saying, "We're not laughing at the stereotypical maid who can't speak English. We're presenting her so you can laugh at the ignorant people who would laugh at her."
Or, "We're not laughing at Indians who think planes are 'iron eagles.' We're laughing at the ignorant people who think Indians think planes are iron eagles. Even thought we don't show any of these ignorant people, much less laugh at them."
It's like Kimmy is trying to have it both ways. Which is evident in the Korean character named Dong. "His name is funny...ha ha! But we understand it's funny, so we're not laughing at him. We're laughing at you if you think his name is funny. You're the ignorant one in that case, not us."
This is a good example of hipster racism: presenting racism, then winking at it. And acting as if that's enough to excuse the racism. No, it isn't.
I'd say the Native subplot is a particular case of failure. In the first three episodes, Jacqueline doesn't show one iota of being torn between her Native and white identities. She's a white woman in her white world and even with her Native parents. That she has a Native upbringing is a gimmick, not a genuine character trait. It does nothing to distinguish her from millions of rich white women who look and act like her.
So she's Native because that's a "hip" way to make her more "complex." Look, she has a backstory! Even though it's little more than a few buzzwords: reservation, buffalo, eagle, etc. It's a Saturday Night Live version of race, which makes sense given Fey's background. And it's about as unsatisfying.
For more on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, see Racial Stereotypes in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Just a Comedy?
With Jane Krakowski playing Native American and an Asian character right out of "Sixteen Candles," "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" is almost begging to be labeled "problematic." Is that so bad?
By Sam Adams
On Vulture, Libby Hill took issue with the "Kimmy Schmidt" subplot involving Jane Krakowski's Jacqueline, a stressed-out Manhattan trophy wife who it's eventually revealed is Lakota, a refugee from a Native American reservation who's been passing for white for decades. Jacqueline's parents are played by Native actors Gil Birmingham and Sheri Foster and, within the context of "Kimmy's" generally farcical tone, the show works to ground the character in something resembling respect for Lakota culture. But for Vulture's Libby Hill, that doesn't offset an initial decision that seems arbitrary and ill thought-out:
Carlock positions the decision as a narrative choice. But this specific backstory is most frustrating because it doesn’t serve a purpose, either narratively or comedically. There must be more compelling (and funnier!) ways to give Jacqueline a backstory that don’t require sloppily marginalizing a group of people who are already as marginalized as you can get. It’s especially disappointing because "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" so deftly integrates race in other instances, mainly in the latter half of its first season. The most prominent example comes when Kimmy’s African-American roommate, Titus, gets a job that requires him to dress as a werewolf. The punch line: He discovers he gets better treatment from strangers while in a monster costume than he does as a black man. The point is sharp, and it works largely because Titus is the one pointing out the discrepancies. This is precisely what isn’t happening when it comes to the dynamic between Jackie Lynn and her parents.
In the Washington Post, Alyssa Rosenberg countered that the show is careful to make sure the joke is always about Jacqueline's own discomfort, and the contempt for her Native American she's internalized from the culture at large: She changed her name from Jackie Lynn, she explains, because it's "a cheap stripper name. Jacqueline is an expensive stripper name."
Going beyond Jacqueline, a BuzzFeed roundtable between Anne Helen Petersen, Ira Madison III and Alex Alvarez concluded that "Kimmy Schmidt" has "a major race problem." On the one hand, Madison says, "Kimmy Schmidt" has already developed Titus Andromedon (Tituss Burgess), Kimmy's gay, black roommate, more in one season than "30 Rock" developed Tracy Jordan in six. But at the same time, there's "Kimmy's" Dong (Ki Hong Lee), a Vietnamese immigrant who seems like a deliberate callback to "Sixteen Candles'" notoriously racist caricature, Long Duk Dong.
IM3: I know next to nothing about the intricacies of Native American culture and even I was like, um, this doesn’t seem…right? And just like Dong, it was a bunch of jokes that we’ve heard before but said in a winking, “isn’t it funny, we get it’s racist!” kinda way. Like, OK, cool. But in the real world, if a white person says those things to me, it’s a microaggression and I’m most certainly not here for that. So why is it OK when the white person puts those words into an actor’s mouth and just has them say it on TV? What’s the difference?
AA: Right. I hate couching racism under the term “hipster racism,” because, like, it’s the same thing. You’re saying the same thing. The result is the same. It’s racism whether or not you “mean” to be racist.
My initial take while watching the show:
Watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (no relation). Waiting for the jokes to kick in after the first 15 minutes.
I guess the first episode is mostly setup. The humor must start in the second episode.
I hope the Hispanic maid reappears. Since the idea that she'd go to the cult leader for a job interview and stay voluntarily for 15 years, without even learning English, is flatly racist.
So Kimmie supposedly went underground at age 13 or so for 15 years? Y'know, 13-year-olds actually know a fair amount about the world already. Like you don't take a backpack with $13,000 to a dance club. Candy stores sell unlimited amounts of candy that you can eat for dinner if you wish. Horse-drawn carriages aren't some weird form of horse enslavement. Etc.
Maybe this hyper-naivete was funny the first time I saw it on The Beverly Hillbillies 50 years ago. Although that was never the funniest show either. But I'm not feeling it as a source of humor in 2015.
After the first three episodes...I didn't find the show at all funny. Most of the characters are caricatures, starting with the naive and optimistic Kimmy the repeated-rape victim. The gay black roommate loves Broadway shows and The Lion King. The old people--the landlady and Kimmy's first "date"--are a cat lady and a senile old coot, respectively. Jacqueline and her daughter are spoiled rich white people personified--even though Jacqueline is supposedly Native.
Then there are the minor characters. Besides the Latina maid and the Indians, there are the Hispanic performers dressed as a mariachi band. And the Korean mourners at a funeral. They're not strange, exactly, since they don't say anything. But they let Titus, a complete stranger, sing in their midst. They seem to be stereotypical Asians who'll passively let someone take over their ceremony because they don't know what's going on.
Hip to be racist
I gather Kimmy Schmidt's racial portrayals get better later on. But if it takes you six or seven episodes to get race reasonably right, I'd say you've failed.
"Hipster racism" seems like the right label for what's going on. I can imagine the writers saying, "We're not laughing at the stereotypical maid who can't speak English. We're presenting her so you can laugh at the ignorant people who would laugh at her."
Or, "We're not laughing at Indians who think planes are 'iron eagles.' We're laughing at the ignorant people who think Indians think planes are iron eagles. Even thought we don't show any of these ignorant people, much less laugh at them."
It's like Kimmy is trying to have it both ways. Which is evident in the Korean character named Dong. "His name is funny...ha ha! But we understand it's funny, so we're not laughing at him. We're laughing at you if you think his name is funny. You're the ignorant one in that case, not us."
This is a good example of hipster racism: presenting racism, then winking at it. And acting as if that's enough to excuse the racism. No, it isn't.
I'd say the Native subplot is a particular case of failure. In the first three episodes, Jacqueline doesn't show one iota of being torn between her Native and white identities. She's a white woman in her white world and even with her Native parents. That she has a Native upbringing is a gimmick, not a genuine character trait. It does nothing to distinguish her from millions of rich white women who look and act like her.
So she's Native because that's a "hip" way to make her more "complex." Look, she has a backstory! Even though it's little more than a few buzzwords: reservation, buffalo, eagle, etc. It's a Saturday Night Live version of race, which makes sense given Fey's background. And it's about as unsatisfying.
For more on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, see Racial Stereotypes in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Just a Comedy?
February 24, 2015
Immigration at the 2015 Oscars
This year's Oscars unmasked Hollywood's most dubious views
Despite stirring support for the spirit of Selma, and big prizes for Hispanic film-makers, it was the unfortunate throwaway remarks which will linger longest after the 87th Academy Awards
By Steven W Thrasher“Who gave this sonofabitch his green card?” Sean Penn demanded before presenting Mexican film-maker Alejandro González Iñárritu the best picture Oscar for Birdman, giving a whole new political dimension to the racism of the 87th Annual Academy Awards.
Penn, who starred in Iñárritu’s 21 Grams all the way back in 2003, probably thought it was a funny joke with an old friend. But racism from friends assumed to be benign can be the worst kind, especially at an awards show: just ask black author Jackie Woodson, whose “friend” used presenting her with a National Book Award to make a watermelon joke.
The incident highlighted Oscar’s uneasy relationship with race, which was on full display throughout last night’s ceremony. Along with Tinseltown’s fraught relationship with American militarism, Penn bookended a politically awkward and often uncomfortable evening, which started with host Neil Patrick Harris making a joke about Hollywood celebrating its “best and whitest”.
Four hours later, Penn reminded the world that white supremacy is never far away in America, and it’s at its most insidious and powerful when wielded by self-proclaimed Hollywood liberals–like Penn. And:Hollywood likes to think it is cutting-edge on social issues, but it’s usually very conservative. So it was good to see Glory’s musicians provide at least reference to what the hell has been happening in America between Happy and Everything is Awesome.
And Penn’s penultimate moment of the broadcast was its lowest point, when he brought to the fore not just the simmering, weird way race was near at hand with several African Americans who weren’t nominated. He showed that white supremacy in Hollywood needs to assert itself even in the face of minority exceptionalists who are nominated and actually win–that it needs to remind a brown film-maker receiving the Academy’s highest honor that he is still a sonofabitch with a green card, ostensibly stealing work from good white folk.
In a way, Penn did us a favor: he exposed Hollywood’s faux liberalism for what it truly is. Hollywood has an uneasy relationship with racism, feminism and militarism because it will exploit all of them to keep making money. It is not concerned with diversity or economic justice, except to the extent it can feign interest in any of them to perpetuate its own power. “Who gave this son of a b*tch his green card?”: On the Oscars stage, there’s no such thing as a joke between friends
It doesn't matter if Alejandro Inarritu thought Sean Penn's joke was funny—the Oscars belong to the people at home
By Erin KeaneAccording to the Associated Press, Iñárritu brushed off concerns others voiced about Penn’s joke after the ceremony. “I found it hilarious,” Iñárritu said. “Sean and I have that kind of brutal (relationship) where only true friendship can survive.”
There’s no reason to believe that’s not true—as comedian Sara Benincasa tweeted last night, “Innaritu and Penn are both rich successful dudes who probably bro down in piles of money and make fun of each other.” As is their right! Friends know where the line is that they allow each other to cross and none of us know the particulars of their “brutal” friendship. My own family includes several different nationalities, and cultural differences do come up, and when they do, sometimes we joke about them, as is our privilege as private citizens with functioning senses of humor.
But Sean Penn wasn’t pulling his buddy’s leg at an afterparty or backstage. He planted himself front and center on stage and made a groaner of a green card joke at the climax of a long and weird ceremony that capped off a long and often intense Oscar campaign season that left many viewers furious over an #OscarsSoWhite and acting and directing snubs for “Selma.” None of that necessarily is Penn’s responsibility to ameliorate, but would it have killed the guy to keep the ethnic jokes to himself until he and his friend were safely off-screen?
I’m sure Penn just felt excited to see his good friend’s name in the envelope and responded the best way he knew how, with a comment that he perceived as fond. But even if the Oscars are Hollywood’s biggest night of the year, once the stars are on stage during the broadcast, the awards cease to belong only to them. Iñárritu might have been the man of the night, but this wasn’t a private party, or even a Comedy Central roast where the form explicitly calls for brutal personal jokes that cross the line of good taste. The Academy Awards are really for the viewing audiences at home. Isn’t that the contract behind this spectacle? They put on designer finery and learn to pronounce each others’ names and walk up on stage without making an ass of themselves, and we watch and clap and tweet and fawn and criticize and generally remind them that they’re still relevant in a world where television in all of its mutating glory is fast overtaking their industry in relevance, quality and diversity. And when an A-list star makes a tasteless joke in the middle of all of that, it can’t just be a personal gag at a close friend. Penn’s immigration joke went out to the whole viewing public—many of whom struggle with immigration status challenges that Iñárritu will not likely face again, if he ever did. 
Of course, conservatives responded to this as well as Selma in a racist way:
Trump Weighs In On The Oscars: 'It Was A Great Night For Mexico, As Usual'
"There was a lot of conservative-hatred there. There was no question about that," Trump said. Yes, there's no question that Hollywood hates the conservatives' bigotry against blacks, women, gays, immigrants, et al. Trump nailed it for once.
For more on the subject, see Hollywood Still White in 2015 and Another White Year at the Oscars.
Despite stirring support for the spirit of Selma, and big prizes for Hispanic film-makers, it was the unfortunate throwaway remarks which will linger longest after the 87th Academy Awards
By Steven W Thrasher
Penn, who starred in Iñárritu’s 21 Grams all the way back in 2003, probably thought it was a funny joke with an old friend. But racism from friends assumed to be benign can be the worst kind, especially at an awards show: just ask black author Jackie Woodson, whose “friend” used presenting her with a National Book Award to make a watermelon joke.
The incident highlighted Oscar’s uneasy relationship with race, which was on full display throughout last night’s ceremony. Along with Tinseltown’s fraught relationship with American militarism, Penn bookended a politically awkward and often uncomfortable evening, which started with host Neil Patrick Harris making a joke about Hollywood celebrating its “best and whitest”.
Four hours later, Penn reminded the world that white supremacy is never far away in America, and it’s at its most insidious and powerful when wielded by self-proclaimed Hollywood liberals–like Penn.
And Penn’s penultimate moment of the broadcast was its lowest point, when he brought to the fore not just the simmering, weird way race was near at hand with several African Americans who weren’t nominated. He showed that white supremacy in Hollywood needs to assert itself even in the face of minority exceptionalists who are nominated and actually win–that it needs to remind a brown film-maker receiving the Academy’s highest honor that he is still a sonofabitch with a green card, ostensibly stealing work from good white folk.
In a way, Penn did us a favor: he exposed Hollywood’s faux liberalism for what it truly is. Hollywood has an uneasy relationship with racism, feminism and militarism because it will exploit all of them to keep making money. It is not concerned with diversity or economic justice, except to the extent it can feign interest in any of them to perpetuate its own power.
It doesn't matter if Alejandro Inarritu thought Sean Penn's joke was funny—the Oscars belong to the people at home
By Erin Keane
There’s no reason to believe that’s not true—as comedian Sara Benincasa tweeted last night, “Innaritu and Penn are both rich successful dudes who probably bro down in piles of money and make fun of each other.” As is their right! Friends know where the line is that they allow each other to cross and none of us know the particulars of their “brutal” friendship. My own family includes several different nationalities, and cultural differences do come up, and when they do, sometimes we joke about them, as is our privilege as private citizens with functioning senses of humor.
But Sean Penn wasn’t pulling his buddy’s leg at an afterparty or backstage. He planted himself front and center on stage and made a groaner of a green card joke at the climax of a long and weird ceremony that capped off a long and often intense Oscar campaign season that left many viewers furious over an #OscarsSoWhite and acting and directing snubs for “Selma.” None of that necessarily is Penn’s responsibility to ameliorate, but would it have killed the guy to keep the ethnic jokes to himself until he and his friend were safely off-screen?
I’m sure Penn just felt excited to see his good friend’s name in the envelope and responded the best way he knew how, with a comment that he perceived as fond. But even if the Oscars are Hollywood’s biggest night of the year, once the stars are on stage during the broadcast, the awards cease to belong only to them. Iñárritu might have been the man of the night, but this wasn’t a private party, or even a Comedy Central roast where the form explicitly calls for brutal personal jokes that cross the line of good taste. The Academy Awards are really for the viewing audiences at home. Isn’t that the contract behind this spectacle? They put on designer finery and learn to pronounce each others’ names and walk up on stage without making an ass of themselves, and we watch and clap and tweet and fawn and criticize and generally remind them that they’re still relevant in a world where television in all of its mutating glory is fast overtaking their industry in relevance, quality and diversity. And when an A-list star makes a tasteless joke in the middle of all of that, it can’t just be a personal gag at a close friend. Penn’s immigration joke went out to the whole viewing public—many of whom struggle with immigration status challenges that Iñárritu will not likely face again, if he ever did.
Of course, conservatives responded to this as well as Selma in a racist way:
Trump Weighs In On The Oscars: 'It Was A Great Night For Mexico, As Usual'
"There was a lot of conservative-hatred there. There was no question about that," Trump said. Yes, there's no question that Hollywood hates the conservatives' bigotry against blacks, women, gays, immigrants, et al. Trump nailed it for once.
For more on the subject, see Hollywood Still White in 2015 and Another White Year at the Oscars.
January 06, 2015
Review of The Lacuna
The LacunaThe Lacuna is a 2009 novel by Barbara Kingsolver. It is Kingsolver's sixth novel, and won the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction and the Library of Virginia Literary Award. It was shortlisted for the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Plot
The novel tells the story of Harrison William Shepherd beginning with his childhood in Mexico during the 1930s. His parents are separated so he lives back and forth between the United States with his father and Mexico with his mother. During his time in Mexico he works as a plaster mixer for the mural artist Diego Rivera then as a cook for both him and his artist wife Frida Kahlo, with whom Shepherd develops a lifelong friendship. While living with and working for them, he also begins working as a secretary for Leon Trotsky who is hiding there, exiled by Stalin.
Later in life, living in Asheville, North Carolina, Shepherd becomes a novelist and is subsequently investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. He instructs his secretary, Violet Brown, to burn his papers and returns to Mexico. However, she saves his diaries and letters and it is these papers that form the bulk of the novel. There are gaps, or lacunae, in the story, hence the title. Barbara Kingsolver’s Artists and Idols
By Liesl SchillingerLeaving his mother to her Mme. Bovary messes, Shepherd parlays his domestic skills into a job mixing plaster for Diego Rivera’s murals (“It’s like making dough for pan dulce”) and joins the Rivera household as cook and typist for Rivera, his artist wife, Frida Kahlo, and later for their guest, the exiled Communist leader Leon Trotsky. In this incendiary, revolutionary household, Shepherd keeps mum and lets louder egos roar, just as he did on Isla Pixol. Baking bread by day, he records the daily dramas of this entourage by night, along with a draft of his first novel, an epic of the Aztec empire. But in 1940, when Trotsky is assassinated, Shepherd leaves Mexico, spooked by the virulent press that denounces his employers and their murdered ward “like the howlers on Isla Pixol.” At the age of 24, he returns to the United States and settles in Asheville, N.C. There he becomes a reclusive, gentlemanly author of swashbuckling Mexican historical novels (“Vassals of Majesty,” “Pilgrims of Chapultepec”) until the ungentlemanly House Un-American Activities Committee drags him into the spotlight, rewriting his character in crude strokes for the public stage. And:“The Lacuna” can be enjoyed sheerly for the music of its passages on nature, archaeology, food and friendship; or for its portraits of real and invented people; or for its harmonious choir of voices. But the fuller value of Kingsolver’s novel lies in its call to conscience and connection. She has mined Shepherd’s richly imagined history to create a tableau vivant of epochs and people that time has transformed almost past recognition. Yet it’s a tableau vivant whose story line resonates in the present day, albeit with different players. Through Shepherd’s resurrected notebooks, Kingsolver gives voice to truths whose teller could express them only in silence. Review: 'The Lacuna' by Barbara Kingsolver
And from Kingsolver's own website:
The Lacuna | 2009In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.
Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico—from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City—Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence.
Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America's hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. He finds support from an unlikely kindred soul, his stenographer, Mrs. Brown, who will be far more valuable to her employer than he could ever know. Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach—the lacuna—between truth and public presumption.
With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Barbara Kingsolver has created an unforgettable portrait of the artist—and of art itself. The Lacuna is a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of the most provocative and important of her time.
“Kingsolver's exploration (through all five senses) of Mexican and American geographies, weather, people, food, cultures, politics, languages and era-bound events—Hoover through World War II, Truman, Nagasaki—is masterful, and a reader receives the great gift of entering not one but several worlds.”
— THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
“The novel is a brilliant mix of truth and fiction, history and imagination … [making] for a compelling and utterly believable read.”
—BOOKPAGE
“As in The Poisonwood Bible, Kingsolver perfects the use of multiple points of view ... This is her most ambitious, timely, and powerful novel yet.”
— LIBRARY JOURNAL About The LacunaI spent so much time thinking about Harrison Shepherd’s hard-boiled Aztec novels, I even designed their dust-jackets in my head. Immediately behind my desk is a shelf where I keep my dictionaries, the thesaurus, and the reference books I’m using most during a given project. A couple of times without really thinking I turned around to reach for Harrison Shepherd’s Vassals of Majesty or Pilgrims of Chapultepec. And then laughed at myself, out loud. And:I traveled to all the settings, on both sides of the border: Washington, D.C., Asheville, North Carolina, the Blue Ridge Parkway, on this side. On the other, I hiked through Mexican coastal jungles, hung out in villages, went to see a brujo, visited Mexico City’s archaeological and art museums, the preserved homes of Rivera and Kahlo and the Trotskys, and their personal archives. I climbed the pyramids at Teotihuacán. I’ve spent a lot of time in Mexico over the past thirty years, living near the border in Arizona for most of that time, so I drew on the past too, digging out old notebooks from assignments in the Yucatan and elsewhere. I only set scenes in places where I’ve been myself. When I create a world for the reader, I want to do it right, using all my senses. Comment: As in her first three books--The Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven, and Animal Dreams--Kingsolver deals with Native and Hispanic themes in The Lacuna. I'd rank The Lacuna with Pigs in Heaven as two of the best Native-themed books ever, even though Kingsolver isn't Native. Rob's rating: 9.0 of 10.
Plot
The novel tells the story of Harrison William Shepherd beginning with his childhood in Mexico during the 1930s. His parents are separated so he lives back and forth between the United States with his father and Mexico with his mother. During his time in Mexico he works as a plaster mixer for the mural artist Diego Rivera then as a cook for both him and his artist wife Frida Kahlo, with whom Shepherd develops a lifelong friendship. While living with and working for them, he also begins working as a secretary for Leon Trotsky who is hiding there, exiled by Stalin.
Later in life, living in Asheville, North Carolina, Shepherd becomes a novelist and is subsequently investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. He instructs his secretary, Violet Brown, to burn his papers and returns to Mexico. However, she saves his diaries and letters and it is these papers that form the bulk of the novel. There are gaps, or lacunae, in the story, hence the title.
By Liesl Schillinger
And from Kingsolver's own website:
The Lacuna | 2009
Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico—from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City—Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence.
Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America's hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. He finds support from an unlikely kindred soul, his stenographer, Mrs. Brown, who will be far more valuable to her employer than he could ever know. Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach—the lacuna—between truth and public presumption.
With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Barbara Kingsolver has created an unforgettable portrait of the artist—and of art itself. The Lacuna is a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of the most provocative and important of her time.
“Kingsolver's exploration (through all five senses) of Mexican and American geographies, weather, people, food, cultures, politics, languages and era-bound events—Hoover through World War II, Truman, Nagasaki—is masterful, and a reader receives the great gift of entering not one but several worlds.”
— THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
“The novel is a brilliant mix of truth and fiction, history and imagination … [making] for a compelling and utterly believable read.”
—BOOKPAGE
“As in The Poisonwood Bible, Kingsolver perfects the use of multiple points of view ... This is her most ambitious, timely, and powerful novel yet.”
— LIBRARY JOURNAL
April 17, 2014
Video game encourages killing Indians
Racist Game Justifies Murder of Mexicans and Indians
By Simon Moya-SmithA mobile game that pits a white, 19th Century sheriff-like figure—one who brandishes a pair of pistols—against stereotypical images of Mexicans and Indians has prompted opposition by both Native American game developers and educators.
The game, designed for iOS and Android systems, is aptly titled “Clash of the West Cowboys Shootout.” The objective of the player, or “Black Jack Ketchum,” is to kill or leap over the Mexicans and Indians in his path. For $1,000, which comes in the manner of bags of money and gold bullion peppered across the ground, the player can upgrade to “Buffalo Bill,” who brandishes a shotgun in place of Ketchum’s six-shooters.
In the game description, the Mexicans, who are illustrated as both lanky and corpulent, and the Indians, who are portrayed as dull-eyed and dopey, are referred to as “a gang of criminals who are violently committing crimes.”
Elizabeth LaPensée, an Anishinaabe and Métis game developer and researcher, said the game “couldn’t [be] more racist” and that it justifies the historical murder of Mexicans and Indians.
“Games like these portray Native people as fodder to be killed,” she said. “They’re representing them as lazy, as evil, because they justify the shootout by saying that these ‘Indians’ are in a gang and that their acts are making the situation.” Comment: For more on stereotypical video games, see No Doubt Video = Custer's Revenge and Angry Patriots and Pinheads.
By Simon Moya-Smith
The game, designed for iOS and Android systems, is aptly titled “Clash of the West Cowboys Shootout.” The objective of the player, or “Black Jack Ketchum,” is to kill or leap over the Mexicans and Indians in his path. For $1,000, which comes in the manner of bags of money and gold bullion peppered across the ground, the player can upgrade to “Buffalo Bill,” who brandishes a shotgun in place of Ketchum’s six-shooters.
In the game description, the Mexicans, who are illustrated as both lanky and corpulent, and the Indians, who are portrayed as dull-eyed and dopey, are referred to as “a gang of criminals who are violently committing crimes.”
Elizabeth LaPensée, an Anishinaabe and Métis game developer and researcher, said the game “couldn’t [be] more racist” and that it justifies the historical murder of Mexicans and Indians.
“Games like these portray Native people as fodder to be killed,” she said. “They’re representing them as lazy, as evil, because they justify the shootout by saying that these ‘Indians’ are in a gang and that their acts are making the situation.”
February 26, 2014
Indigenous people should drop "Latino"
Drop the “Latino” and Re-Adopt the Indigenous Label for Mixed-Indigenous People: This is Our Idle No More Movement
By Hummingbird KnowsIf we identify as American Indian (not the feathered Indian Hollywood portrays, but the modern-day Indigenous in 2014) in the U.S. Census, the United States has to recognize Ecuadorians as an Indigenous Nation in North America. We make up close to 1 million of Ecuadorians in the United States.
But this is not what the U.S. wants to deal with. Because it’s easier to label them Hispanic or Latino instead of recognizing them as one of the original people of the Americas. Because it’s convenient to make them think they’re the immigrants, terrorists, invaders, thieves, criminals, and idiots instead of treating them with proper respect and solidarity. Because it’s okay to fool them into thinking they’re “free” and they’re chasing the “American dream” instead of disrupting US colonial institutions that aim to steal more land and more resources abroad.
As long as church authorities force their knees to the floor and media convince us into thinking we’re Spanish with white actors on soap opera, South American and Central American Indigenous and mixed-Indigenous people will not rise as a people with a political right to have a say of their lands.
But if North American and South American Indigenous people in the United States work together to raise awareness, all Indigenous people of the Americas will have a stronger political voice as one Indigenous race. Comment: For more on the subject, see:
Indigenous Mexicans face prejudice
More Latinos identify as Native
What's the difference between Indian and Latino?
Most Mexicans are Indians
By Hummingbird Knows
But this is not what the U.S. wants to deal with. Because it’s easier to label them Hispanic or Latino instead of recognizing them as one of the original people of the Americas. Because it’s convenient to make them think they’re the immigrants, terrorists, invaders, thieves, criminals, and idiots instead of treating them with proper respect and solidarity. Because it’s okay to fool them into thinking they’re “free” and they’re chasing the “American dream” instead of disrupting US colonial institutions that aim to steal more land and more resources abroad.
As long as church authorities force their knees to the floor and media convince us into thinking we’re Spanish with white actors on soap opera, South American and Central American Indigenous and mixed-Indigenous people will not rise as a people with a political right to have a say of their lands.
But if North American and South American Indigenous people in the United States work together to raise awareness, all Indigenous people of the Americas will have a stronger political voice as one Indigenous race.
Indigenous Mexicans face prejudice
More Latinos identify as Native
What's the difference between Indian and Latino?
Most Mexicans are Indians
August 16, 2013
Aeromexico wants only light-skinned actors
Mexico airline apologizes for light-skin casting
By Adriana Gomez LiconMexico's Aeromexico airline and its ad agency have apologized for a producer's casting call requesting that only light-skinned people apply as actors for a television commercial.
Mexico's population is largely dark-skinned, but Mexican television ads routinely feature light-skinned actors, sparking accusations of racial discrimination.
The commercial has not yet been made, but the casting call specified it wanted "nobody dark skinned," only actors with "white skin."
The Catatonia ad agency said this week that a third company that sent out the casting call had used "inappropriate" language. "We regret this situation, which in no way reflects our thinking as a company or as individuals," Catatonia said on its Twitter account.
Aeromexico also apologized, and blamed Catatonia for the "discriminatory attitude" of the casting call. "We offer our deepest apology and reaffirm our respect for all people, without regard to their gender, language, religion or skin color," the airline said in a statement.
The casting call also said producers didn't want anyone with blond hair or blue eyes.
For some social media users, the casting call confirmed what they say is a long history of implicit discrimination in Mexico.
Although most Mexicans have some Indian blood, and 6.7 million Mexicans over 5 years old speak an indigenous language, Indians have suffered persistent racial discrimination since the Spanish conquest in the early 1500s.
Blogger Tamara de Anda said Friday that she was a taken aback when she saw the casting call, and shared it on social networking sites.
"I always get these racist ads, but they've never been so explicit," De Anda said.
The casting call also seemed worded to exclude anyone who doesn't look wealthy. It sought people "with a Polanco Look," referring to a wealthy, largely white Mexico City neighborhood. It also said producers didn't want a "government look," an apparent reference to people who appear in ads promoting government social aid programs. Comment: For more on Mexican racism, see Mexican Inspector Humiliates Tzotzil Boy and Indigenous Mexicans Face Prejudice.
By Adriana Gomez Licon
Mexico's population is largely dark-skinned, but Mexican television ads routinely feature light-skinned actors, sparking accusations of racial discrimination.
The commercial has not yet been made, but the casting call specified it wanted "nobody dark skinned," only actors with "white skin."
The Catatonia ad agency said this week that a third company that sent out the casting call had used "inappropriate" language. "We regret this situation, which in no way reflects our thinking as a company or as individuals," Catatonia said on its Twitter account.
Aeromexico also apologized, and blamed Catatonia for the "discriminatory attitude" of the casting call. "We offer our deepest apology and reaffirm our respect for all people, without regard to their gender, language, religion or skin color," the airline said in a statement.
The casting call also said producers didn't want anyone with blond hair or blue eyes.
For some social media users, the casting call confirmed what they say is a long history of implicit discrimination in Mexico.
Although most Mexicans have some Indian blood, and 6.7 million Mexicans over 5 years old speak an indigenous language, Indians have suffered persistent racial discrimination since the Spanish conquest in the early 1500s.
Blogger Tamara de Anda said Friday that she was a taken aback when she saw the casting call, and shared it on social networking sites.
"I always get these racist ads, but they've never been so explicit," De Anda said.
The casting call also seemed worded to exclude anyone who doesn't look wealthy. It sought people "with a Polanco Look," referring to a wealthy, largely white Mexico City neighborhood. It also said producers didn't want a "government look," an apparent reference to people who appear in ads promoting government social aid programs.
July 30, 2013
Mexican inspector humiliates Tzotzil boy
Juan Diego Lopez Jimenez, Mexican City Inspector, Makes Street Vendor Cry: Watch 10-Year-Old Tzotzil, Manuel Diaz Hernandez, Get Humiliated [VIDEO]Video footage of a Mexican inspector making a 10-year-old Indian street vendor cry has gone viral. The footage melted the hearts of Mexicans and has resulted in the firing of the Mexican official.
The footage shows the poor Tzotzil boy selling candy, cough drops and what looks like cigarettes in Villahermosa, the capital of the state of Tabasco. The boy, identified as Manuel Diaz Hernandez, was trying to make money to buy his own school supplies.
A city inspector, Juan Diego López Jiménez, is seen in the video spotting the boy, confronting him and taking packs of cigarettes from his basket. For full disclosure, it is illegal in Mexico for minors to buy or sell cigarettes. The inspector forces Manuel Diaz Hernandez to throw the candy onto the pavement and the boy is seen crying.
After the inspector walks off, another man helps the young boy pick up the sweets and Manuel Diaz Hernandez falls down into a squatting position, covers his face with his arms and begins crying while rocking back and forth.
It is not uncommon in Mexico for street vendors to sell single cigarettes at double the price to people who need just the one or don't have the money to buy a full pack. The cost of the candies and cigarettes thrown by the inspector is most likely more than what the boy would make in profit in a week, which explains his sobbing reaction. Officials have agreed, after the story hit the news, that the punishment for the boy was too severe, especially since Indians were enslaved a century ago in the region.
The video, taken last Monday, has been seen hundreds of thousands of times and on Friday, the National Human Rights Commission announced it would investigate the case. The city revealed on Wednesday that it fired the inspector.
"Any form of violence against children is totally unacceptable, especially when directed against Indians, who are one of the most vulnerable groups in the country," said the National Human Rights Commission said in a statement. Mexicans outraged by video of official humiliating Tzotzil Indian boyThe video was viewed hundreds of thousands of times over the last few days, and on Friday the governmental National Human Rights Commission announced it would investigate the case. The city announced on Wednesday that it has fired the inspector.
It was the latest victory for social media in winning some measure of justice in Mexico. In recent years, social media have exposed a number of scandals and instances of mistreatment that often would have gone overlooked in the past. And:The Tabasco state prosecutors’ office said the boy’s aunt, Maria Diaz Diaz, said she had brought Manuel to Villahermosa about 10 days earlier. She said the boy lives with his grandparents in the Tzotzil Indian village of San Juan Chamula, in neighboring Chiapas state, and wanted to work during his summer vacation to raise money for school supplies in the fall. Mexican children get free textbooks, but often have to buy their own pencils, paper and uniforms.
Tabasco state Gov. Arturo Nunez announced Thursday his administration would give Manuel and his family “a scholarship, as well as all medical and psychological help for the boy.” Comment: There's no clear evidence that Lopez picked on Manuel because he's an Indian, but it's quite possible. As I've noted before, Mexico has a problem with racism against Indians just like the US.
Once again, we see the power of social media. Because of the online outrage, the inspector gets fired and the boy gets a scholarship.
For more on prejudice in Mexico, see Indigenous Mexicans Face Prejudice and Mexicans Gyrate in Blackface.
The footage shows the poor Tzotzil boy selling candy, cough drops and what looks like cigarettes in Villahermosa, the capital of the state of Tabasco. The boy, identified as Manuel Diaz Hernandez, was trying to make money to buy his own school supplies.
A city inspector, Juan Diego López Jiménez, is seen in the video spotting the boy, confronting him and taking packs of cigarettes from his basket. For full disclosure, it is illegal in Mexico for minors to buy or sell cigarettes. The inspector forces Manuel Diaz Hernandez to throw the candy onto the pavement and the boy is seen crying.
After the inspector walks off, another man helps the young boy pick up the sweets and Manuel Diaz Hernandez falls down into a squatting position, covers his face with his arms and begins crying while rocking back and forth.
It is not uncommon in Mexico for street vendors to sell single cigarettes at double the price to people who need just the one or don't have the money to buy a full pack. The cost of the candies and cigarettes thrown by the inspector is most likely more than what the boy would make in profit in a week, which explains his sobbing reaction. Officials have agreed, after the story hit the news, that the punishment for the boy was too severe, especially since Indians were enslaved a century ago in the region.
The video, taken last Monday, has been seen hundreds of thousands of times and on Friday, the National Human Rights Commission announced it would investigate the case. The city revealed on Wednesday that it fired the inspector.
"Any form of violence against children is totally unacceptable, especially when directed against Indians, who are one of the most vulnerable groups in the country," said the National Human Rights Commission said in a statement.
It was the latest victory for social media in winning some measure of justice in Mexico. In recent years, social media have exposed a number of scandals and instances of mistreatment that often would have gone overlooked in the past.
Tabasco state Gov. Arturo Nunez announced Thursday his administration would give Manuel and his family “a scholarship, as well as all medical and psychological help for the boy.”
Once again, we see the power of social media. Because of the online outrage, the inspector gets fired and the boy gets a scholarship.
For more on prejudice in Mexico, see Indigenous Mexicans Face Prejudice and Mexicans Gyrate in Blackface.
July 25, 2013
Latino comic books with Native roots
Latino Comic Book Artists Explore Roots, Culture
By Monica CampbellGrowing up in Los Angeles, Javier Hernandez worshiped superheroes like any other kid. But he went a bit further.
“When I was a kid my brother gave me his collection of comics, and I started just drawing,” he says. “And then at one point, after college, I go you know I’ve got to make my own comic. You know, I want to see stuff that maybe you don’t see a lot.”
Like characters called Weapon Tex-Mex, El Muerto or Sonámbulo, a Mexican wrestler turned private eye. One of Hernandez’s latest comics teams up a young Aztec boy and a dinosaur.
“It’s basically about a boy who during the Spanish conquest of Mexico realizes there’s a Tyrannosaurus Rex embedded in a block of amber in a cave,” Hernandez says. So, the T-Rex gets released and the boy rides him to battle the conquistadors. And:[S]ome artists here go beyond superheroes. Illustrator and writer Liz Mayorga, 31, drew as a kid growing up in Los Angeles and then saw art as a way to connect to her Mexican roots. One of her newest stories is called “A Caxcan Guerrilla Takes Over the Awkward Girl.”
“Caxcan is a tribe of indigenous people that were in my mom and dad’s hometown of El Teúl, Zacatecas,” Mayorga says. “I always asked my parents about our indigenous background and they could never give me any answers. And it made me really angry to know that my parents had no concept of that.”
One of her favorite cartoonists, Mario Hernandez, is also here and he stops by Mayorga’s table. Hernandez and his brothers pioneered the comic “Love and Rockets.” The cult favorite broke ground in the early 80s with its smart Latino characters, steeped in California’s punk rock scene.
“The stories would just tell stories about everyday people who happened to be gay, or happened to be Hispanic or they happened black,” says Hernandez. “At the time there was no other Hispanic names that were putting out original things like that.” Comment: For more on Native-themed comic books, see Superheroes in Native American Encyclopedia and Manifest Destiny Comic Book.
Below: "A print titled Preying Aztec Mantis by cartoonist and illustrator José Cabrera, who grew up in a Dominican family in New York City." (Courtesy of José Cabrera)
By Monica Campbell
“When I was a kid my brother gave me his collection of comics, and I started just drawing,” he says. “And then at one point, after college, I go you know I’ve got to make my own comic. You know, I want to see stuff that maybe you don’t see a lot.”
Like characters called Weapon Tex-Mex, El Muerto or Sonámbulo, a Mexican wrestler turned private eye. One of Hernandez’s latest comics teams up a young Aztec boy and a dinosaur.
“It’s basically about a boy who during the Spanish conquest of Mexico realizes there’s a Tyrannosaurus Rex embedded in a block of amber in a cave,” Hernandez says. So, the T-Rex gets released and the boy rides him to battle the conquistadors.
“Caxcan is a tribe of indigenous people that were in my mom and dad’s hometown of El Teúl, Zacatecas,” Mayorga says. “I always asked my parents about our indigenous background and they could never give me any answers. And it made me really angry to know that my parents had no concept of that.”
One of her favorite cartoonists, Mario Hernandez, is also here and he stops by Mayorga’s table. Hernandez and his brothers pioneered the comic “Love and Rockets.” The cult favorite broke ground in the early 80s with its smart Latino characters, steeped in California’s punk rock scene.
“The stories would just tell stories about everyday people who happened to be gay, or happened to be Hispanic or they happened black,” says Hernandez. “At the time there was no other Hispanic names that were putting out original things like that.”
Below: "A print titled Preying Aztec Mantis by cartoonist and illustrator José Cabrera, who grew up in a Dominican family in New York City." (Courtesy of José Cabrera)
July 15, 2013
Zimmerman acquitted of Trayvon's murder
The verdict on George Zimmerman's killing of Trayvon Martin is in: not guilty. Conservatives are predictably glad that a white man got away with killing a black boy, while liberals are predictably angry.
For starters, let's note that the liberal outrage isn't necessarily over the verdict itself:
On the Killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman
By Ta-Nehisi CoatesI think the jury basically got it right. The only real eyewitness to the death of Trayvon Martin was the man who killed him. At no point did I think that the state proved second degree murder. I also never thought they proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he acted recklessly. They had no ability to counter his basic narrative, because there were no other eye-witnesses.
I think Andrew Cohen is right--trials don't work as strict "moral surrogates." Not everything that is immoral is illegal--nor should it be. I want to live in a society that presumes innocence. I want to live in that society even when I feel that a person should be punished. That said, observers say the prosecution made several mistakes. One was not focusing on Zimmerman's initial aggression:How does 2013 Florida have a (Stand Your Ground) law that seems cut and pasted from 1881 Tombstone? Because let’s be clear here: according to current Florida law, you can get a gun, follow an unarmed minor, call the police, have them explicitly tell you to stop following them, then choose to ignore that, keep following the minor, get into a confrontation with them, and if at any point during that process you get scared, you can shoot the minor to death. And the state of Florida would say ‘Well, you did what you could.’John Oliver, The Daily Show Another was not focusing on Trayvon's race:
Zimmerman saga was all about race
Let's get real
By Paul CamposTrayvon Martin was stalked by George Zimmerman because he was black. Trayvon Martin is dead because he was black. George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin because the boy Zimmerman killed was black.
If you deny these things, you are either a liar or an idiot, or possibly both.
Nothing above requires the conclusion that the jury’s verdict was wrong as a matter of law. Florida’s laws, in their majestic equality, extend to people of all races the right to engage in vigilante killing that eliminates the sole witness to that killing. To point this out is neither a defense of those laws, nor a claim that they will in fact be applied equally. In other words, to blame this jury in this situation is to miss the point. Zimmerman verdict: A green light for racist vigilantes
This verdict allows every paranoid, sub-intelligent, vigilante with a gun to go on victimizing black youth
By Rich BenjaminZimmerman’s stooges and apologists claim that his deadly encounter had nothing do with race. And that his trial and acquittal have nothing to do with race. His defenders effectively portrayed him as a hapless Samaritan who got in over his head. Meanwhile, they tarred Trayvon as a menace who failed to properly justify his existence.
These presumptions colored every moment of the Police Department’s botched initial reaction and the trial.
How does an armed adult defy the policy, chase down a youth, kill him, and then turn around and call it self defense? Defense from what? A fleeing kid? Was Trayvon Martin seen for his humanity? Or as a “fucking punk”? Are black men seen for our humanity or as three-fifths of a fucking punk? This verdict will have devastating consequences. It is an implicit green light for every paranoid, sub-intelligent, vigilante racist to go on victimizing black youth. Trayvon Martin is dead for no reason other than being black.
Why do Zimmerman and some Americans feel entitled to police black and brown people like vigilantes? Why did the Sanford Police Department test a dead boy’s body for drugs in “standard operating procedure,” yet failed to test a live man’s body for alcohol or drugs? Why did the Sanford Police Department fail so miserably during the critical immediate hours after arriving on the scene?
Since our juridical Establishment often turns its head--or even winks--at the prevalence of racial profiling and police brutality against black and brown people, why should anyone be surprised by Zimmerman’s chase? Or by his acquittal? Implicitly and explicitly, the law condones his racial paranoia. The so-called rationales used to design and peddle “Stand Your Ground” laws and “Stop and Frisk” laws, and immigrant policing laws, fuel a vigilante mentality allowing some Americans to feel entitled to self-police others.
Even before the verdict, the Police Establishment warned black people not to riot--as though that were a foregone conclusion--without delivering Zimmerman’s supporters the same warning. The warning not to riot--in its substance and tone--recirculates the dogma of “black men as menace.” The chase, the trial, the warnings not to riot, the acquittal all compound the passive-aggressive profiling of black and brown people. Defending Zimmerman = racist
Tim Wise explains the racism in the Zimmerman case for those who still don't get it:
No Innocence Left to Kill: Racism, Injustice and Explaining America to My Daughter
By Tim WiseI am fully aware that there are still those who would admonish me for even suggesting this case was about race. Not just the defenders of George Zimmerman, with whom I shall deal in a moment, but even the state, whose prosecutors de-racialized this case to a point that frankly was as troubling as anything the defense tried to do. Maybe more. I mean, the defense’s job is to represent their client, and I cannot fault them for having done so successfully. But the prosecution’s job is to make it clear to the jury what the defendant did and preferably why he did it. By agreeing to a fundamentally colorblind, “this isn’t about race,” narrative, they gave away the best part of their arsenal before the war had really started.
Because anyone who still believes that this case had nothing to do with race—or worse, that it was simply a tragedy, the racial meaning of which was concocted by those whom they love to term “race hustlers”—are suffering from a delusion so profound as to call into question their capacities for rational thought. And yet still, let us try to reason with them for a second, as if they were capable of hearing it. Let’s do that for the sake of rational thought itself, as a thing we still believe in; and for our country, which some of us still believe—against all evidence—is capable of doing justice and living up to its promises. In short, let’s give this one more shot.
Those who deny the racial angle to the killing of Trayvon Martin can only do so by a willful ignorance, a carefully cultivated denial of every logical, obvious piece of evidence before them, and by erasing from their minds—if indeed they ever had anything in there to erase—the entire history of American criminal justice, the criminal suspicion regularly attached to black men, and the inevitable results whenever black men pay for these suspicions with their lives. They must choose to leave the dots unconnected between, for instance, Martin on the one hand, and then on the other, Amadou Diallo or Sean Bell or Patrick Dorismond, or any of a number of other black men whose names—were I to list them—would take up page after page, and whose names wouldn’t mean shit to most white people even if I did list them, and that is the problem.
Oh sure, I’ve heard it all before. George Zimmerman didn’t follow Trayvon Martin because Martin was black; he followed him because he thought he might be a criminal. Yes precious, I get that. But what you don’t get—and by not getting it while still managing to somehow hold down a job and feed yourself, scare the shit out of me—is far more important. Namely, if the presumption of criminality that Zimmerman attached to Martin was so attached because the latter was black—and would not have been similarly attached to him had he been white—then the charge of racial bias and profiling is entirely appropriate.
And surely we cannot deny that the presumption of criminality was dependent on this dead child’s race can we? Before you answer, please note that even the defense did not deny this. Indeed, Zimmerman’s attorneys acknowledged in court that their client’s concerns about Martin were connected directly to the fact that previous break-ins in the neighborhood had been committed by young black males.
This is why it matters that George Zimmerman justified his following of Martin because as he put it, “these fucking punks” always get away. In other words, Zimmerman saw Martin as just another “fucking punk” up to no good, similar to those who had committed previous break-ins in the community. But why? What behavior did Martin display that would have suggested he was criminally inclined? Zimmerman’s team could produce nothing to indicate anything particularly suspicious about Martin’s actions that night. According to Zimmerman, Martin was walking in the rain, “looking around,” or “looking around at the houses.” But not looking in windows, or jiggling doorknobs or porch screens, or anything that might have suggested a possible burglar. At no point was any evidence presented by the defense to justify their client’s suspicions. All we know is that Zimmerman saw Martin and concluded that he was just like those other criminals. And to the extent there was nothing in Martin’s actions—talking on the telephone and walking slowly home from the store—that would have indicated he was another of those “fucking punks,” the only possible explanation as to why George Zimmerman would have seen him that way is because Martin, as a young black male was presumed to be a likely criminal, and for no other reason, ultimately, but color.
Which is to say, Trayvon Martin is dead because he is black and because George Zimmerman can’t differentiate—and didn’t see the need to—between criminal and non-criminal black people. Which is to say, George Zimmerman is a racist. Because if you cannot differentiate between black criminals and just plain kids, and don’t even see the need to try, apparently, you are a racist. I don’t care what your Peruvian mother says, or her white husband who married the Peruvian mother, or your brother, or your black friends, or the black girl you took to prom, or the black kids you mentored. If you see a black child and assume “criminal,” despite no behavioral evidence at all to suggest such a conclusion, you are a racist. No exceptions. That goes for George Zimmerman and for anyone reading this.
And here’s the thing: even in the evidentiary light most favorable to George Zimmerman this would remain true. Because even if we believe, as the jury did, that Zimmerman acted in self-defense, there can be no question that were it not for George Zimmerman’s unfounded and racially-biased suspicions that evening, Trayvon Martin would be alive, and Zimmerman would be an entirely anonymous, pathetic wanna-be lawman, about whom no one would much care. It was he who initiated the drama that night. And even if you believe that Trayvon Martin attacked Zimmerman after being followed by him, that doesn’t change.
But apparently that moral and existential truth matters little to this jury or to the white reactionaries so quick to praise their decision. To them, the fact that Martin might well have had reason to fear Zimmerman that night, might have thought he was standing his ground, confronted by someone who himself was “up to no good” is irrelevant. They are saying that black people who fight back against someone they think is creepy and who is following them, and might intend to harm them, are more responsible for their deaths than those who ultimately kill them. What they have said, and make no mistake about it, is that any white person who wants to kill a black person can follow one, confront them, maybe even provoke them; and as soon as that black person perhaps takes a swing at them, or lunges at them, the white pursuer can pull their weapon, fire, and reasonably assume that they will get away with this act. I can start drama, and if you respond to the drama I created, you are to blame, not me. A Washington Post columnist helpfully demonstrates how Zimmerman's defenders are as racist as Zimmerman is--exactly as Tim Wise said:
Richard Cohen is terrified of black people
Washington Post columnist understands racial profiling, because hoodies are the "uniform" of crime
By Alex PareeenWashington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote an offensive, poorly reasoned column about racial profiling. In 1986. And also this week. And once or twice or let’s say perhaps a dozen additional times in the interim. The occasion of this week’s installment of “Richard Cohen explains why black men should be treated as second-class citizens for the safety of us all, which is to say rich old white men” is the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin. Cohen is very sorry that Martin is dead due to Zimmerman incorrectly assuming him to be a criminal of some sort based solely on Martin’s demographic profile—in other words, Cohen is sorry that Martin is dead because of racial profiling—but on the other hand, Cohen argues, racial profiling is correct and necessary because black people are scary, at least when they wear certain things.I don’t like what George Zimmerman did, and I hate that Trayvon Martin is dead. But I also can understand why Zimmerman was suspicious and why he thought Martin was wearing a uniform we all recognize. I don’t know whether Zimmerman is a racist. But I’m tired of politicians and others who have donned hoodies in solidarity with Martin and who essentially suggest that, for recognizing the reality of urban crime in the United States, I am a racist. The hoodie blinds them as much as it did Zimmerman. A “uniform we all recognize.” “We all.” “We.” Richard Cohen speaks for us all. Or “us” “all.” That one incredibly dumb assertion, stated with perfect idiotic certainty in the first-person plural, is exactly the sort of thing that makes Richard Cohen America’s worst columnist on America’s worst opinion page.
In the world outside Cohen’s tiny boomer rich guy bubble, “a hoodie” is worn by … nearly all young people and plenty of not-so-young people. To call a hoodie part of a (universally recognized!) “uniform” of Dangerous Black Thuggishness makes about as much sense as invoking high-tops or baseball caps. It is the “uniform” of youth. But then, to Richard Cohen, youth plus blackness makes probable cause. And please, spare us any talk of how Zimmerman is Hispanic, not white:
Is George Zimmerman white or Hispanic? That depends
For white Hispanics, our privilege can always be undercut. Zimmerman bet on his whiteness--and now he's entrapped
By Isa HopkinsIn the cascade of social media responses to the verdict in the death of young, black Trayvon Martin, the racial and ethnic identity of assailant George Zimmerman has been as bifurcated as the rage and relief. To those grieving an injustice, Zimmerman was a white man; those who celebrate his acquittal have been quick to point out that Zimmerman is, in fact, not white at all, but Hispanic. How can such a basic fact of a man be so disputed?
The truth is, Zimmerman is both: white and Hispanic, one a racial category and the other a marker of ethnicity, an accusation and an exoneration, respectively, inverted from their usual exculpatory order. Both are social constructions, but the former relies on skin color and ostensibly biological features, while the latter is a designation based on country of origin. Many Hispanics are dark-skinned, but many are not. It’s a confusing identity in a land that has traditionally preferred its divisions to be more clean-cut, and it’s one that even we white Hispanics struggle to understand. The key point:The genius of white supremacy is in its elasticity: It can expand to include the not-quite-right, the off-whites, when necessary, and then otherize and eject us when convenient. Bottom line: Zimmerman is white, racially speaking. End of story there.
For more on Trayvon Martin, see Black Youth Killed Like Trayvon and Racial Profiling for Blacks and Indians.
For starters, let's note that the liberal outrage isn't necessarily over the verdict itself:
On the Killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
I think Andrew Cohen is right--trials don't work as strict "moral surrogates." Not everything that is immoral is illegal--nor should it be. I want to live in a society that presumes innocence. I want to live in that society even when I feel that a person should be punished.
Zimmerman saga was all about race
Let's get real
By Paul Campos
If you deny these things, you are either a liar or an idiot, or possibly both.
Nothing above requires the conclusion that the jury’s verdict was wrong as a matter of law. Florida’s laws, in their majestic equality, extend to people of all races the right to engage in vigilante killing that eliminates the sole witness to that killing. To point this out is neither a defense of those laws, nor a claim that they will in fact be applied equally. In other words, to blame this jury in this situation is to miss the point.
This verdict allows every paranoid, sub-intelligent, vigilante with a gun to go on victimizing black youth
By Rich Benjamin
These presumptions colored every moment of the Police Department’s botched initial reaction and the trial.
How does an armed adult defy the policy, chase down a youth, kill him, and then turn around and call it self defense? Defense from what? A fleeing kid? Was Trayvon Martin seen for his humanity? Or as a “fucking punk”? Are black men seen for our humanity or as three-fifths of a fucking punk? This verdict will have devastating consequences. It is an implicit green light for every paranoid, sub-intelligent, vigilante racist to go on victimizing black youth. Trayvon Martin is dead for no reason other than being black.
Why do Zimmerman and some Americans feel entitled to police black and brown people like vigilantes? Why did the Sanford Police Department test a dead boy’s body for drugs in “standard operating procedure,” yet failed to test a live man’s body for alcohol or drugs? Why did the Sanford Police Department fail so miserably during the critical immediate hours after arriving on the scene?
Since our juridical Establishment often turns its head--or even winks--at the prevalence of racial profiling and police brutality against black and brown people, why should anyone be surprised by Zimmerman’s chase? Or by his acquittal? Implicitly and explicitly, the law condones his racial paranoia. The so-called rationales used to design and peddle “Stand Your Ground” laws and “Stop and Frisk” laws, and immigrant policing laws, fuel a vigilante mentality allowing some Americans to feel entitled to self-police others.
Even before the verdict, the Police Establishment warned black people not to riot--as though that were a foregone conclusion--without delivering Zimmerman’s supporters the same warning. The warning not to riot--in its substance and tone--recirculates the dogma of “black men as menace.” The chase, the trial, the warnings not to riot, the acquittal all compound the passive-aggressive profiling of black and brown people.
Tim Wise explains the racism in the Zimmerman case for those who still don't get it:
No Innocence Left to Kill: Racism, Injustice and Explaining America to My Daughter
By Tim Wise
Because anyone who still believes that this case had nothing to do with race—or worse, that it was simply a tragedy, the racial meaning of which was concocted by those whom they love to term “race hustlers”—are suffering from a delusion so profound as to call into question their capacities for rational thought. And yet still, let us try to reason with them for a second, as if they were capable of hearing it. Let’s do that for the sake of rational thought itself, as a thing we still believe in; and for our country, which some of us still believe—against all evidence—is capable of doing justice and living up to its promises. In short, let’s give this one more shot.
Those who deny the racial angle to the killing of Trayvon Martin can only do so by a willful ignorance, a carefully cultivated denial of every logical, obvious piece of evidence before them, and by erasing from their minds—if indeed they ever had anything in there to erase—the entire history of American criminal justice, the criminal suspicion regularly attached to black men, and the inevitable results whenever black men pay for these suspicions with their lives. They must choose to leave the dots unconnected between, for instance, Martin on the one hand, and then on the other, Amadou Diallo or Sean Bell or Patrick Dorismond, or any of a number of other black men whose names—were I to list them—would take up page after page, and whose names wouldn’t mean shit to most white people even if I did list them, and that is the problem.
Oh sure, I’ve heard it all before. George Zimmerman didn’t follow Trayvon Martin because Martin was black; he followed him because he thought he might be a criminal. Yes precious, I get that. But what you don’t get—and by not getting it while still managing to somehow hold down a job and feed yourself, scare the shit out of me—is far more important. Namely, if the presumption of criminality that Zimmerman attached to Martin was so attached because the latter was black—and would not have been similarly attached to him had he been white—then the charge of racial bias and profiling is entirely appropriate.
And surely we cannot deny that the presumption of criminality was dependent on this dead child’s race can we? Before you answer, please note that even the defense did not deny this. Indeed, Zimmerman’s attorneys acknowledged in court that their client’s concerns about Martin were connected directly to the fact that previous break-ins in the neighborhood had been committed by young black males.
This is why it matters that George Zimmerman justified his following of Martin because as he put it, “these fucking punks” always get away. In other words, Zimmerman saw Martin as just another “fucking punk” up to no good, similar to those who had committed previous break-ins in the community. But why? What behavior did Martin display that would have suggested he was criminally inclined? Zimmerman’s team could produce nothing to indicate anything particularly suspicious about Martin’s actions that night. According to Zimmerman, Martin was walking in the rain, “looking around,” or “looking around at the houses.” But not looking in windows, or jiggling doorknobs or porch screens, or anything that might have suggested a possible burglar. At no point was any evidence presented by the defense to justify their client’s suspicions. All we know is that Zimmerman saw Martin and concluded that he was just like those other criminals. And to the extent there was nothing in Martin’s actions—talking on the telephone and walking slowly home from the store—that would have indicated he was another of those “fucking punks,” the only possible explanation as to why George Zimmerman would have seen him that way is because Martin, as a young black male was presumed to be a likely criminal, and for no other reason, ultimately, but color.
Which is to say, Trayvon Martin is dead because he is black and because George Zimmerman can’t differentiate—and didn’t see the need to—between criminal and non-criminal black people. Which is to say, George Zimmerman is a racist. Because if you cannot differentiate between black criminals and just plain kids, and don’t even see the need to try, apparently, you are a racist. I don’t care what your Peruvian mother says, or her white husband who married the Peruvian mother, or your brother, or your black friends, or the black girl you took to prom, or the black kids you mentored. If you see a black child and assume “criminal,” despite no behavioral evidence at all to suggest such a conclusion, you are a racist. No exceptions. That goes for George Zimmerman and for anyone reading this.
And here’s the thing: even in the evidentiary light most favorable to George Zimmerman this would remain true. Because even if we believe, as the jury did, that Zimmerman acted in self-defense, there can be no question that were it not for George Zimmerman’s unfounded and racially-biased suspicions that evening, Trayvon Martin would be alive, and Zimmerman would be an entirely anonymous, pathetic wanna-be lawman, about whom no one would much care. It was he who initiated the drama that night. And even if you believe that Trayvon Martin attacked Zimmerman after being followed by him, that doesn’t change.
But apparently that moral and existential truth matters little to this jury or to the white reactionaries so quick to praise their decision. To them, the fact that Martin might well have had reason to fear Zimmerman that night, might have thought he was standing his ground, confronted by someone who himself was “up to no good” is irrelevant. They are saying that black people who fight back against someone they think is creepy and who is following them, and might intend to harm them, are more responsible for their deaths than those who ultimately kill them. What they have said, and make no mistake about it, is that any white person who wants to kill a black person can follow one, confront them, maybe even provoke them; and as soon as that black person perhaps takes a swing at them, or lunges at them, the white pursuer can pull their weapon, fire, and reasonably assume that they will get away with this act. I can start drama, and if you respond to the drama I created, you are to blame, not me.
Richard Cohen is terrified of black people
Washington Post columnist understands racial profiling, because hoodies are the "uniform" of crime
By Alex Pareeen
In the world outside Cohen’s tiny boomer rich guy bubble, “a hoodie” is worn by … nearly all young people and plenty of not-so-young people. To call a hoodie part of a (universally recognized!) “uniform” of Dangerous Black Thuggishness makes about as much sense as invoking high-tops or baseball caps. It is the “uniform” of youth. But then, to Richard Cohen, youth plus blackness makes probable cause.
Is George Zimmerman white or Hispanic? That depends
For white Hispanics, our privilege can always be undercut. Zimmerman bet on his whiteness--and now he's entrapped
By Isa Hopkins
The truth is, Zimmerman is both: white and Hispanic, one a racial category and the other a marker of ethnicity, an accusation and an exoneration, respectively, inverted from their usual exculpatory order. Both are social constructions, but the former relies on skin color and ostensibly biological features, while the latter is a designation based on country of origin. Many Hispanics are dark-skinned, but many are not. It’s a confusing identity in a land that has traditionally preferred its divisions to be more clean-cut, and it’s one that even we white Hispanics struggle to understand.
For more on Trayvon Martin, see Black Youth Killed Like Trayvon and Racial Profiling for Blacks and Indians.
December 04, 2012
Minority voters understand economics
The facts put the lie to racist and sexist Republicans like Mitt Romney and Bill O'Reilly. Indians and other minorities vote Democratic because they aren't blinded by their prejudices. They understand how the economy works and can see that Democrats are better fiscal managers.
Data show minorities--and whites--fare better under Democratic presidents
By Zoltan Hajnal and Jeremy D. HorowitzSpeaking to donors after the election, Mitt Romney attributed his loss to President Obama to the administration's strategy of "giving a lot of stuff" to blacks and Latinos, citing in particular "free healthcare" and "amnesty for the children of illegals."
But data show a more plausible explanation: black, Latino and Asian-American voters, who overwhelmingly voted for Obama, were simply evaluating the long-term record of each party.
The data we analyzed show unequivocally that minorities fare better under Democratic administrations than under Republican ones. Census data tracking annual changes in income, poverty and unemployment over five decades tell a striking story. Under Democratic presidents, the incomes of black families grew by an average of $895 a year, but only by $142 a year under Republicans. Across 26 years of Democratic leadership, unemployment among blacks declined by 7.9 percent; under 28 years of Republican presidencies, the rate increased by a net of 13.7 percent.
The black poverty rate fell by 23.6 percent under Democratic presidents and rose by 3 percent under Republicans.
The results for Latinos and Asians, though based on fewer years of data, show the same pattern. For example, Latino incomes grew an average of $627 a year under Democrats and fell by $197 a year under Republicans. More important, these gains do not come at the expense of whites. On average, white incomes have similarly grown, and white joblessness and poverty have likewise declined, under Democratic administrations. These numbers show that economic condition need not be a zero-sum game pitting races and ethnicities against one another. Comment: For more on the subject, see Republicans Alienated "Nontraditional" Voters and Letters to Romney on "Stuff."
Data show minorities--and whites--fare better under Democratic presidents
By Zoltan Hajnal and Jeremy D. Horowitz
But data show a more plausible explanation: black, Latino and Asian-American voters, who overwhelmingly voted for Obama, were simply evaluating the long-term record of each party.
The data we analyzed show unequivocally that minorities fare better under Democratic administrations than under Republican ones. Census data tracking annual changes in income, poverty and unemployment over five decades tell a striking story. Under Democratic presidents, the incomes of black families grew by an average of $895 a year, but only by $142 a year under Republicans. Across 26 years of Democratic leadership, unemployment among blacks declined by 7.9 percent; under 28 years of Republican presidencies, the rate increased by a net of 13.7 percent.
The black poverty rate fell by 23.6 percent under Democratic presidents and rose by 3 percent under Republicans.
The results for Latinos and Asians, though based on fewer years of data, show the same pattern. For example, Latino incomes grew an average of $627 a year under Democrats and fell by $197 a year under Republicans. More important, these gains do not come at the expense of whites. On average, white incomes have similarly grown, and white joblessness and poverty have likewise declined, under Democratic administrations. These numbers show that economic condition need not be a zero-sum game pitting races and ethnicities against one another.
October 27, 2012
Majority of Americans are racist
AP poll: Majority harbor prejudice against blacks
By Jennifer Agiesta and Sonya RossRacial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the United States elected its first black president, an Associated Press poll finds, as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward blacks whether they recognize those feelings or not.
Those views could cost President Barack Obama votes as he tries for re-election, the survey found, though the effects are mitigated by some people's more favorable views of blacks.
Racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views toward race without asking questions about that topic directly.
In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.
"As much as we'd hope the impact of race would decline over time ... it appears the impact of anti-black sentiment on voting is about the same as it was four years ago," said Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University professor who worked with AP to develop the survey.
Most Americans expressed anti-Hispanic sentiments, too. In an AP survey done in 2011, 52 percent of non-Hispanic whites expressed anti-Hispanic attitudes. That figure rose to 57 percent in the implicit test. The survey on Hispanics had no past data for comparison. Comment: You can bet Americans' prejudice against Indians is just as strong.
This poll confirms several things I've said. That racism is far from a thing of the past. That many Americans still harbor prejudice against minorities. That conservatives are more prejudiced than liberals. That racism goes beyond what people explicitly say to their unstated and unconscious feelings. That a huge amount of the antipathy toward Obama--the Tea Party movement and the Romney campaign--results from this racism.
Same with the so-called "honor and respect" of Indian mascots, leathers 'n' feathers costumes, and advertising images. Much of this activity is fueled by unconscious racism. You don't use someone you respect--Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Ronald Reagan, or your mother--as a tool. Turning an Indian into a one-dimensional marketing gimmick is inherently demeaning. It necessarily misrepresents and trivializes an entire race.
For more on the subject, see:
"Stupid Indians" Criaglist posting
"Too sensitive" about Del Rey's headdress?
Transgendered Natives face more discrimination
GOP America = strivers vs. parasites
"Prairie Niggers!" in SDSU bathroom
By Jennifer Agiesta and Sonya Ross
Those views could cost President Barack Obama votes as he tries for re-election, the survey found, though the effects are mitigated by some people's more favorable views of blacks.
Racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views toward race without asking questions about that topic directly.
In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.
"As much as we'd hope the impact of race would decline over time ... it appears the impact of anti-black sentiment on voting is about the same as it was four years ago," said Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University professor who worked with AP to develop the survey.
Most Americans expressed anti-Hispanic sentiments, too. In an AP survey done in 2011, 52 percent of non-Hispanic whites expressed anti-Hispanic attitudes. That figure rose to 57 percent in the implicit test. The survey on Hispanics had no past data for comparison.
This poll confirms several things I've said. That racism is far from a thing of the past. That many Americans still harbor prejudice against minorities. That conservatives are more prejudiced than liberals. That racism goes beyond what people explicitly say to their unstated and unconscious feelings. That a huge amount of the antipathy toward Obama--the Tea Party movement and the Romney campaign--results from this racism.
Same with the so-called "honor and respect" of Indian mascots, leathers 'n' feathers costumes, and advertising images. Much of this activity is fueled by unconscious racism. You don't use someone you respect--Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, Ronald Reagan, or your mother--as a tool. Turning an Indian into a one-dimensional marketing gimmick is inherently demeaning. It necessarily misrepresents and trivializes an entire race.
For more on the subject, see:
"Stupid Indians" Criaglist posting
"Too sensitive" about Del Rey's headdress?
Transgendered Natives face more discrimination
GOP America = strivers vs. parasites
"Prairie Niggers!" in SDSU bathroom
June 04, 2012
Adrian Grenier's Native roots
Adrian Grenier, star of TV's Entourage, appeared on Finding Your Roots recently (airdate: 5/20/12). Some postings on his ancestry:
Adrian GrenierGrenier was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the son of Karesse Grenier and John T. Dunbar. His parents met at a commune in the 1970s, and were never married. His father was from Ohio and was of European ancestry (the Dunbar surname is of Scottish origin); his mother was born in New Mexico to a Hispanic family, with Mestizo roots. Finally Someone on Finding Your Roots Has a Native American Ancestor
By TammyAdrian Grenier calls himself a “Native American white boy,” who checks the “Other” box on forms. ... “Other” Adrian was raised by a single mother who wanted him to identify with his rumored Apache forebear more than the Hispanic community she left. Dr. Henry Louis Gates Talks About Finale of “Finding Your Roots”Adrian Grenier confesses that he “never really embraced” his Latino heritage, but instead feels a stronger identity to the Apache descent he's heard about since childhood. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Discusses His PBS Docu-Series, "Finding Your Roots"
The outcome
First Grenier learns that his "Apache" ancestor was listed as white in all the official documents. Oops. Then comes this key moment:
A DNA test, on the PBS program Finding Your Roots, showed Adrian to have approximately 8% Native American ancestry and that his matrilineal line was Native American. For more on genealogy, see School Project Features Choctaw Journals and Warren's Cherokee Claim Unsubstantiated?
Adrian Grenier
By Tammy
The outcome
First Grenier learns that his "Apache" ancestor was listed as white in all the official documents. Oops. Then comes this key moment:
Watch Adrian Grenier's Conquistador Ancestor on PBS. See more from Finding Your Roots.
The video omits the rest of the story. The conquistador settled in New Mexico and raised a family with a Pueblo woman, so Grenier is part Pueblo Indian. As Wikipedia continues:May 28, 2012
Indigenous Mexicans face prejudice
Epithet that divides Mexicans is banned by Oxnard school district
'Oaxaquita' (little Oaxacan) is used by other Mexicans to demean their indigenous compatriots—who are estimated to make up 30% of California's farmworkers.
By Paloma EsquivelIndigenous Mexicans have come to the U.S. in increasing numbers in the last two decades. Some estimates now put them at 30% of California's farmworkers. In Ventura County, there are about 20,000 indigenous Mexicans, most of whom are Mixtec from the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero who work in the strawberry industry, according to local organizers.
Many speak little or no Spanish and are frequently subjected to derision and ridicule from other Mexicans. The treatment follows a legacy of discrimination toward indigenous people in Mexico, said William Perez, a professor of education at Claremont Graduate University who has interviewed and surveyed numerous indigenous Mexican students.
"One of the main themes is the discrimination, bullying, teasing and verbal abuse that they receive from other Mexican immigrant classmates who are not indigenous," he said. The abuse, which often goes unnoticed or is minimized by teachers and administrators, has left some of the indigenous students too embarrassed to speak their native languages, he said.
Educators and others in the U.S. often don't recognize diversity within the Mexican community, said Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, a researcher at the UCLA Labor Center who has written extensively about indigenous Mexican migration.
"We forget that it's a multilingual, multiethnic community," he said. "We forget about the fact that 62 indigenous languages are spoken in Mexico."
The organizing project's campaign, Rivera-Salgado said, "is a really interesting way to confront, very directly, something that the Mexican nation and the Mexican immigrant community sometimes sweeps under the rug, and that's the prevalence of racism and discrimination that indigenous people have to endure in Mexico and that is reproduced here in the United States." Comment: I wonder how much difference there is in the "blood" of indigenous and non-indigenous Mexicans. Is there any difference?
Ironic to see Mexicans discriminate against each other. To many Americans, they're all one big brown horde.
For more on the subject, see More Latinos Identify as Native and "Most Mexicans Are Indians."
Below: "Abelardo Popec, left, and Romaldo Lopez listen to speakers as indigenous Mexican students and leaders of Ventura County public schools launched the "No Me Llames Oaxaquita" (Don't call me little Oaxacan) campaign at the Center for Employment Training in Oxnard." (Anne Cusack/Los Angeles Times)
'Oaxaquita' (little Oaxacan) is used by other Mexicans to demean their indigenous compatriots—who are estimated to make up 30% of California's farmworkers.
By Paloma Esquivel
Many speak little or no Spanish and are frequently subjected to derision and ridicule from other Mexicans. The treatment follows a legacy of discrimination toward indigenous people in Mexico, said William Perez, a professor of education at Claremont Graduate University who has interviewed and surveyed numerous indigenous Mexican students.
"One of the main themes is the discrimination, bullying, teasing and verbal abuse that they receive from other Mexican immigrant classmates who are not indigenous," he said. The abuse, which often goes unnoticed or is minimized by teachers and administrators, has left some of the indigenous students too embarrassed to speak their native languages, he said.
Educators and others in the U.S. often don't recognize diversity within the Mexican community, said Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, a researcher at the UCLA Labor Center who has written extensively about indigenous Mexican migration.
"We forget that it's a multilingual, multiethnic community," he said. "We forget about the fact that 62 indigenous languages are spoken in Mexico."
The organizing project's campaign, Rivera-Salgado said, "is a really interesting way to confront, very directly, something that the Mexican nation and the Mexican immigrant community sometimes sweeps under the rug, and that's the prevalence of racism and discrimination that indigenous people have to endure in Mexico and that is reproduced here in the United States."
Ironic to see Mexicans discriminate against each other. To many Americans, they're all one big brown horde.
For more on the subject, see More Latinos Identify as Native and "Most Mexicans Are Indians."
Below: "Abelardo Popec, left, and Romaldo Lopez listen to speakers as indigenous Mexican students and leaders of Ventura County public schools launched the "No Me Llames Oaxaquita" (Don't call me little Oaxacan) campaign at the Center for Employment Training in Oxnard." (Anne Cusack/Los Angeles Times)
May 20, 2012
Fictional characters make acceptance easier
Gays may have the fastest of all civil rights movements
Public attitudes have shifted sharply in the last 10 years. Chalk it up to familiarity–among family, friends, co-workers and prime-time TV characters.
By Mark Z. BarabakIn a convergence of causes, the NAACP board voted Saturday to endorse same-sex marriage, saying "marriage equality" was "consistent with equal protection under the law provided under the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution."
Several reasons account for the success. The gay community tends to be more affluent, and the ability to give generously to candidates has translated into significant political clout, from the local level to the White House. Its leaders are well-versed in the machinations of government and the means of power, knowledge hard-won through years spent dragging politicians into the fight against the AIDS epidemic.
But experts and advocates agree on one explanation above all others: Familiarity.
"People came to understand we existed," Jones said. "They worked with us. They knew us. They had [gay] family members. That demystified it and made it harder for them to hate us in an abstract way."
That was an avenue obviously unavailable to African Americans. "It isn't as if white people suddenly come to discover they have African American children or relatives," said Kenneth Sherrill, a professor at Hunter College in New York and a longtime gay activist.
Gays and lesbians "are born into straight families and live in straight neighborhoods and go to straight schools and work in straight businesses," Sherrill said. "There's a kind of familiarity that's exceedingly difficult to achieve in the case of race."
Popular culture and its shaper, the mass media, have also played a crucial role in changing attitudes, much as news accounts helped advance the cause of the black civil rights movement. Only this time it wasn't images of fire hoses and police dogs turned on innocents but the sympathetic portrayal of gay and lesbian characters in prime time, in what has become a TV staple.
"Will & Grace," the NBC comedy that ran from 1998 to 2006, "probably did more to educate the American public than almost anything anybody's ever done so far," Vice President Joe Biden said in a "Meet the Press" interview that helped prod Obama off the fence into supporting same-sex marriage.
That may be hyperbolic, but many said the vice president hit on something important: that welcoming fictionalized gay characters into the home made it that much easier to welcome gays and lesbians as family, friends, neighbors and co-workers in real life.
"It is certainly the case that gays and lesbians have been widely accepted in popular culture in a way that you could argue blacks in particular and Latinos too have never really been accepted," said Frank Gilliam, an expert on politics and race at UCLA. Comment: This article suggests why it's important to see real Indians in movies and TV shows. Not historical Indians and not fake "spirit warriors" like Johnny Depp's Tonto, but modern-day Indians who are doctors, lawyers, and teachers.
For more on the subject, see Why Tonto Matters, Truth vs. Twilight, and "Such-and-Such Is Fiction."
Below: Another entry in the "Indians as Fantasy Figures" sweepstakes.
Public attitudes have shifted sharply in the last 10 years. Chalk it up to familiarity–among family, friends, co-workers and prime-time TV characters.
By Mark Z. Barabak
Several reasons account for the success. The gay community tends to be more affluent, and the ability to give generously to candidates has translated into significant political clout, from the local level to the White House. Its leaders are well-versed in the machinations of government and the means of power, knowledge hard-won through years spent dragging politicians into the fight against the AIDS epidemic.
But experts and advocates agree on one explanation above all others: Familiarity.
"People came to understand we existed," Jones said. "They worked with us. They knew us. They had [gay] family members. That demystified it and made it harder for them to hate us in an abstract way."
That was an avenue obviously unavailable to African Americans. "It isn't as if white people suddenly come to discover they have African American children or relatives," said Kenneth Sherrill, a professor at Hunter College in New York and a longtime gay activist.
Gays and lesbians "are born into straight families and live in straight neighborhoods and go to straight schools and work in straight businesses," Sherrill said. "There's a kind of familiarity that's exceedingly difficult to achieve in the case of race."
Popular culture and its shaper, the mass media, have also played a crucial role in changing attitudes, much as news accounts helped advance the cause of the black civil rights movement. Only this time it wasn't images of fire hoses and police dogs turned on innocents but the sympathetic portrayal of gay and lesbian characters in prime time, in what has become a TV staple.
"Will & Grace," the NBC comedy that ran from 1998 to 2006, "probably did more to educate the American public than almost anything anybody's ever done so far," Vice President Joe Biden said in a "Meet the Press" interview that helped prod Obama off the fence into supporting same-sex marriage.
That may be hyperbolic, but many said the vice president hit on something important: that welcoming fictionalized gay characters into the home made it that much easier to welcome gays and lesbians as family, friends, neighbors and co-workers in real life.
"It is certainly the case that gays and lesbians have been widely accepted in popular culture in a way that you could argue blacks in particular and Latinos too have never really been accepted," said Frank Gilliam, an expert on politics and race at UCLA.
For more on the subject, see Why Tonto Matters, Truth vs. Twilight, and "Such-and-Such Is Fiction."
Below: Another entry in the "Indians as Fantasy Figures" sweepstakes.
May 18, 2012
Racists hate and fear minority babies
Morons Disappointed to Learn Most Babies Born in America Are Not White
By Erin Gloria RyanWhen the US Census bureau announced this morning that for the first time in US history, the majority of babies born in 2011 were not white, naturally my first thought was to see what paranoids and dum dums on the internet were saying about it, because I'm nothing if not a chronic hater. After all, this sort of topic is perfect idiot-bait—it hits all the notes necessary to strike a chord of fear in the hearts of America's racists. And the web, as this country's id's butthole, absolutely did not disappoint.
The data in question shows that more non-white babies were born last year, which means calling non-white babies "minorities" is becoming increasingly stupider, and also that the Duggars are losing. Part of the baby demographic shift was due to a higher birth rate among Hispanics and the fact that the crappy economic picture prompted many white families to forego baby having. Analysts project that by the end of this century, non-white Americans will outnumber white Americans, a thought that strikes fear into octogenarian conservative xenophobes who will be dead long before "their" country is "taken away" from them by the Mexicans.
Anyway, the sort of person who uses the phrase "the white race" non-ironically is pretty upset with this development, another bit of evidence, in their mind, that minority women are unstoppable breeding machines with out of control sexuality and dangerous fecundity that must be kept out of America at all costs.
Readers of Fox Nation, that reliable bastion of whackadoodlery, rated the story of the nonwhite birth rate surpassing the white birth rate as "Scary." And commenters are frightened, but resigned. One said, "It was bound to happen..with anchor babies and pay raises for more chillrin..." Others, who clearly still don't understand the concept of "structural racism" having nothing to do with sheer numbers and everything to do with power, wondered if they'd get special consideration for entering "government school" now. You know, like all those Mexican children of undocumented farm workers who are applying for admission to Harvard, unseating deserving white applicants. Another said, "Not hard to believe. Los Angeles in the 1970's was overwhelmingly white. Now it's overwhelmingly latino. The latinos took over. Just look at the school demographics. That pretty much tells the story. This country is slowly being returned to Mexico with the help of politicians." Hard to argue with that! Top Right-Wing Group: Minority Births Are ‘Not A Good Thing’ Because They ‘Don’t Share American Values’
By Adam PeckYesterday, the New York Times reported on new census data which showed, for the first time, that non-white births made up over 50 percent of all births in the United States last year.
It marked an important milestone, indicative of a changing United States that has long been considered the world’s melting pot. Or, if you’re the conservative, Phyllis Schlafly-backed Eagle Forum, it’s a clarion call that America is in grave danger of being overrun by uneducated, un-American brown people:It is not a good thing. The immigrants do not share American values, so it is a good bet that they will not be voting Republican when they start voting in large numbers.
[...]
Instead, the USA is being transformed by immigrants who do not share those values, and who have high rates of illiteracy, illegitimacy, and gang crime, and they will vote Democrat when the Democrats promise them more food stamps. Setting aside for a minute the offensive way in which the Eagle Forum dismisses all of “the immigrants” as thoughtless criminals, it’s telling that The Eagle Forum views this as simply a political problem. Some commenters put the second posting in perspective:Sigh, again with the "blacks & Hispanics aren't American and only want welfare and food stamps."
FACT: Red States use the most welfare and food stamps.
FACT: a minority baby cries & poops just like a white baby.
FACT: Minorities vote Democrat because the GOP are racists and treats them like they're not people.
Exactly, why would I as a minority want to vote for a politicial party that sees me as: illiterate, less educated, not American (even though I AM) and worst of all less human than they are.
Oh--I thught all babies were BORN with American values--except, of course, those that aren't like Phyllis.
And we stole this land so...I guess American values are steal what you can and call it yours. A shame to see THAT go! Comment: As Tim Wise put it, anyone who reacts negatively to this news is a racist. It's pure racial news--more brown than white babies born--so there's no reason to care unless you're prejudiced against skin color.
For more on conservative racism, see White Privilege Will End Soon and Conservatives Seek Return to 1957.
By Erin Gloria Ryan
The data in question shows that more non-white babies were born last year, which means calling non-white babies "minorities" is becoming increasingly stupider, and also that the Duggars are losing. Part of the baby demographic shift was due to a higher birth rate among Hispanics and the fact that the crappy economic picture prompted many white families to forego baby having. Analysts project that by the end of this century, non-white Americans will outnumber white Americans, a thought that strikes fear into octogenarian conservative xenophobes who will be dead long before "their" country is "taken away" from them by the Mexicans.
Anyway, the sort of person who uses the phrase "the white race" non-ironically is pretty upset with this development, another bit of evidence, in their mind, that minority women are unstoppable breeding machines with out of control sexuality and dangerous fecundity that must be kept out of America at all costs.
Readers of Fox Nation, that reliable bastion of whackadoodlery, rated the story of the nonwhite birth rate surpassing the white birth rate as "Scary." And commenters are frightened, but resigned. One said, "It was bound to happen..with anchor babies and pay raises for more chillrin..." Others, who clearly still don't understand the concept of "structural racism" having nothing to do with sheer numbers and everything to do with power, wondered if they'd get special consideration for entering "government school" now. You know, like all those Mexican children of undocumented farm workers who are applying for admission to Harvard, unseating deserving white applicants. Another said, "Not hard to believe. Los Angeles in the 1970's was overwhelmingly white. Now it's overwhelmingly latino. The latinos took over. Just look at the school demographics. That pretty much tells the story. This country is slowly being returned to Mexico with the help of politicians." Hard to argue with that!
By Adam Peck
It marked an important milestone, indicative of a changing United States that has long been considered the world’s melting pot. Or, if you’re the conservative, Phyllis Schlafly-backed Eagle Forum, it’s a clarion call that America is in grave danger of being overrun by uneducated, un-American brown people:
[...]
Instead, the USA is being transformed by immigrants who do not share those values, and who have high rates of illiteracy, illegitimacy, and gang crime, and they will vote Democrat when the Democrats promise them more food stamps.
FACT: Red States use the most welfare and food stamps.
FACT: a minority baby cries & poops just like a white baby.
FACT: Minorities vote Democrat because the GOP are racists and treats them like they're not people.
Exactly, why would I as a minority want to vote for a politicial party that sees me as: illiterate, less educated, not American (even though I AM) and worst of all less human than they are.
Oh--I thught all babies were BORN with American values--except, of course, those that aren't like Phyllis.
And we stole this land so...I guess American values are steal what you can and call it yours. A shame to see THAT go!
For more on conservative racism, see White Privilege Will End Soon and Conservatives Seek Return to 1957.
April 28, 2012
Ethnic studies "is about rehumanization"
Tucson’s Ousted Mexican-American Studies Director Speaks: The Fight’s Not Over
By Julianne HingCan you speak to these oft-quoted statistics that 48 percent of Latino students in TUSD drop out of high school, but something like 94 percent of students who go through the program graduate. What’s behind those numbers?
There was a study done at UCLA by Daniel Solorzano and Tara Yosso that talks about the Chicano educational pipeline of Mexican American youth. The dropout rate across the country is about 54 percent for Mexican American and Chicano youth and in most urban school districts you see a mirror trend. TUSD is no different. But students who take our classes, data has emerged not from our department but from the department of accountability and research, that students who take our classes graduate at 97.5 percent. There was a district audit ordered by [Arizona State Superintendent] John Huppenthal and paid for by taxpayers. Through Cambium, an independent group, they conducted a separate analysis and found the same thing. Even more insightful, [ethnic studies courses] at the very least close the achievement gap. And at some our our sites, they surpass the achievement gap.
Urban school districts across the nation are seeking aggressively ways to figure out: How do we close the achievement gap? What’s significant with this number is they demonstrated that they were capable of closing that gap.
That was also documented, researched, and published through the state commission audit. And yet our district did not assert that in the administrative hearings. Our state superintendent and state officials actually denounced their own independent audit which was paid through taxpayer dollars in the amount of [$110,000], so you have these rigorous studies, independent studies, and yet folks like our Attorney General Tom Horne say, well, the data show that your students graduate at higher rates, that they are closing the achievement gap, but it’s not about that. According to him TUSD’s Mexican-American studies are an anti-American program that need to be eliminated. So it’s horrible, our own state officials are denouncing academic achievement, denouncing higher graduation rates and instead spreading this discourse to the public that we are anti-american, anti-white. There is nothing further from the truth.
Can you go into educator mode for a second? Because people like Tom Horne have called the Mexican-American studies curriculm racist. And other people who are trying to defend have said, no, it’s that HB 2281 is a racist law. How do define racism here? It doesn’t seem like both things could be “racist.” How does your definition of racist here differ from the way that Tom Horne interprets the word?
Racism is about power. About oppressing somebody through institutions, institutions of control. What we’re dealing with is institutional racism, the legacy of institutional racism. So Tom Horne sees Mexican American knowledge, history, our literature, as threats to Eurocentric knowledge. And because it counters that very source of knowledge and what we’re doing is trying to integrate more holistic and more comprehensive knowledge forms into our school system for the benefit for all of our students, he simply disregards it and again implements his fear-mongering and says that we’re racist. In no way would we replicate a paradigm that exists in our school systems in which particular groups of students are marginalized, because there are indeed racist practices and policies within our school system.
Racism is about control and marginalization and dehumanization of a group of people. In no means are we being that. Our pedagogy, our curriculum, is about rehumanization, about race as a social construct. And it’s about not replicating this paradigm. The real question we have to ask is, what type of power do certain groups of people wield against certain groups of people?
Huppenthal has compared us to Nazis, to Hitler Youth, which is also very offensive, and there’s a real distortion, a real twisting of historical circumstances. It’s horrific and what it is is the further dehumanization and demonization of Latinos in the state of Arizona. Comment: For more on the subject, see What Conservatives Consider "Objective History" and Tucson Bans Native Books, Shakespeare Play.
Below: Sean Arce, "the former director of Tucson Unified School District’s now-suspended Mexican American Studies program, was fired earlier this month in the latest crackdown on the program in what has become a years-long saga over the fate of the popular program."
By Julianne Hing
There was a study done at UCLA by Daniel Solorzano and Tara Yosso that talks about the Chicano educational pipeline of Mexican American youth. The dropout rate across the country is about 54 percent for Mexican American and Chicano youth and in most urban school districts you see a mirror trend. TUSD is no different. But students who take our classes, data has emerged not from our department but from the department of accountability and research, that students who take our classes graduate at 97.5 percent. There was a district audit ordered by [Arizona State Superintendent] John Huppenthal and paid for by taxpayers. Through Cambium, an independent group, they conducted a separate analysis and found the same thing. Even more insightful, [ethnic studies courses] at the very least close the achievement gap. And at some our our sites, they surpass the achievement gap.
Urban school districts across the nation are seeking aggressively ways to figure out: How do we close the achievement gap? What’s significant with this number is they demonstrated that they were capable of closing that gap.
That was also documented, researched, and published through the state commission audit. And yet our district did not assert that in the administrative hearings. Our state superintendent and state officials actually denounced their own independent audit which was paid through taxpayer dollars in the amount of [$110,000], so you have these rigorous studies, independent studies, and yet folks like our Attorney General Tom Horne say, well, the data show that your students graduate at higher rates, that they are closing the achievement gap, but it’s not about that. According to him TUSD’s Mexican-American studies are an anti-American program that need to be eliminated. So it’s horrible, our own state officials are denouncing academic achievement, denouncing higher graduation rates and instead spreading this discourse to the public that we are anti-american, anti-white. There is nothing further from the truth.
Can you go into educator mode for a second? Because people like Tom Horne have called the Mexican-American studies curriculm racist. And other people who are trying to defend have said, no, it’s that HB 2281 is a racist law. How do define racism here? It doesn’t seem like both things could be “racist.” How does your definition of racist here differ from the way that Tom Horne interprets the word?
Racism is about power. About oppressing somebody through institutions, institutions of control. What we’re dealing with is institutional racism, the legacy of institutional racism. So Tom Horne sees Mexican American knowledge, history, our literature, as threats to Eurocentric knowledge. And because it counters that very source of knowledge and what we’re doing is trying to integrate more holistic and more comprehensive knowledge forms into our school system for the benefit for all of our students, he simply disregards it and again implements his fear-mongering and says that we’re racist. In no way would we replicate a paradigm that exists in our school systems in which particular groups of students are marginalized, because there are indeed racist practices and policies within our school system.
Racism is about control and marginalization and dehumanization of a group of people. In no means are we being that. Our pedagogy, our curriculum, is about rehumanization, about race as a social construct. And it’s about not replicating this paradigm. The real question we have to ask is, what type of power do certain groups of people wield against certain groups of people?
Huppenthal has compared us to Nazis, to Hitler Youth, which is also very offensive, and there’s a real distortion, a real twisting of historical circumstances. It’s horrific and what it is is the further dehumanization and demonization of Latinos in the state of Arizona.
Below: Sean Arce, "the former director of Tucson Unified School District’s now-suspended Mexican American Studies program, was fired earlier this month in the latest crackdown on the program in what has become a years-long saga over the fate of the popular program."
March 26, 2012
500 years of book banning
Arizona’s Curriculum Battles: A 500-Year Civilizational War
By Roberto Cintli RodriguezIn this highly successful department, Horne saw something un-American at its core, something evil and cancerous. MAS-TUSD’s indigenous, maiz-based curriculum, was something he saw as outside of Western civilization--something outside of Greco-Roman culture. He is unaware of the irony that maiz, or corn, is indigenous to this very continent, whereas things Greco-Roman are not. For Horne, what he deemed to be the "foreign" curriculum was something that had to be destroyed at all costs.
Among those who look on in horror at what is happening in Arizona, many are blinded to the fact that this has already occurred in every state of the union. Arizona was the last holdout. Thus, as people look on in horror, what they should be contemplating is not simply how to help save Arizona, but how to reverse the 500-year process of de-indigenization and dehumanization that continues unabated on this continent and in virtually every country in this hemisphere.
Asking what is at stake in Arizona is not only asking the wrong question, but it is asking it a few centuries too late. This, Horne understands. He refers to the process of eliminating Raza Studies as a civilizational war. And indeed, it is the very same one prosecuted by Bishop Diego de Landa in Mani, Yucatan, where he declared an auto-da-fé in 1562, setting in motion one of humanity’s greatest cultural tragedies: the destruction of Mayan books, known as amoxtlis. That three-day book burning is only one incident in a hundreds-of-years process that attempted to destroy the intellectual, mathematical, scientific, cultural and spiritual knowledge of this continent. (Fortunately, while thousands of Mayan, Nahua and Mixtec amoxtlis were destroyed, the knowledge itself was not; it was simply suppressed and survived via oral tradition).
In this civilizational war, one by one, peoples and communities--and their unique corpus of knowledge--are condemned as pagan, barbaric and demonic; a dehumanization that prepared the ground psychologically for the same peoples to be evangelized and colonized. Comment: For more on the subject, see Educators Protest Tuscon Book Ban and Aztecs Favored Universal Education.
Below: "A young boy is searched by security guards at the entrance of the Tucson Unified District headquarters, ahead of a school board meeting on March 13, 2012." (Roberto Cintli Rodriguez)
By Roberto Cintli Rodriguez
Among those who look on in horror at what is happening in Arizona, many are blinded to the fact that this has already occurred in every state of the union. Arizona was the last holdout. Thus, as people look on in horror, what they should be contemplating is not simply how to help save Arizona, but how to reverse the 500-year process of de-indigenization and dehumanization that continues unabated on this continent and in virtually every country in this hemisphere.
Asking what is at stake in Arizona is not only asking the wrong question, but it is asking it a few centuries too late. This, Horne understands. He refers to the process of eliminating Raza Studies as a civilizational war. And indeed, it is the very same one prosecuted by Bishop Diego de Landa in Mani, Yucatan, where he declared an auto-da-fé in 1562, setting in motion one of humanity’s greatest cultural tragedies: the destruction of Mayan books, known as amoxtlis. That three-day book burning is only one incident in a hundreds-of-years process that attempted to destroy the intellectual, mathematical, scientific, cultural and spiritual knowledge of this continent. (Fortunately, while thousands of Mayan, Nahua and Mixtec amoxtlis were destroyed, the knowledge itself was not; it was simply suppressed and survived via oral tradition).
In this civilizational war, one by one, peoples and communities--and their unique corpus of knowledge--are condemned as pagan, barbaric and demonic; a dehumanization that prepared the ground psychologically for the same peoples to be evangelized and colonized.
Below: "A young boy is searched by security guards at the entrance of the Tucson Unified District headquarters, ahead of a school board meeting on March 13, 2012." (Roberto Cintli Rodriguez)
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