Before reading Push, I braced myself and prepared for depression. Before heading to see Precious, I packed three travel sized packs of kleenex. But the unrelenting despair I was warned about never quite materialized. Instead, I saw hope.

Crazy right?

Hope was the last thing I was expecting when I checked out this story. After all, I had published SLB’s essay/post “Reveling in Bleakness,” and every time I announced something about Precious, one of my readers would plug Percival Everett’s Erasure. Reading any of my online feeds was a race and class related cacophony, and I hadn’t even touched a page.

Last Thursday, I settled in for what I thought would be an extremely painful and devastating read…or, worse, something so disgusting and exploitative that I would reject it outright as poverty pimping. But neither of these things happened.

Instead, I fell headlong into the alternately horrific and hilarious world of Precious Jones, one that was both familiar to me and strange at the same time. I enjoyed Precious’ rapid fire thoughts, found her casual allegiance to Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam interesting, and watched her openness to the world, even as she was limited by circumstances. I understand the impulse that many would have to cringe at much of the piece – the world painted is tangled with dysfunction and pain, and graphic depictions of sexual and physical violence aren’t for the feint of heart. But again, I read the novel dry-eyed. Perhaps I didn’t have any tears left to shed for Precious. I’ve been holding in the secrets of others for years – the circumstances described in Push are extreme, but not unimaginable. I loved watching Precious progress, watching her world expand, watching her cope in the same ways I’ve seen so many other girls do. As I have done. Acknowledge what’s fucked up, push onward. And, in a wonderful touch, Sapphire allows the other girls to have their say at the end of the book, revealing the same vibrant inner lives as Precious possesses. I smiled when I closed the book.

The next day, I hopped on the train to NYC to watch the film adaptation. Again, I prepared for devastation that did not materialize. I did cry – especially at Mary’s final monologue, which I will get to later – but spent a lot more of the movie laughing along with Precious. Sometimes, life is so fucked up it rolls into the absurd, which is what happens in Precious. The abject misery of the dank apartment she shares with her sadistic mother is mitigated when by many other scenes of teenagers reclaiming their lives and their narratives.

My favorite character, outside of Precious, had to be Joanne. Actress Xosha Roquemore clearly evoked the spirit of Remy Ma and dropped her into the 1980s. Every time she was on screen, I died laughing at her empathy and warmth, undercut with flourishes of hard posturing.

The film does many things well, starting with the Susan L. Taylor (!) cameo as the fairy godmother who opens the film’s first fantasy sequence. Daniels is able to capture the horror of what happens to Precious without glamorizing the violence, making use of quick cut scenes and strategically placed fantasy sequences to pull both Precious and the viewer away from the act. In addition, Daniels stays fairly true to the book, pulling many lines directly from the pages. And many parts of the book remain as the author intended – Blue Rain remains a lesbian in the film, and her partner is shown a few different times. In addition, Daniels makes wonderful use of visuals – the laughter-filled, happy scenes with Precious in the hospital, surrounded by friends and a doting veg*n nurse (played by Lenny Kravitz) provide a stark contrast with her return to the brown void with her mother.

However, while I would count the film as a success, there is a major stumble that happened taking the book from page to screen.

Over at Feministing, Rose writes:

A few days remain until Precious debuts across the country on Nov. 6th. The story, originally told by Sapphire through the novel Push, is an ode to negotiating inclusion and exclusion in the media. It’s about much more than the New York Times’ account: a “Harlem girl raped and impregnated by her abusive father.” (That’s practically all the ink dedicated to Precious the character despite an accompanying a column that extends for 5 pages.) It’s about inclusion and what it says about who is valuable in our society. That’s best captured in Push, when Precious explores this:

I am comp’tant. I was comp’tant enough for her [Precious' mother] husband to fuck. She ain’ come in here and say, Carl Kenwood Jones–thas wrong! Git off Precious like that! Can’t you see Precious is a beautiful chile like white chile in magazines or on toilet paper wrappers. Precious is a blue-eye skinny chile whose hair is long braids, long long braids. Git off Precious fool! It time for Precious to go to the gym like Janet Jackson. It time for Precious hair to braided.(64)

But what I love about the book is that Precious is not a defenseless subject. She is a survivor who resists against her exclusion by striving for her own inclusion. She does this by learning how to read. She then uses her literacy to read about the lives of Black women through writers such as Alice Walker, Ann Petry, Ann McGovern and others. The story ends with her literally penning her own story fully epitomizing the agency she had all along despite sexual trauma and despair.

Which was precisely my take. From the beginning of the novel, Precious’ voice explodes on the page, providing us with a heroine who may not be the most educated or literate, but has a vibrant inner life. This doesn’t exactly translate on screen – Sidibe voices some of Precious’ thoughts, but slowly, and no where near as many random, flitting ideas are explored over the course of the movie. This omission changes our perception of Precious – in the book, she bright, quick-witted, and runs a constant narration about the things she has encountered in her world. Once she discovers the alternative school, the reader is excited as Precious is finally given a chance to express what she is thinking – she has a space in which to speak where she is valued, as well as a new method (writing) that unlocked more possibilities for reflection, introspection, and discussions.

In the film, this part is flattened a bit. I am aware that books cannot be translated exactly to the screen, but condensing Precious’ thoughts removes a lot of her own agency. After Precious acts out in math class, getting into a verbal confrontation with her teacher, Mr. Wicher, she feels some remorse and ruminates on a goal that’s slightly out of reach:

I didn’t want to hurt him or embarrass him like that you know. But I couldn’t let him, anybody, know, page 122 look like page 152, 22, 3, 6, 5 – all the pages look alike to me. ‘N I really do want to learn. Everyday I tell myself something gonna happen, some shit like on TV. I’m gonna break through or somebody gonna break through to me – I’m gonna learn, catch up, be normal, change my seat to the front of the class. But again, it has not been that day.

This was on page five. Her character is established as wanting something more, knowing there is something more, but not quite understanding how she can reach her goal. The movie makes the classroom scenes closer to a “Freedom Writers” scenario, with Paula Patton veering way too close to the typical “nice white lady” trope.

Ah, Paula Patton.

While I think Patton is gorgeous and talented, I don’t believe she did the character of Blue Rain justice.

Part of this is not her fault – the character of Blue Rain in the book is considerably darker, with dreadlocks. Now, this may not seem so important on its face. After all, casting makes character changes all the time, right? This shouldn’t be this big of a deal.

And it wouldn’t, if the character of Precious wasn’t so thoroughly indoctrinated with self hatred and displaying her color consciousness throughout the entire book. When she has her first child, she wasted no time in calling the EMT a spic before he helped her, quickly revising her opinion of him to use the more respectful term “Spanish” and comment on his “coffee-cream color, good hair.” Her nurse in the hospital is described as “butter color,” looks at her lightness, and opines “It’s something about being a nigger ain’t color.” Henceforth, that nurse is called Miss Butter. She worships light skinned people in general, and whites most of all, believing that if she were white, her life would be better. She says:

My fahver don’t see me really. If he did, he would know I was like a white girl, a real person, inside.

Marinate on that for a second. She would be real if she were white.

He would not climb on me from forever and stick his dick in me ‘n get me inside on fire, bleed, I bleed then he slap me. Can’t he see I am a girl for flowers and thin straw legs and a place in the picture. I been out the picture so long I am used to it. But that don’t mean it don’t hurt.

In Precious’ mind, whiteness is equivalent to being loved, safe, and wanted. The movie briefly shows this by having Precious look in the mirror and see a young white girl, but this moment is robbed from its potency unless you are exposed to the constant self-hatred throbbing in her brain.

Later in the book, Blue Rain models self love and acceptance for Precious, and for the first time, she is able to see that dark skin and natural hair can be beautiful.

This dynamic does not exist with Paula Patton in the role. She would be yet another light skinned person with “good hair” representing progress – something Precious would see as unattainable for herself.

On a broader scale, as many people picked up watching the trailer, the positioning of Paula Patton and Mariah Carey as Precious’ light skinned saviors reinforced existing societal ideas – the evil or helpless dark skinned people being uplifted (or punished) by the benevolent light skinned people. The casting serves to help reinforce existing prejudices that we see played out onscreen time and time again.

But even outside of that, Patton’s portrayal of Rain did not make me believe that she was someone Precious could trust. That Mad TV sketch I linked to above? That was the scene between Precious and Blue Rain after Precious confesses she is HIV positive. Down to the heavy handed command “write.”

The other moment in the film that radically departed from the book was Mo’Nique’s shining moment. In the social worker’s office, Precious’ mother Mary gives voice to what caused her to look the other way when she knew her child was being sexually abused, and gives insight into why she chose to perpetuate this dysfunction. In the book, this speech isn’t much of a speech – it’s a confession, with Precious cursing her mother out in her head the whole time. But on screen,the sight of the film’s monstrous antagonist breaking down and offering to forgo the sacred welfare chance to be reunited with her daughter is both disgusting and moving. You are revolted at Mary’s confession and yet, simultaneously empathizing a little, a master stroke.

But this doesn’t exist in the book. And while I think it adds to the movie immeasurably, I don’t think Mary should have automatically been humanized on principle. If you want the evil mom to be given full representation and humanity, go read the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. But here, I think Sapphire deliberately chose not to humanize Mary’s character. Why? I believe the answer lies on page 31.

I talk loud but I still don’t exist.

In life, the character of Precious Jones is marginalized and invisible, ignored unless someone wishes to do her harm or use her in some way. Her only refuge is her mind, where she essentially keeps herself company. And thus, Sapphire – who reveals a bit of this sentiment in her interview with Katie Couric – makes the entire novel about her. It’s all about her thoughts, her eyes, her reactions, her perceptions. (The other girls publish their stories in a supplement after Precious’ story ends.) And so, shifting the focus to anyone else would ultimately start to overshadow the story of Precious. Even for a moment.

So while I think the film does an amazing job walking the tightrope between humanizing Mary and keeping her at arms length, ultimately, this story belongs to Precious.

There is so much more I could write – perceptions about the film, familial violence, sexual abuse, black stereotyping, the single story conundrum, other critics take’s, race and Oscar bait, what I thought about Erasure, which was a literary response to Push – but those will have to wait for another post.

Reveling in Bleakness [Racialicious]
Erasure [Amazon]
The Not-Rape Epidemic [Racialicious]
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire [IMDB]
On Representation: Push versus Precious [Feministing]
Reflections on Lola [The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao] (Part 1 of 2) [Racialicious]
Katie Couric Interviews Sapphire [What About Our Daughters]

I emailed my friend Kaisha that I got a free ticket to see Fela!, the new musical co-conceived, directed and choreographed Tony Award winner Bill T. Jones.

“I’m a little embarrassed that i don’t know his music,” she wrote back, “I feel like everyone on the planet is a fan!”

That makes two of us.

What I do know about Fela Kuti:

1) an ex-roommate claimed that a Queen, the title Kuti gave to his back-up dancers/wives/lovers, tried to recruit her into the troupe.
2) Kuti was a Yoruba man
3) his music doesn’t move me to put him on my playlist for the revolution.

Now, as far as Jones is concerned, the show’s creator, I want him to choreograph the revolution. I have loved Jones’ work since I saw Still/Here, his meditative piece on the journeys of illness, on PBS several years ago, which partly stemmed from his living as a Black gay man who’s HIV+ but also having his life and business partner Arnie Zane, a white man, die from the illness. Not only did the dance stay in my mind, but the dancers’ bodies. Jones had people who weren’t professional dancers and/or they were of size as part of the on-stage troupe. This, either right around or before the days of Drag Kings, Sluts, and Goddesses, Big Moves, Fat Bottom Revue, and Brown Girl Burlesque and other dance and performance troupes started their work on normalizing bodies of size on the contemporary dance stage.

Beyond all this, and a dabbling knowledge of Yoruba religion and culture and African dance, I saw Fela!

Jones stages another beholding show with Fela. Instead of the Still/Here’s austere, contemplative beauty, this musical is riotous, saturated color and the disciplined spontaneity that’s both African dance and music and Jones’ signature. The stage is the entire theater, thoroughly muraled and with strung-up block-party lights. It’s a concert at Kuti’s famous Shrine made multimedia, and everyone in the theater seats was the concert-going audience. Kuti (Sahr Ngaujah), his band (Antibala), and his dancers, including the Queens, command the stage as only master performers, the politically charismatic, and those who party knowing that death comes to capture them can and do.

At this concert, Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti tells us how he became Fela Anikulapo Kuti, through the baptisms of seeing his home country of Nigeria ruined by corrupt presidents and their cronies and colonialism; traveling to Ghana, England, and the US and hearing James Brown (who visited Kuti at the Shrine), Frank Sinatra (Kuti got into an argument with him), and jazz; digging Black Power thinkers and writers; returning to Nigeria to harassment, jail, torture, arson, death (of his mom and, ultimately, his), and a failed presidential run; creating the genre-melding music of Afrobeat that radicalized Nigeria and quakes the world to this day.

I noticed a couple of odd things about this musical.

Ever present are the dancers/singers, who morph into townspeople, salsa dancers, and spirits. The troupe, both men and women—except for Sparlha Swa, who plays Sandra–have no individual singing roles. The men are mostly bare-chested, either jacket-covered or shirtless, a physical celebration of Black male pulchritude; even Ngaujah bares and covers his torso. The women wear the dappled, ringed make-up are dress in variation of one-legged unitards and short and/or tight skirts when they portray the Queens, in head wraps, tops, and tied-at-the-side African cloth are when they’re townspeople, or white, flowing, strapless dresses when they’re spirits.

Perhaps because of their physical and numerical presence–ten women are on stage; Kuti, at one point had 27 Queens, pared it down to 12 women who rotated out, and eventually divorced them all—I’m reminded that the women, either garbed as Queens or townswomen, are eroticized assistants, sauntering to Kuti to light his cigarettes/pot, offer a towel for his sweat, or take away an instrument once he’s done playing it. When the men perform the same duties, however, they walk with an efficient, asexual clip.

The character Kuti mentions his first wife, Remilekun (Remi) Taylor, and his three children in passing. The women who most influenced his political life and imagination—his mom Funmilayo, who was a socialist-nationalist and feminist activist, and Sandra (Smith) Isidore, a Black Panther Party member and a student of Black Power literature and thought—don’t counterweigh the representation of the Queens. And they have singing roles. Funmilayo (Abena Koomson)–though she dies in the second half—is presented throughout the musical as a specter with light rays beaming from her, though the actor herself is mostly backlit during most of the performance. Either that, or Kuti’s mom is a piece of the Shrine mural, in semi-profile and eyes cast away and semi-downward, to which Fela speaks. The only time the audience sees Fela’s mother face is when her son goes behind the veil between this life and the spirit world to have a heart-to-heart with her.

Jones and Co. don’t present Sandra as disembodied woman, just another sexualized one. Sandra is an in-the-flesh woman, but presented as a fist-in-the-air, head-wrap-to-there, elephant-pants-and-midriff-baring-top wearing sistah. According to one article, she introduced Kuti to pro-Black literature and thought as well as was his lover, muse, advocate, and soulmate. ; the musical gives the impression that Kuti picked up on these ideas during his travels in the US. Then he met Sandra, a(nother) hot, sexy (African) American woman for Kuti to take as a(nother) lover.

Okay, Jones and Co. offers these pause-inducing images of the women, which seem to follow the tradition of the women’s stories being subjugated or silenced in some heroic male narratives. Then, something stranger happens at the end of the play.

The ensemble is playing this rousing version of “Coffin Head of State.” (Okay, I did dance. A little bit.) Then, a slide appears on the wall saying that Fela died in 1997 and millions of people mourned his passing. Now, if I didn’t know better—after being told for about 2 hours how heroic and radical Kuti was—quite a few clichéd heroic endings would have come to mind: he died in a hail of martial bullets! He died in an arson-caused fire at his beloved commune! He died of fatal stab to the heart administered by a government-hired assassin!

The fact: Fela Kuti died from complications due to AIDS. The same year Jones made Still/Here for PBS.

This fact is mentioned briefly on the musical’s website and mentioned in articles I’ve read in preparing this review. But it’s not mentioned in the musical itself.

But can I fault this paltry treatment of Kuti’s sexual politics—his ideas and actions concerning women and HIV/AIDS–on Jones or with Kuti himself? In video clips of Kuti and the Queens shown at the show the women are silent. In an interview with a British reporter Kuti said this about his views on the role of women and the reasons for it (all quotes below from the Guardian):

In songs such as ‘Lady’ and ‘Mattress’ the impression he gave was that women were inferior. ‘I’m not saying that women should not be political leaders,’ he said. ‘Women can do what they want – but once she’s married in Africa she can’t do anything against her husband’s will. If a woman doesn’t like a man she should find another – that’s why polygamy is so fantastic… An African man should not do anything called housework or cooking…’ But, Fela, cooking can be fun, I persisted. ‘I can cook, I had to as a student in London. But if I have a party and do cooking, people call me a ‘Less Man’. I don’t see why I should go against the cultural values of my people.’

At the same time, some people view Kuti marrying the Queens—whom he referred to as “courageous” and “witches”–as a radical act:

…to mark the anniversary of the pillage of Kalakuta [in 1978], he married 27 of his dancers simultaneously. Fela claimed this was a traditional Yoruba ceremony, although some priests disputed this, pointing out that no bride prices were paid, and there is a suggestion that some sort of immigration scam was also involved. It was certainly a fabulous publicity stunt, although as DJ Rita Ray, who now runs a Fela-inspired club called Shrine in London, points out, ‘Dancers weren’t held in high esteem, so his argument was that he was making them respectable. He was wild, but very progressive.’

Kuti’s views on sex may warm some Western sex-positive advocates’ hearts:

‘Sex is one of the most important things in life, man. It’s Christianity and Islam that have made sex immoral. People should be proud to say, “I had a fantastic fuck last night.” When a minister in Britain has an affair he loses his job. If a minister in Africa fucks 400 women no one will even notice him, you know.’

However, later in the article, the reporter stated Kuti thought AIDS was “’a white man’s disease’”:

Fela’s last song had been called ‘C.S.A.S (Condom Scallywag and Scatter )’, which described the use of condoms as ‘un- African’. To the end, Fela refused to be tested to determine the cause of his weight loss and skin lesions. After much discussion among the family after his death, his brother, Dr Beko Ransome-Kuti, publicly disclosed the cause, paradoxically enabling, as one commentator put it, ‘Aids awareness in Nigeria to leave the dark ages’. In that sense, Fela’s death helped save a lot of lives, although it’s impossible to know how many women he himself put in mortal danger by his wilful denial of his disease. Stein [Kuti’s manager] says ‘one or two women in Fela’s entourage became ill, though I don’t know whether it had anything to do with Fela. All the rest are still going strong, as I understand it. They say it was Aids. I say that he died of one beating too many. He was a giant of a man, but a man nevertheless.

Is, therefore, Jones simply offering facts about the role of women and HIV/AIDS in Kuti’s life, even the silences, in a musical form? Did Jones and his collaborators not want to deal with that part of Kuti’s life because they wanted to avoid negating Kuti’s radical socio-governmental politics with his own admitted refusal to use condoms and dependence on traditional African healing arts to handle his infection–thus risking having Kuti become an embodiment of the stereotype of the Ignorant and (Sexually) Irresponsible African? Did Jones and Co. not want to make judgments about Kuti’s treatment of women because they didn’t want to come from a self-congratulatory Western lens, knowing we in the West have our own effed-up polar-opposite constructs of “women” as either virgins or whores? Did the creators not want to offer an examination about Kuti dealing with HIV/AIDS when the disease–and people who live with it–are still stigmatized, even in some US communities? Would it have been such a disruption if the dancers, especially the Queens, spoke in their own behalf, especially talking about the time when military officials burned down the Shrine and raped and tortured some of them? (When this horror happens in the musical, it’s silent. The dancers are in spotlight, and the descriptions are beamed on the wall directly across from the audience.) Is there a way to offer a critique about Kuti without diminishing his contributions?

I can appreciate Jones and his collaborators for bringing Kuti’s life to the stage. I love Jones’ staging and choreography, in that genius alchemy of precision and chaos only he is capable of. Simultaneously, Fela! shortchanges the man whom it celebrates by giving two very important aspects of his life–the women and living with and dying from HIV/AIDS–the short shrift, if not the silent treatment.

Another revolution, perhaps?

I would think, I wish I were dead.

I did not think of it as a suicidal thought.  My poet’s parsing mind read the first “I” and the second “I” as different “I’s.” The first “I” was the whole watching the self, while the second “I” – the one I wanted to kill – was the gay “I” nestled inside it.  It was less a suicidal impulse than a homicidal one – the infanticide of the gay self I had described in the poem.

My only consistent foray from my rooms was to the college chapel, where I prayed to gods I did not believe in for transformation.  No erotic desire I had ever felt exceeded my desire for conversion in those moments.  It is hard now to recall that young man at prayer.  To see him clearly is to feel the outlines of my present self grow fainter.

An older American student [also studying at Oxford at the time] tried to help.  Arad was struggling to come out himself, but seemed, I thought enviously, much more self-possessed.  He was the prodigy of his class – his intellectual feats, in medicine and philosophy, were reported in hushed and reverent tones.  Tall and angular, he accentuated his forbidding demeanor with a black coat that billowed out like the wings of a predatory bird.

Arad was kind to me. I never named my malady, but he knew its ways better than I.  I remember sitting in his rooms, listening to him describe the deadlines he had set for himself – to come out to his parents in three months, to go to a meeting of the college gay group in six months, to begin to date in a year. It was important, he said, to be a creature of will.  Unable to meet his eye, I looked over his shoulder at the wall behind him, which was tiled with diplomas and awards.  In the center were some framed black-and-white photographs he had taken.  One caught my eye – a statue of a kneeling angel weeping with her head buried in her arms.

It was a portrait of abject perfection, a portrait of him, and it terrified me.  I recognized the striving impulse in Arad as an attribute of my former self, and felt shame for having lost the discipline he possessed.  Yet I was also frightened by the harshness of that will.  I thanked him and left, never to return.  I could not help him, and I knew he could not help me. [...]

[After a year of disconnection] I surfaced back into my life.  I made decisions with percussive efficiency.  I chose the American passport over the Japanese one, the gay identity over the straight one, law school over English graduate school.  The last two choices were connected.  I decided on law school in part because I accepted my gay identity.  A gay poet is vulnerable in profession as well as person.  I refused that level of exposure.  Law school promised to arm me with a new language, a language I did not expect to be elegant or moving but that I expected to be more potent, more able to protect me. I have seen this bargain many times since – in myself and others – compensation for standing out along one dimension by assimilating among others. [...]

The month I was hired [to teach law at Yale], Arad killed himself.  It would wrong the grief of his intimates to make too much of my own feelings.  Yet I was shaken, especially when I read the eulogy his friends had written.  Rather than continuing the narrative of perfection they thought had contributed to his isolation, his friends sought to humanize him.  One detail was unforgettable – as a child at boarding school, Arad had been discovered in a broom closet with a bottle of bleach, trying to dye his skin white.  As I read that story, I thought of Arad’s absoluteness.  I thought of the alabaster angel in his photograph and knew, with some combination of guilt and relief, that I was imperfect and able to survive.

For even that far out of the closet, I was still making bargains.  While closeted, I micromanaged my gay identity, thinking about who knew and who did not, who should know and who should not.  When I came out, I exulted that I could stop thinking about my orientation.  That celebration proved premature.  It was impossible to come out and be done with it, as each new person erected a new closet around me.  More subtly, even individuals who knew I was gay imposed a fresh set of demands for straight conformity.

When I began teaching, a colleague took me aside.  “You’ll have a better chance at tenure,” he cautioned, “if you’re a homosexual professional than if you’re a professional homosexual.”  He meant I would fare better as a mainstream constitutional law professor who “happened to be gay” than as a gay professor who wrote on gay subjects.  Others in the vigorously progay environment in which I work echoed the sentiment in less elegant formulations.   Be gay, my world seemed to say.  Be openly gay, if you want.  But don’t flaunt.

For a short time, I acceded.  When I taught mainstream courses like constitutional law, I avoided gay examples. I wrote articles on nongay topics.  I didn’t bring the men I was dating to law school functions.  I chose my political battles carefully.

I soon grew tired of such performances.  What bothered me was not that I had to engage in “straight-acting” behavior, much of which felt natural to me.  What bothered me was the felt need to mute my passion for gay subjects, people, culture – as if this were the love of which I still had to be ashamed.  I knew I would be breaching some pact with myself if I stopped writing on gay issues out of a desire to conform. [...]

In the new generation, discrimination directs itself not against the entire group, but against the subset of the group that fails to assimilate to mainstream norms.  This new form of discrimination targets minority cultures rather than minority persons.  Outsiders are included, but only if we behave like insiders – that is, only if we cover. [...]

This covering demand is the civil rights issue of our time.  It hurts not only our most vulnerable citizens but our most valuable commitments.  For if we believe a commitment against racism is about equal respect for all races, we are not fulfilling that commitment if we protect only racial minorities who conform to historically white norms.  As the sociologist Milton Gordon identified decades ago, the demand for “Anglo-conformity” is white supremacy under a different guise.  Until outsider groups surmount such demands for assimilation, we will not have achieved full citizenship in America. [...]

When I lecture on covering, I often encounter what I think of as the “angry straight white man” reaction.  A member of the audience, almost invariably a white man, almost invariably angry, denies that covering is a civil rights issue.  Why shouldn’t racial minorities or women or gays have to cover? These groups should receive legal protection against discrimination for things they cannot help, like skin color or chromosomes or innate sexual drives.  But why should they receive protection for behaviors within their control – wearing cornrows, acting “feminine,” or flaunting their sexuality? After all, the questioner says, I have to cover all the time.  I have to mute my depression, or my obesity, or my alcoholism, or my schizophrenia, or my shyness, or my working-class background, or my nameless anomie.  I, too, am one of the mass of men leading a life of quiet desperation.  Why should classic civil rights groups have a right to self-expression I do not?  Why should my struggle for an authentic self matter less?

I surprise these individuals when I agree.  Contemporary civil rights has erred in focusing solely on traditional civil rights groups, such as racial minorities, women, gays, religious minorities, and people with disabilities.  This assumes those in the so-called mainstream – those straight white men – do not have covered selves.  They are understood only as impediments, as people who prevent others from expressing themselves, rather than as individuals who are themselves struggling for self-definition.  No wonder they often respond to civil rights advocates with such hostility.  They experience us as asking for an entitlement they themselves have been refused – an expression of their full humanity.

Civil rights must rise into a new, more inclusive register.  That ascent begins with the recognition that the mainstream is a myth. With respect to any particular identity, the word “mainstream” makes sense, as in the statement that straights are more mainstream than gays.  Used generically, however, the word lacks meaning.  Because human beings hold many identities, the mainstream is a shifting coalition, and none of us is entirely within it.  As queer theorists have recognized, it is not normal to be completely normal.  All of us struggle for self-expression; we all have covered selves.

For this reason, we should understand civil rights to be a sliver of a universal project of human flourishing.  Civil rights has always sought to protect the human flourishing of certain groups from being thwarted by the irrational beliefs of others.  Yet that aspiration is one we should hold for all humanity.

—Kenji Yoshino, Covering

What’s the bigger piece of sci-fi: that everybody on the planet can be knocked the you-know-what out at once, or that an imprecise recitation of Schroedinger’s Cat can work as a pick-up line?…

… No, really, let me know. If the latter is even close to plausible, I’ve still got the monologue on my DVR so I can transcribe it. Meantime, let’s see what the Table thought of “Scary Monsters and Super Creeps.”

SUPER CHO + JETT JACKSON TEAM-UP HOUR! Demetri is like Midas on this show. But it already looks like he’s starting to burn out, no?

Mahsino: Like I said in our first roundtable for this: Demetri’s back must be tired from all this show carrying he’s doing. Yeah Stan and Al are lightening the load, but still… I’m just hoping his “murder file” was just a cover up for witness protection and he’s in a short coma during April 29. Yeah, it would be really convenient, but I’ll take it.
Diana: I like the Demetri/Jett Jackson pairing much better than Demetri/Shakespeare. Mahsino, I’m with you. I’m hoping his lack of a flashforward and his murder can be explained by something else.
jen*: Great to see them together, and any pairing with Fiennes is gonna suck in comparison to one with Jett Jackson – from jump. I liked the ~Blue Hand~ exposition without our British buddy, but I’d love for Cho to get a revelation of his own – maybe some way to change his “destiny”?

Ok, so this week we confirmed that Charlie the Hobbit is 1) evil; 2) involved with Lloyd and a group responsible for the Blackout; 3) proficient in some bizarre hyper-nerd variant of game. What I’m wondering is, could he possibly be *the* Big Bad?
Mahsino: He can’t be the big bad, we’re not even midseason yet.
Diana: And he’s literally not that big. Is it just me, or did he look less like a hobbit when he was on Lost? His close haircut and lack of facial hair forced me to focus on his nose as I was watching. I digress.
jen*: Naw. He doesn’t have the fill-in-the-blanks to be the Big Bad. He just seems like he’s stuck on himself enough to not have been worried about the whole knocking people out for 137 seconds thing. He’s a worker bee.

The scene with Dylan on the bus was clunky (for example, how the hell would the bus driver know *that exact address?*) but the inclusion of the Mexican/”Cholo”/Chicano passenger was interesting. You don’t often see a character of that fashion portrayed as sympathetic – even if he did threaten the bus driver’s life.
Mahsino: Yeah, that could’ve gone horribly, horribly wrong. Instead it was just- not bad? The whole suspension of disbelief also hit me when he agree to stop off at the exact address, did the busdriver not have a radio to call dispatch to get CPS?
Diana: It was a bit unrealistic. I was mad at the bus driver for hounding Dylan about $1.55, so I didn’t mind when the passenger stared down the bus driver like he was crazy.
jen*: Riiiight. Drop him right *at* the house? Whatev. School-bus drivers don’t do that. And, it was nice to see that the passenger was friendly, but tres noticeable that it was supposed to be surprising. Brown people can actually be nice, y’all – surprise, surprise. But we always gotta keep that skreet edge. “I will put you down like a sick dog…” – Not the best threat I’ve heard, but still apparently effective. So, overall – this interaction didn’t totally suck, but, coulda used a lil less extremism.

I don’t exactly care for the Bedfords, but the scene in the living room was sublime in its’ awkwardness. And I was actually in Mark’s corner during his dismissal of Simon … but he lost me again in the kitchen argument. How’d you feel about it?
Mahsino: Every time Mark get’s mad at his wife’s flash forward, I half expect him to lift his leg up and pee on her to mark her as his territory. I get that he’s projecting his future failures onto her, but this is ridiculous. I feel like it’s never occurred to him that the reason she leaves him might not just be because he drinks again, but because he’s a sanctimonious asshat. Either way, I do find his leaps of logic to be either good writing/acting in regards to being believable in real arguments.
Diana: Frankly, I was glad to see his wife call him on his BS because he was being a class-a asshat. At the same time, I thought she gave up a little too quickly on working out their issues. But something about their characterization just doesn’t make you want to invest in them as a couple.
Arturo: They’re just unbelievable stiffs, both of them. That’s what happens when you stick melodramatic characters in what could/should be a sci-fi thriller.
jen*: Completely blah. I did feel like she gave up a little early, but then I figured – if he’s been this annoying *sober*, he must’ve been a real prick on the sauce. Somebody, somewhere made a mistake in making him the lead, because I spend each episode wishing HE was the one with no vision/murder in his future. These guys really do remind me of the Bennetrellis: stars by pure chance that I completely do not care about.

… And then there’s Janis. “Why am I crying?”, I thought, was a well-placed line for her situation. But it was nice to hear that Maya still cared, no?
Mahsino: I’m neutral on Janis. I put her in the same category as the nanny in that I don’t know what her purpose is or why I should care about her. And I don’t like Maya, I’d imaging that looking up a potential suitor on Mosaic would be as creepy as Google/Facebook stalking them. Not a good look. Either that, or it’s my general negative disposition of tv characters named Maya (mainly from that other show that shall not be named).
Diana: I was really relating to Janis. The fact that she almost lost her uterus and her confiding that she had never thought about having children until the flashforward and now faced with the prospect of losing her fertility made her character very realistic. I won’t lie, I was broke down.
jen*: I felt for Janis and her sitch, but I’m no fan of what they’re doing with her character. I loved her reason and common sense on the Nazi issue, and wish she could’ve had more power. I loved her no-quit attitude that led her to take down her attacker while she was bleeding out on the pavement. But discovering that her chances of pregnancy are now tenuous, at best, wasn’t as sympathetic for me and it should’ve been. Maybe cuz I thought her flashforward was kinda boring in the beginning. It’s like the rest of her personality getting fleshed out was superfluous exposition on the way for us to get to her Quest-For-The-Baby.
Mahsino: Thinking back, although her logic skills are pretty sound and she’s kinda badass, what grinds my gears is the fact that she managed to get an ultrasound at 10pm at a doctor’s office.

Open Mic!
Mahsino: Joseph Fiennes must really be in shape from all the running he does on this show.
Diana: I was mad that they dressed Dylan up as Flavor Flav for Halloween and then, when he went missing, his father told the security guard he was dressed like a pimp. WTF?
Arturo: That got my antenna twitching, too. My theory: Lloyd just went to some generic shop and got what was billed as a “Flava” outfit. Add to that some lack of cross-cultural awareness and there you go. At least Dylan wasn’t “acting the part.”
jen*: I also caught that pimp business. Not cool. But also, could someone please tell me about this kangaroo? If it got loose from the zoo during the chaos, wouldn’t there have been a few more wild animals that got out as well? Where are the lions and tigers and bears?
Diana: Ooh, Jen, that kangaroo thing is odd. This is the second time it’s hopped by for no apparent reason. On another note, I was also freaked out about all those bodies with blue hands.
Mahsino: Maybe since Mark seems to be the one who keeps seeing the kangaroo, it symbolizes his constant jumping to conclusions.

Character bios and images courtesy of Flash Forward Wiki and ABC

From the age of twelve to the age of seventeen, Davina Wan was in a gang. Excuse My Gangsta Ways reflects on a life in which a young girl could attend 35 funerals before the age of eighteen.

Directed and produced by Corinne Manabat, Gangsta Ways shares the powerful story of Davina Wan, a former gang member who charted a different course for her life after losing one of her closest friends. The description is here:

For most of us, wedding cakes and caps and gowns mark our life’s milestones. For D. Wan, it is switchblades and dog tags. Excuse My Gangsta Ways, a documentary by Corinne E. Manabat, explores the life of Wan, a Chinese American from New York’s Lower East Side, and her transition from a life of gang violence to a “normal” life. Visually poetic and uncompromising in its portrayal of gang culture, Excuse My Gangsta Ways uses interviews with Wan and her family to reach beyond stereotypes of urban gang members and America’s “model minority.” We will take a look at the person she was and the person she has become, where fate and inspiration endure.

When I saw the short film at this year’s DC APA Film Festival, I was blown away at the level of honesty and pain captured in a scant fifteen minutes.

Wan’s grandmother and godfather both share tales of Wan’s rebellion, beginning after her parent’s separation when she was young. Keenly describing the painful home situation she grew up in, it almost makes sense why she abandoned her former life and fell into an all-girl gang. However, through it all, she still dreamed of a different type of future. When one of her best friends dies, the tightly knit gang unraveled and Wan found herself wanting out. The film also explores her life now, and discusses the cost and result of that journey.

Manabat, in an interview about the film, talks about the ways in which Wan’s story challenged the predominant (and often stereotypical) narrative about the lives of Asian American women:

In the Q & A session after the film, Manabat mentioned that while her film was geared toward an Asian American/Urban audience in mind, the film was really for everyone – that the theme of transformation was most prominent. I agree – though gang life is a far cry from the relatively safe and stable world I grew up in, I felt myself relating to Wan’s tale of being lost and adrift in a hostile world. This articulation of the inner lives of young girls is rare, but explains why some of us flee from our homes early, often into the arms of older men, trying to “raise ourselves the best way [we] knew how” as Davina’s godfather put it.

Both Wan and Manabat do community outreach, and workshops targeted around the film – through their work, they are hoping to reach some of the other lost girls in the world, and show them there is a way for them to find something like home.

Excuse My Gangsta Ways [Third World Newsreel]
Official Site [DC APA Film Festival 2009]
My Space Page [Excuse My Gangsta Ways]
Next Screening [San Diego Asian Film Festival]

Latoya’s Note - Interestingly, the comments for this post were almost non-existent for a day or so after I posted it…until someone said they felt as though all this was fake.  The reasoning?  Asian American women don’t do things like join gangs.  I thought it was kind of amazing, that even though I made a point to post Manabat’s discussion of how Wan’s story flies in the face of existing stereotypes, someone would still choose that pre-existing image over one woman’s lived experience.  However, after that comment was made, others chimed in pointing out that obviously, people find themselves in all kinds of situations. – LDP

by Latoya Peterson, originally published at Jezebel

Latoya’s Note: This one is off-topic. We do racial analysis here, but sometimes it spins off into other conversations about concepts that influence racial inequality. Capitalism is one of them, and something we have not discussed at length here. I originally published this on Jezebel, but I am curious to see the reactions from this audience. – LDP

“We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,” says Brian Griffiths, Goldman Sachs International Economic Adviser. But when does the inequality end? Noreena Hertz, rogue economist and capitalist reformer, says now.

To my amusement, the Fast Company profile must have originally been named “Cassandra’s Revenge” judging from the URL. In the heavily gendered article (Hertz is described as “seduc[ing] Bono;” being “teacup-size”; having a “waifish figure” and is spotted with “pink fishnets” and a “hot pink blackberry”) Danielle Sacks describes exactly why Hertz is causing an international sensation:

Few academics have leaped from the critical fringes to the role of prophet as adroitly as Hertz. Wielding her contrarian message — that markets need to serve the interests of people as much as they serve companies or shareholders — Hertz has been campaigning for the past decade against the mantras of mainstream economists, urging a more ethical form of capitalism. But her message isn’t some yoga-infused spiritual quest. As she explained in her 2001 European best seller, The Silent Takeover, it is about the unsustainability — environmentally, socially, and economically — of laissez-faire capitalism and the idea that markets are stable. If the surge of corporate power was going to leave governments relatively impotent, Hertz argued, then those corporations themselves needed to fill the void. “She moved the conversation from what corporations can do to be socially responsible to a much more profound examination of the boundaries of corporate behavior and public behavior and where they have failed,” says Debora Spar, who was a dean at Harvard Business School for nearly two decades and is now president of Barnard. “She’s much more radical.”

Hertz — part activist, part detective — argues that both economics and business need to be put back into the human social context. “Over the past 30 years, economics became a narrow field completely out of touch with reality,” says Hertz, 41, who sees the discipline as a jigsaw puzzle. “I don’t believe you can reduce the world to a mathematical formula. I start with the world, assume it’s complicated, and ask where can I get help from a whole range of disciplines.” Drawing on subjects as diverse as anthropology, physics, geopolitics, and neurology, Hertz’s economic vision is at once eclectic and holistic, which may explain her apparent ability to foresee dangers and opportunities others do not. It is also relentlessly pointed, serving an explicit agenda — making corporations realize that they can no longer operate in their Adam Smith — designed bubble. “I really believe in a globalist agenda, but globalization isn’t just allowing companies to trade freely all over the world. It’s about what types of rights and responsibilities come with that,” Hertz says. With inequality surging, resources diminishing rapidly, and the earth’s very future in question, capitalism-at-all-costs is no longer an option, she insists: “I have problems with this very extreme form of capitalism where the pendulum has swung so far in one direction, where the focus is completely on the short term, and no one is thinking about the consequences.”

Can I get a hell yeah?

Hertz has since devoted her career to debunking economic myths. After a year, she quit her World Bank job and spent another four years in Russia while getting her PhD in economics and business at Cambridge. Hertz published a book indicting the World Bank and the IMF for imposing American-style capitalism on Russia without contemplating the social cost. “It was never about being anti-capitalist,” she says. “I realized that how an economy functions is not just about a market anonymously distributing things but also the way people relate to each other, their beliefs, the way power is distributed. All of that was being ignored.” She points out that life expectancy in Russia has fallen by 15 years since the early ’90s. Says punk fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, a fan of Hertz’s work: “Noreena looks at economics from the other side. From the people it suppresses. This is what punk is all about.”

The punk economist spent years honing her ideas, railing against “Gucci Capitalism” since the 1990s. The premise of her work is simple: our systems are broken, and social equality will pay a major role in forming this new economy.

Hertz says that even though many necessary shifts — like caps on banker pay — haven’t happened yet, there are already indications that challenges to laissez-faire capitalism are taking shape. Anglo-American market dominance, she says, will be contested by emerging economies like those of Brazil, China, and India, whose votes are likely to be given greater weight by the World Bank and the IMF. At the same time, some countries are starting to question the notion that mere GDP defines success. France, based on recommendations from Nobel Prize economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, recently announced it would de-emphasize GDP in favor of other factors such as quality of life and the environment. (Hertz points out that a country’s “health” most often correlates with its levels of inequality, now at an all-time high in the United States.) To shake up the old boys’ networks, countries such as Norway and Spain have passed legislation that will require company boards to have 40% women. Hertz, too, is helping to drive these developments: She’s working with banks like ING to unite investors, environmental NGOs, and other groups in a dialogue about the thorniest global problems.

As Hertz points out repeatedly over the course of the piece, Smith style “consumption above all else; the market will fend for itself” philosophies are laughably out of date. Interestingly, Adam Smith is always the fall guy for consumption based capitalism, but that wasn’t his original intent. As Muhammad Yunus writes in World Policy Journal:

The need for reviewing the basic structure of capitalism has seemed appropriate on many occasions, but never so clearly as it is today. Indeed, in light of the current global economic crisis, there is strong support for a major overhaul of the system. In my view, one major change in the theoretical framework of capitalism is necessary-a change that will allow individuals to express themselves in multi-dimensional ways and address the problems left unsolved or even intensified by the existing conceptual framework. And although my proposal may be viewed as a significant change in the structure of capitalism, it is actually very consistent with what Adam Smith elaborated so brilliantly in his Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759. [...]

Even if we can overcome the immediate crises we face, we will still be left with fundamental questions about the effectiveness of capitalism in tackling such unresolved problems as persistent poverty, lack of access to health care and education, and epidemic diseases. In my view, the theoretical framework of capitalism that is widely accepted today is a half-built structure-one that prevents Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” from operating as he believed it should, transforming the pursuit of individual gain into general social benefit through the workings of the marketplace.

In a sense, we have chosen to disregard half of Smith’s message. His landmark book, The Wealth of Nations, has drawn all the attention, while his equally important Theory of Moral Sentiments has been largely ignored. The present theory of capitalism holds that the marketplace is uniquely for those who are interested in profit only. This interpretation treats people as one-dimensional beings; but people are multi-dimensional, as Adam Smith saw so clearly two and a half centuries back. While we have a selfish dimension, we also have a selfless dimension.
The prevailing theory of capitalism, and the marketplace that has grown up around the theory, makes no room for the selfless dimension of people. If the altruistic motivation that exists in people could be brought into the business world, there would be few problems we could not solve.

Yunus then maps out everything that is wrong with the current system:

The financial system has broken down because of a fundamental distortion of its basic purpose.

Credit markets were originally created to serve human needs-to provide business people with capital to start or expand companies. In return for these services, bankers and other lenders earned a reasonable profit. Everyone benefited. In recent years, however, the credit markets have been distorted by a relative handful of individuals and companies with a different goal in mind- to earn unrealistically high rates of return through clever feats of financial engineering. They repackaged mortgages and other loans into sophisticated instruments whose risk levels and other characteristics were hidden or disguised. Then they sold and resold these instruments, earning a slice of profit on every transaction. All the while, investors eagerly bid up the prices, scrambling for unsustainable growth and gambling that the underlying weakness of the system would never come to light.

Let’s be clear here. What we are currently practicing isn’t capitalism. It’s a perversion of the original system, designed within a rigged system, set to benefit a few. And innovators like Yunus and Hertz are primed to lead us into a brave new market – or they would, if we were willing to listen.

(Image Credit: Josh van Gelder for Fast Company)

Goldman Sachs’s Griffiths Says Inequality Helps All [Bloomberg News]
How an Economist’s Cry for Ethical Capitalism was Heard [Fast Company]
Economic Security for a World in Crisis (PDF) [World Policy Journal]

Aoki, by Ben Wang and Mike Cheng, is a new feature documentary chronicling the life of the late Richard Aoki, a third generation Japanese American who became one of the founding members of the Black Panther Party in 1966. Here’s the film’s official description:

Aoki is a documentary film chronicling the life of Richard Aoki (1938-2009), a third-generation Japanese American who became one of the founding members of the Black Panther Party. Filmed over the last five years of Richard’s life, this documentary features extensive footage with Richard and exclusive interviews with his comrades, friends, and former students. Viewers will learn about Richard’s childhood in a WWII Japanese American concentration camp, growing up in West Oakland, and serving eight years in the U.S. military. The film explores previously unknown facts about the formation of the Black Panther Party such as how Richard became intimately involved in its founding and contributed the first two firearms to the Party. Aoki highlights how Richard’s leadership also made a significant impact on individuals and groups in the contemporary Asian American Movement. Richard’s contributions to the groundbreaking organization Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA) and its involvement in the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) student strike led to the formation of ethnic studies at U.C. Berkeley. Above all else, Aoki is a film that demonstrates the incredible dedication to justice that one man’s life has had and how the lessons of solidarity, commitment, and discipline can carry on from one generation to the next.

View the trailer here. It looks like a really interesting portrait of a fascinating figure. The film makes its world premiere at a special screening next week, Thursday, November 12 at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland.

The details:

Documentary AOKI, on the life of Richard Aoki, premiering November 12th in Oakland, CA

What: Film premiere of the documentary film AOKI. This is the first documentary on the life of Richard Aoki, founding member and one of the only Asian Americans to join the Black Panther Party. A 30-minute Q&A panel with the filmmakers will follow the film.

When: Thursday November 12, 2009 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm

Where: Grand Lake Theater, 3200 Grand Ave., Oakland, CA

Online pre-sale tickets can be purchased for $8.50 (general admission)
or $7 (students) at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/87178. A
small service fee will be added by Brown Paper Tickets.

Tickets can also be purchased the night of the premiere at the Grand
Lake Theater’s box office for $10 (general admission) or $9 (students).

Purchase your tickets here. To learn more about the documentary, visit the Aoki website here. And for more information about next week’s premiere, which includes a screening and Q&A with the filmmakers, go to the Facebook event page here.

Dear Old Morehouse,

I’ve been trying to avoid writing this for some time now. As an alumnus of the institution, it’s hard for me to see you in such condition. Many of my fellow alumni complained of your disrepair and your besmirched image when they heard about students being beaten for their sexuality, shooters graduating, and cross-dressing, but I have bigger concerns. While all these things mattered to me, they did not disturb me because of what was being done to the image of our institution; they disturbed me because they demonstrated that Dear Old Morehouse was terribly unequipped to deal with the realities and lives that Black men in America live now. In fact, it is the Old Morehouse that is more dangerous to me than any student with a gun, sagged pants, or high heels would ever be. Let me explain.

When I visited Morehouse for the first time, it was about 1994, I remember seeing hanging banners and brochures that talked about the development of leaders, community servants, and caring connected brothers. The culmination of these developments was to be the Morehouse Man. I remember reading about the crown that Morehouse held up for its students so that one day they too would embody the Morehouse Mystique. I was sold. I was ready to be in that number. I was ready to be at the only institution of higher education dedicated fully to the education of men of African descent in the United States. But like most things, I soon found out all that glittered was not gold.

When I arrived, I remember hearing brothers commonly refer to the Morehouse Mistake, not Mystique. I remember seeing Samuel L. Jackson toted out as a shining alumnus, only to learn he was actually kicked out while he was there. I was there when I realized Morehouse students had no trouble admitting rape happened, but sadly refused to admit that Morehouse students could or would rape their Spelman sisters. I know, now I’m airing dirty laundry, in your eyes, but hear me out. Morehouse, if you are committed to Black men, then you’ve got to do better. You, no WE, have got to work to make better men for the 21^st century, not the 20^th. It often feels like each time I hear about your “new moves” and “plans” you’re becoming more committed to making a middle class Black man who would exist in the 1950s or 60s, not in 2009. From clothing to interviews, Dear Old Morehouse, there is much more happening with and to Black men than you’re equipped to handle.

See, in the past, Morehouse was about accepting and graduating the “cream of the crop” amongst the Black bourgeoisie and claiming the production of the Black intelligentsia. We all know, at least at the House, that Martin Luther King, Jr. — our most well known alumnus– came from a relatively well-to-do background and he wasn’t the most stunning student. But it would be on the red clay hills of Georgia that he got a deeper social, spiritual, and political education which would lead him to change the world. It is that image that you fed us and feed young brothers who come to the gates these days. You celebrate your role as one of the top feeders to graduate schools and Fortune 500 companies among institutions of higher education.  You highlight that our alumni are Rhodes Scholars, former surgeon generals and are changing the world around the globe, as many institutions do. The problem is, those men are the ones who made it, and it is likely that they still would have made it without Morehouse. Sometimes I think you point to exceptional success from the past in an effort to keep people from noticing what you are doing wrong or simply not doing it the present. So many who come to our campus, who desire to be better men, are not given what they need because you are asking them to trade themselves for your idea of success. Dear Old Morehouse, success does not look, sound, or feel the same for all.

I almost feel like you’re in denial; we can’t keep living a lie. I’ve got to tell you five things that you seem to deny too often. First, Affirmative Action did change you and who attended you. Affirmative Action allowed a number of the brothers who would have attended HBCUs in the past to attend traditional Ivys. We have to recognize that we don’t have the economic resources to compete with the Harvards, Yales or even smaller liberal arts schools. Many brothers get drawn to these schools because they have a financial safety net and set of offerings that make it difficult for them to sign on Morehouse’s dotted line. Second, the day of male breadwinner and unquestioned male leadership is done. While the sisters at Spelman were over there involved in the freedom struggle with us, they were also noticing we were often working on “liberation for half a race.” While we spend copious amounts of time sitting in orientations and Crown Forums that convince us that we’ve “made it” because so many brothers didn’t, we’re falsely inflating ourselves and using these bloated egos to plot the path towards a wayward progress. Third, style is one of hallmarks of Blackness. Spending time trying to reduce and refashion style is like harnessing youth, a noble thought but likely to leave you more embarrassed than successful. Hip-Hop culture is here to stay and reflects a lot of what we face as a people and what many in our community aspire to emulate. Hip-Hop culture is art and yes, art and life do imitate one another. Hip-Hop is, was, and shall be anti-establishment; the more you regulate it, the more it will battle you. Fourth, gay men are Morehouse Men and they should no longer be silent and covering. For too long, Morehouse treated gay and queer brothers like the Loch Ness monster, often talked about but never fully confirmed. News flash: being non-heterosexual is neither a psychological nor a social deviance. It’s reality! Fifth, Black boys are in crisis and you have to adapt to this crisis as well. With 50% of Black boys who begin high school in the inner-city not graduating with their classmates on time, you must realize your pool of applicants and admits is going to look different. These brothers mostly come with 4.0 potential, not 4.0 GPA’s. The question becomes, what can we do to move potential to reality?! What are the supports we’re putting in place for the brothers who beat the odds and make it to the House? I am honestly not sure if you are ignorant or simply ignoring, but either way, we’ve got to do better. I seriously think that if you start to deal with these five facts, you can move from being Dear Old Morehouse to a Dear New Morehouse.

Oh I can hear you now, “Brother, we are getting ‘new’!” Unfortunately your “new” is old. With each passing year, I swear you move a step backwards towards your former self… or at least an image that you believed yourself to be. From interviews to dress codes, you’re trying to create a brand of respectable middle class black males that went out with the last sputters of the Civil Rights Movement. Yes, alumni get excited when they hear, “we will no longer tolerate…” because we all have a narrative about how Morehouse was and how it has changed. Don’t be surprised if people co-sign on your reversal of the clock without seeing the bigger picture. They’ll support more assemblies, more Crown Forums, more rules, less braids, less sagging, less gays… oops, just kidding on the last one. I know that subject is touchy in our community. Have you forgotten, it was not what was outside that made the Morehouse Man it was what was inside? The most valuable lessons are those learned collectively through struggle, failure and success.  Not from imposition, dress codes, or dress policies. College is one of the few times that Black men may be able to explore fuller and truer selves and your hallowed halls are the ideal place to do so. Instead, you threaten to lock down and narrow those very halls. I want to hear that you’re developing new models of manhood, ones that are not patriarchal, ones that deal with the needs of Black men and boys who need healing, ones that let boys become the Men of their choosing and of their community’s wanting. Few of the rules that you are implementing are creating a healthier pathway for Black men, they’re simply polishing the same “broken” brothas and yet you wonder why it is not working.

Quite regularly now, I receive emails asking “What is Morehouse doing?” Some come in agreement, some come in disagreement, but the ones I value most are the those that come from a place of love for the development of all Black men. The individual policies that you have drawn up are just echoes of the world that Black males now create and inhabit. If Dear Old Morehouse is truly interested in living up to its missions and declarations, the ones that got me to attend, the ones that got me to link up and sing, the ones that got me to love my institution enough to critique its actions, then we’ve got to begin from a point of understanding and expansion, not from a point of rigidity and constriction. Unless we acknowledge that Dear Old Morehouse must become Dear New Morehouse to serve the whole of our community, we’ll be doing this sad dance every 8 months. I look forward to your response and hope WE can grow to meet that crown of which Howard Thurman so eloquently made us aware.

In humility and community,

Dr. R. L’Heureux Lewis

Ndugu Dumi Eyi di yiye

Class of 2000

(Image via  nyleharris flckr stream)

Wesley Du, creator of the film I wrote about here, has agreed to host to the film on YouTube so that everyone can have a chance to see it. (Thanks Wes!)

Here is the film, parts one and two.

As you formulate your responses, I’d like you to keep a couple things in mind:

1. How much does your race influence how you perceive this film?

2. How does this film factor into the conversations we attempt to have about the Things We Do To Each Other? As in, discussions of interracial tension that occurs between nonwhite groups?

ETA: This movie is going to dredge up some complicated feelings. It is ok to voice these, just like it is ok to be unsure how to feel. But what I am looking for in responses is engagement with the material – why do you feel the way you do? I already received a comment that is a disappointment (that will not be approved), so I want to make this clear – you can feel however you want about this film. However, I want people to articulate why they feel that way(if you are unsure, articulate that too) and what feelings this film brought to the surface. – LDP

I was going to begin this post be talking about Mohandas Gandhi. I was going to chastise Bernice King, daughter of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and new leader of the civil rights organization Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), for her hateful pronouncement, recounted in The Guardian: “I know down in my sanctified soul that [MLK] did not take a bullet for samesex unions.”

I was going to point out that Gandhi, who is said to have inspired MLK, did not take a bullet for black Americans. His cause was the oppressed people of India. But the universal truth of his message–resistance to tyranny, nonviolence and the fundamental equality of all people–was as applicable on the North American continent as the Asian one. Bernice King’s father realized that. How small and hateful and contrary to the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi it would have been if, during the height of the U.S. Civil Rights movement, a surviving family member had proclaimed that “down in their souls” they were certain that Gandhi didn’t take a bullet for Negroes to ride on the front of the bus.

To my surprise, while doing a little research on the martyr known as “The Great One,” I discovered that, though time has cemented Gandhi in the public consciousness as a loving but determined champion for world equality. He may well not have supported civil rights for all marginalized people.

From Wikipedia:

Some of Gandhi’s early South African articles are controversial. On 7 March 1908, Gandhi wrote in the Indian Opinion of his time in a South African prison: “Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilized – the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals.”[14] Writing on the subject of immigration in 1903, Gandhi commented: “We believe as much in the purity of race as we think they do… We believe also that the white race in South Africa should be the predominating race.”[15] During his time in South Africa, Gandhi protested repeatedly about the social classification of blacks with Indians, who he described as “undoubtedly infinitely superior to the Kaffirs”.[16] It is worth noting that during Gandhi’s time, the term Kaffir had a different connotation than its present-day usage. Remarks such as these have led some to accuse Gandhi of racism.[17]

and…

In 1906, after the British introduced a new poll-tax, Zulus in South Africa killed two British officers. In response, the British declared a war against the Zulus. Gandhi actively encouraged the British to recruit Indians. He argued that Indians should support the war efforts in order to legitimize their claims to full citizenship. The British, however, refused to commission Indians as army officers. Nonetheless, they accepted Gandhi’s offer to let a detachment of Indians volunteer as a stretcher bearer corps to treat wounded British soldiers. This corps was commanded by Gandhi. On 21 July 1906, Gandhi wrote in Indian Opinion: “The corps had been formed at the instance of the Natal Government by way of experiment, in connection with the operations against the Natives consists of twenty three Indians”.[22] Gandhi urged the Indian population in South Africa to join the war through his columns in Indian Opinion: “If the Government only realized what reserve force is being wasted, they would make use of it and give Indians the opportunity of a thorough training for actual warfare.”[23] In Gandhi’s opinion, the Draft Ordinance of 1906 brought the status of Indians below the level of Natives. He therefore urged Indians to resist the Ordinance along the lines of satyagraha by taking the example of “Kaffirs“. In his words, “Even the half-castes and kaffirs, who are less advanced than we, have resisted the government. The pass law applies to them as well, but they do not take out passes.”[24]

I was wrong about Gandhi having a message of world equality. At least early in his life he believed that some people are more equal than others.

What is it about us that makes us fight for our own freedom and equality, but sit comfortably with the bondage and oppression of others? Even the man heralded as one of the world’s greatest civil rights leaders believed “all men are created equal”…but for those over there.

My discovery convinced me of two things:

The greatest battle for marginalized peoples may not be the biases of the majority culture, but the way those biases are embraced by minority cultures. How much stronger would all of the equality movements be if we were working together to cement the idea that EVERYONE, regardless of gender, race, sexuality, ability, etc., deserved basic human rights and respect? Instead, we learn to hate ourselves, while fighting to demonstrate our superiority over other marginalized people. We fight each other over scraps. We fail to leverage our own dehumanization as a tool to empathize with the dehumanization of others. Instead, we seek to demonstrate, as Gandhi once advocated in South Africa, “See, majority, we’re just like you. The pair of us are equally better than those people.” I deserve rights; they do not.

The fight for equality and human rights might well be over if marginalized people worked together. But we do not.

I think, this is also true: it does not matter what Gandhi thought of black people or what Martin Luther King thought of gay people. For all the deification, they are both just men, fallible men–men of a different time and place (Mohandas Gandhi was born in the 19th century, for goodness sake.), men who were just as influenced by the biases of their day as any of us are, men like those who wrote “all men are created equal” and yet owned men, women and children as property. Do we even know whether MLK would have approved of a woman (his daughter or no) as head of the SCLC? His views and treatment of women were not exactly enlightened. That Gandhi did not believe in the inherent equality of all brown people; that King may not have approved of gay marriage–I couldn’t care less.

TODAY matters. It matters that we come to understand that “divided we fall” in the battle for human rights. It matters that we learn that if you are not about justice for all, you are not about justice and that a civil rights organization that does not advocate for across the board human rights is not a civil rights organization. (This goes as much for homophobic black civil rights groups as it does for gay rights groups that marginalize people of color and transgender people.) And that a civil rights leader who takes time out from advocating for equality to call out who, in fact, should not be equal, is not much of a leader at all–pedigree be damned.

Colourface fatigue, I haz it.  Who here is tired of reading about blackface? Because I sure am tired of writing about it. And at this point I don’t know what more there is to say.

Well, come to think of it, there was never much to say in the first place.  Because here we tend to deal more in the subtle nuances of racism; when something is as out and out wrong as painting yourself black for a lark, you don’t need us to deconstruct it for you.

But I ask this: why is a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader who colourfaced it up as Lil Wayne for Halloween causing so much of a ruckus? It might just be because I live in Texas, but all day Monday I heard reports about white cheerleader Whitney Isleib and her poor choice of costume.  The team even received a request from a Texas media outlet for an interview.

News, by definition is (among other things): a person, thing, or event considered as a choice subject for journalistic treatment; newsworthy material. This is pretty elementary: there has to be something spectacular about your behaviour for it to make headlines.  Simply behaving badly or cluelessly – which Isleib most certainly was – is not enough to get you in the news.  You have to behave badly in some kind of unusual way.

But colourface is not unusual. It is reprehensible and grotesque, but it’s not unusual. Who here was out and about on Halloween, and saw some colourface? *raises hand*

So. Why the attention for Isleib’s dressup? Yes, Isleib is sort of a public figure. But that’s just it: she’s only sort of a public figure. I can’t imagine her getting this much attention for anything else.  Isleib’s situation is markedly different from biracial colourface on ANTM, Vogue painting white supermodel Lara Stone black, and Harry Connick Jr putting his foot down at Australian blackface.  These are all examples of public performances of blackface.  Isleib on the other hand was at a private party. Why is this news? Why is it even local Texas news?

A minute ago, I said that in order to get on the news, you have to behave badly in some kind of unusual way.  I should correct that: you have to behave badly in some kind of way that is perceived to be unusual.  Or further, you have to behave badly in some kind of way that we like to perceive as unusual – regardless of the truth.

Partly Isleib is news because it’s an amusing “quirky” newspiece.  Uh oh! Another example of Facebook Fail! And partly Isleib is news because there are still some lucky souls who think that blackface is unusual – clearly they haven’t been following the colourface epidemic.

But I do think that there is something deeper here than just a slow news day.  What do we get out of perceiving Isleib’s blackface to be newsworthy or shocking?  What cultural function does shock fulfill?

Consider this: violence against women is incredibly common, yet when a serial killer kills multiple women, media outlets go to town.  Cases get blown up, and the 24-hour news cycle analyses every grisly detail of an individual case – instead of turning an eye to the broader culture that engenders such violence. And people react with shock and horror – How could this happen here? Can you believe this? – to something that happens every single day, something that is terrifyingly ordinary.  Definitely we should report terrible murders.  But acting shocked about them is an inappropriate response when violence is such a way of life for us.  There is something very hypocritical about shock.

As a culture, we go out of our way to express shocked disapproval, when we want to demonstrate distance between ourselves and some extreme act of hatred.  It’s a smokescreen that masks the hatred we carry out everyday.

As a culture, we pay attention to the most heinous – or most clueless – examples of patriarchy and racism in order to ignore the daily insidiousness of oppression and suffering.

We pay attention to Isleib’s stupidly ordinary costume because it allows us to pretend that blackface and all its disturbing connotations are out of the ordinary.  But they’re not.  While publicly we feign surprise, on anonymous internet message boards people are talking about how awesome Isleib’s costume is.

So again. I’m not saying that what Isleib did is no big deal.  It’s just that I hate that it’s news.

–
Incidentally since the writing of this article, some of the news pieces I was looking at of Isleib have disappeared. If you enter “dallas cowboys cheerleader blackface” into Google News, the service tells you that there are 14 related articles. But when you click “More”, there are only 3. Damage control?

Addicted to Race is our weekly talk show podcast about all things race. Here’s a rundown of what you’ll find in this episode:

Since the implementation of affirmative action in the college admissions process, opponents of the policy have alleged that the changes reduce the chances of White and Asian high school students applying to elite colleges. Is that really true? Tyra Banks often tackles race on her talk show, so why did she get race oh-so-wrong in last week’s episode of America’s Next Top Model, in which contestants wore colorface to mimic different ethnic mixtures? Fat black women are often the butt of the joke in low-brow comedy films. But when a smart comedy like “Parks & Recreation” dabbles in it, what does that say about our biases against race and size? Newsweek writer Allison Samuels sparked furor around the ‘Net recently with an article taking Angelina Jolie to task for her daughter Zahara’s allegedly uncared for tresses. Does Samuels ultimately uphold Eurocentric beauty standards? Carmen Van Kerckhove and Tami Winfrey Harris discuss.

Addicted to Race is broadcast live every Sunday afternoon at 12 pm Eastern. You can listen live on our BlogTalkRadio page and call in by dialing 347-996-3958.

Right-click here to download an MP3 of Addicted to Race Episode 124
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The Colbert Report is pretty hit and miss.  But most of the time I enjoy it.  Potentially that’s because Stephen Colbert’s satire is so impenetrable that I have little idea as to what his real politics are…which means I can just project my own politics onto him.  Jon Stewart on the other hand is less of a blank space. We get a much clearer sense of what he truly believes, making it (well, at least to this grump) easier to dislike him.

When Cornel West guested on the Colbert Report last week, my sleuthing skills went on overdrive.  What does Colbert really think of West? Does he agree with West, or does he think West’s a joke?

Is Colbert mocking West’s manner of speaking, or borrowing it? When Colbert references Jim Morrison, is he poking fun at West’s knowledge base, or is he merely “tangoing”? When West makes a great counterargument to the logic of Post Racialism, Colbert responds by saying “I feel like a muppet.” Does that undermine West – and is that Colbert’s intention?

I have to say that no matter what Colbert is doing, I really love this interview. I couldn’t stop smiling through it – not only because Cornel West’s enthusiasm and exuberance is infectious, but also because I don’t think I have ever seen someone steamroll Colbert so effectively. And I love that it was an anti-racist black man – expounding such truthiness! – that managed the Colbert takedown.

It can be very difficult for women and people of colour to wrest control of a conversation in a white mainstream space, especially when that conversation veers into hateful territory. Feeling voiceless or ignored in a white or male conversational space seems like almost a weekly happening for me. Watching this video, I felt like West was striking one for any POC (or WOC) who’s ever felt silenced by the cacophony of racism around them.

Interestingly a Colbert fan site reports that Colbert appears to genuinely like West, stating that this is what Colbert did after taping the interview:

In person I got the impression that Colbert actually really liked Cornel West. After the interview Stephen immediately walked around the desk and gave him a hug. Then West smiled and waved at the audience and we gave him a standing ovation.

So what do you think? Is Colbert an ally or is he just using West to make white folks laugh?

In a post called “Penny-Pinching Jews and South Carolina Republicans,” Jeff Goldberg points to an editorial by two South Carolina Republicans defending Sen. Jim DeMint’s opposition to opening the federal spigot for his state.

Recently your newspaper published a letter from state Rep. Bakari Sellers attacking U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint and his opposition to congressional earmarks.

There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves. By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies and trying to preserve our country’s wealth and our economy’s viability to give all an opportunity to succeed.

To which one of Goldberg’s readers responded:

Perhaps I’m seeing something that isn’t there, but I inferred from the title of this post a suggestion of anti-Semitic bigotry on the part of the two county Republican chairmen.

First, I think there is a difference between stereotypes to be disparaged and stereotypes to be emulated. The chairmen were guilty of the latter. Second, I’ve lived 2/3 of my life in the South/Southwest and the rest in the Northeast. I’ve the noticed that the attitudes about Jews in either place to be remarkably different. In New York, a Jew is some jerk who is dating his sister or a weirdly dressed guy who’s probably hoarding diamonds. In the S/SW and probably in most of the Midwest, a Jew is David or Solomon or Daniel or Jesus or James or Paul.

Ah, yes! Those good stereotypes that we should emulate! They’re always tossed into the bin of “bad” and “racist,” which just isn’t right. Unlike “bad stereotypes,” the good ones are dehumanizing and condescending, but in a well-intentioned sort of way!

The stereotype of the money-hungry Jew has had a pretty good run (Shakespeare!), as stereotypes tend to, what with their being logical fallacies that can’t be disproven. This one really picked up traction in the olden days, back when Europe’s Christians believed that money-lending was a sin. Europe’s Jews were relegated to the bottom of the social ladder because they didn’t believe in salvation through Christ. They were blamed for everything from witchcraft to killing Christian babies to spreading the Black Death, and massacred in violent pogroms. (This suggests that stereotypes are so long-lived because the dangerous stupidity of racists has no apparent ceiling.) Since they were barred from other kinds of labor and had no religious compunctions against it, many Jewish men ended up taking work as money-lenders — which being sinful and all, was held up by Europe’s Christians as another example of Jewish iniquity and duplicity.

(This is textbook racism:  a complicated feedback loop of dehumanization used to justify cruelty toward a given group. Por ejemplo: “Blacks are dumb and lazy! We better own, beat, terrorize and rape them, keep them from reading and codify their inferiority into law! By the way, did you know that those Negroes can’t read or advocate for their own humanity? Idiots.”)

Hitler rose to power in part on the idea that there was a secret cabal of shady Jewish bankers wreaking pecuniary havoc on the wider world — a notion that Germans were primed to receive after centuries of European folklore posited the wickedness of Jews as a given. That idea remains a tentpole of global antisemitism.

In trying to flip the script, those two S.C. Republicans miss the point that their “compliment” starts from a position that the money-hungry, penny-pinching Jew stereotype is true and valid.Trying to untether that stereotype from this history, as the guy defending these two Republicans does, takes a lot of arrogance, ignorance  or both.

If you scratch down just below the surface, you’ll find this kind of Othering in all “good stereotypes.” The well-worn trope about black men being strong and athletic with huge dicks is supposed to be some kind of compliment, even as it directly recalls the myth of violent, animalistic black male sexuality to which so much of America’s long history of racist terrorism has been a response. The “positive stereotype” of the smart Asian is based on the old idea of Asian folks as crafty, untrustworthy possessors of secret knowledge — an idea whose assumed validity makes it easier to round folks up en masse during wartime and shove them into detention camps.

But those two South Carolinians and their defender at Goldblog weren’t trying to conjure up all that historical ugliness. They’re just some down-home guys, regular schmoes who can’t be bogged down with all that reading and the assumption of basic human dignity of folks who aren’t like them. I mean that in a good way, of course.

–
Photo from Wikimedia Commons

With the premiere of Chris Rock’s documentary “Good Hair” everyone is talking about black women’s tresses–about our quest for “good hair.” What exactly is “good hair,” anyway? I suspect that, until now, many white Americans have not heard hair described in quite these terms. But blacks folks know all too well.

We live in a society where beauty is governed by Eurocentric standards that say the most attractive tresses for women are straight, long, shiny, fine and preferably light in color. To be sure, many, many women of all races fall short of this standard, but none so much as women of African descent, whose crowning glory tends to be, in many ways, the opposite of what is considered beautiful. It would be easier if, despite living in a majority culture different form our own, the black community as a whole was able to embrace the qualities most often associated with our hair, which tends to be highly-textured. But let’s face it: We do not, thanks in part to the legacy of slavery and continued racism.

Don’t believe me? When was the last time, outside of the natural hair community, that you heard someone use “nappy” as a compliment?

Sharon’s new baby is gorgeous! She has a head full of nappy hair!

When was the last time you saw a sister with a TWA in an R&B video?

Man, shawty looks good! She’s got a bangin’ body and a really short afro!

I think some of the protestations that black people don’t covet the appearance of whiteness are dishonest. Black women may not straighten their hair because they wish to look white, per se, but many of us seek to achieve a look that is based on a beauty standard set by white people and more readily achieved by white people. Black women have also been taught that tightly-curled hair is less manageable than straight hair (though this is only true if you are trying to “manage” black hair into something it is not.).I should say here that this isn’t about individual choices. Some sisters straighten on occasion simply cause they like to switch up their looks. No problem there. The problem is with thinking you have to straighten, at great cost and sometimes to the detriment of intimacy and health, to be acceptable or to have hair that is manageable. I’m talking about the general view of natural, black hair within our community — and that view is largely negative.

No one should think this hatred of our physicality is merely a quirk of black character. I worry from the little I have seen of Rock’s flick that this is exactly where that story is going. The idea that black hair is unsightly and unmanageable has been reinforced by the majority culture since slavery. Comparing black women and relaxing with white women and the quest for blondeness, as Rock has done, is facile and inaccurate. Black women covet straight hair not just for vanity’s sake, but for social and professional acceptance. Brunette hair is not thought unsightly and inappropriate for public view; natural, black hair is. For example, there are many companies that forbid natural black hairstyles, deeming them “extreme.” In fact, controversy erupted a few years ago when some historically black colleges decided to ban natural hairstyles in their business schools, caving to the idea that the hair of people of African descent is unacceptable in the workplace. The Baltimore police department banned black, natural hairstyles in 2006, calling them “fads.” And most of us on the ‘Net recall the Glamour magazine/natural hair controversy. Is it any wonder that black women straighten, weave up and wig? Our very livelihoods often rely on our assimilating our looks.

When most black folks use “good” to describe someone’s hair, they invariably mean the person in questions hair is close to the Eurocentric ideal: It is straight or has uniform curls, not kinks. It is long. It is easy to comb. The hair and beauty Web site, Spiced Honey, asked readers what “good hair” meant to them.

Long, thick, with a natural sheen… Sometimes curls up with the first sign of moisture, but always falls straight with a little work

Not nappy, and keeps it presentable

Hair that is shiny and wavy, and can pass through my fingers like silk

It is worth noting that these respondents praise traits commonly associated with white hair not black hair. And this thinking is all too common in our community. Now, I am bound to get comments from women who say that white beauty standards have no impact on why they straighten their hair. I believe you. Again, this is not about personal choices. I am talking about the black community as a whole. When someone checks for a woman with “good hair,” you know exactly what they mean, and it ain’t short and kinky or locked or twisted. The very idea of “good hair” is a manifestation of self hatred. That’s why Rock’s film makes me uncomfortable. Rock is a comedian and, thus, his first job is to be funny. Self-hatred isn’t funny.

So, as a sister who has been keeping it nappy for three years now, what is my view of “good hair?” (The term, not the movie, since it doesn’t seem to be playing in Central Indiana.) Good hair is healthy hair. Period. It took me a while to come to terms with my thick, spirally hair that is shiny and multi-textured and big and dense and hates to be “tamed.” But I have come to love it. It doesn’t fit under hats very well. Unless it is wet and soaked in conditioner, it really can’t be combed. But it is my good hair. I also like Solange’s short cut and Rihanna’s asymmetrical do and my friend’s honey brown locs and my other friend’s waist-length locs and my mom’s shoulder-length permed tresses and, though I’ve only seen it in photos, my blogsister AJ Plaid’s baldy. I’ve come to a place where I recognize that there is no one-size-fits-all “good hair.” It’s about confidently trying looks without being ashamed of what Mother Nature gave you.

What is good hair to you?

Image courtesy of masoesa on Flickr.

In the early 1980s the Reagan Administration engaged in an active campaign to demonize welfare and welfare recipients. Those who received public assistance were depicted as lazy free-loaders who burdened good, hard-working taxpayers. Race and gender played major parts in this framing of public assistance: the image of the “welfare queen” depicted those on welfare as lazy, promiscuous women who used their reproductive ability to have more children and thus get more welfare. This woman was implicitly African American, such as the woman in an anecdote Reagan told during his 1976 campaign (and repeated frequently) of a “welfare queen” on the South Side of Chicago who supposedly drove to the welfare office to get her check in an expensive Cadillac (whether he had actually encountered any such woman, as he claimed, was of course irrelevant).

The campaign was incredibly successful: once welfare recipients were depicted as lazy, promiscuous Black women sponging off of (White) taxpayers, public support for welfare programs declined. The negative attitude toward both welfare and its recipients lasted after Reagan left office; the debate about welfare reform in the mid-1990s echoed much of the discourse from the 1980s. Receiving public assistance was shameful; being a recipient was stigmatized.

Abby K. recently found an old Sesame Street segment called “I Am Somebody.” Jesse Jackson leads a group of children in an affirmation that they are “somebody,” and specifically includes the lines “I may be poor” and “I may be on welfare”.

(Originally found at the Sesame Street website.)

I realized just how effective the demonization of welfare has been when I was actually shocked to hear kids, in a show targeted at other kids, being led in a chant that said being poor or on welfare shouldn’t be shameful and did not reduce their worth as human beings. Can you imagine a TV show, even on PBS, putting something like this on the air today? Our public discourse at this point says that being on welfare is shameful, and that those receiving it in fact aren’t “somebody.” They are dependents, lazy loafers, and their kids are just additional burdens on the state; they don’t have the same rights to dignity and respect as other citizens, and they certainly shouldn’t expect to get it.

Of course, the totally confused looks on some of the kids’ faces are hysterical.

These notes are taken from complimentary screenings courtesy of the San Diego Asian Film Festival, which concluded Thursday night.

For those of us who only remember Jack Soo from watching Barney Miller with our parents, the documentary You Don’t Know Jack is aptly named, as it reveals a pleasant set of surprises.

Directed by Jeff Adachi, Jack is concise (it clocks in at just under an hour) but not rushed, covering its subject with a relaxed cool that, as we soon learn, fed not only the onstage persona he developed as a singer, nightclub host and comedian, but made him an asset to Japanese-American families interned in California during World War II, as he organized talent revues and shows to lift spirits at the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah. He even managed to arrange permission and transportation for off-site shows. Soo’s singing ability is shown off about halfway through the movie, when you hear his rendition of “For Once In My Life,” made popular by Stevie Wonder.

The film also covers the origin of the name “Jack Soo”; he was actually born Goro Suzuki, on a boat bound for Japan, to an Oakland family, but took on the stage name in order to sound Chinese and thus circumvent anti-Japanese prejudice to perform in Ohio. He was forced to retain the name, ironically, after landing his first breakout role, as the lead in Flower Drum Song, and while Soo/Suzuki rode his star turn to regular Hollywood work, it’s noted that he was able to forge his career without having to play manservant-type characters.

Upcoming screenings:
Vancouver Asian Film Festival, 11/08, 4 pm PST

Arusi: Persian Wedding follows a young interracial couple, Alex and Heather, journeys to Alex’s native Iran to go through a traditional wedding. Heather, who’s white, goes so far as to take language classes and sign a declaration of Islamic faith to get the necessary paperwork.

As they make the trip and meet with members of his family, Heather is more than willing to connect with them, while Alex feels alienation from not only her kin – “There’s definitely been that challenge with them,” he says – but from his own, in no small part because of his inability to communicate.

The film weaves together Alex and Heather’s respective efforts to acclimate themselves with a retrospective of Iran’s relationship with the U.S. and travel photography by Alex. Arusi is the kind of story a mainstream movie would render more farce than Farsi (indeed, it’s only too easy to imagine this getting “adapted” into something stupid more suitable for the multiplex). But this is a case where the truth – or at least these two peoples’ truth – is more interesting than the hackneyed fiction we often get.

There’s moments when Shades Of Ray, which has garnered praise at various festivals, threatens to veer into that kind of territory. But Jaffar Mahmood’s story puts more stock in his characters than the average rom-com.

The story follows Ray (Zachary Levi) as he adjusts to his Pakistani father Javaid (Brian George) suddenly moving in with him while waiting for his white girlfriend Noel (Bonnie Somerville) to answer his marriage proposal. Javaid insists Ray marry a Pakistani girl, saying white girls will “crush [Ray's] testicles in a vice.” The kicker is, Javaid himself is married to a white woman – Janet (Kathy Baker). Regardless, Javaid fixes up Ray with his friend’s daughter Sana (Sarah Shahi), who is also the product of a white/Pakistani marriage.

As Ray tries to get his parents to work out their own problems, he finds himself drawn to Sana, even after he gets his answer from Noel. As you might expect, things culminate with a series of awkward moments. But instead of playing them for laughs, we get a glimpse of something closer to the everyday truth: when it comes to matters of the heart, nobody walks away unscathed.

Not to say there aren’t laughs in cranky Javaid’s confrontations with both Ray and Janet, and Levi and Shahi have a laid-back type of chemistry. But there’s time set aside to show each of them in doubt as much as they are in love. And that’s also a welcome change of pace for this genre.

I suppose it is a good sign that we can still be shocked speechless by the racism in pop culture, right? Because it means that we aren’t totally cynical and embittered. Right?

This morning we received a tip from reader Cassandra, letting us know about last night’s episode of America’s Next Top Model, where contestants flew to Maui to do a photo shoot where they were supposed to be biracial.

Blink.

We don’t usually quote directly from tipsters, but I am too stunned to paraphrase right now. Cassandra reports:

Each girl was given two ethnicities: Tibetan/Egyptian, Greek/Mexican, Moroccan/Russian, Native American/East Indian, Botswanan/Polynesian, Malagasy/Japanese. Five girls are white, one is Asian, and a few are donned in black face and all in “ethnic” outfits (a combination of an aspect of each culture, evident in the photos), which Tyra explains, “Every outfit is not necessarily what people of that culture are wearing now, it might not even be a necessary exact of what they’ve worn in the past, it’s a fashion interpretation of it.” Nicole, assigned to look Malagasy/Japanese, remarks how she’s always wondered what she looked like as a different race and that she felt she looked “exotic.” The girls had to somehow embody what people of those ethnicities were like i.e. Tyra saying, “Think Egyptian, think [insert ethnicity], think of what those people were like, etc.”

INSERT SCREAMS OF HORROR AND FOAMING AT THE MOUTH NOW.

I have to outsource further analysis. I’m not capable of forming coherent words right now.

From Jezebel (where you can also see more photos), a much gentler approach to Tyra Banks that wonders why a black woman initiated this shoot:

As a black woman working in fashion, Elizabeth Gates wrote for the Daily Beast that she was not surprised by the French Vogue blackface, saying: “I would be fooling myself if I thought the draftsmen behind fashion’s most beautiful things were ever going to be sensitive to race, black women, or how they represent our cultural history. In fact, I’m not exactly sure why this was a shock to anyone.”

But this ANTM shoot was put together by Tyra Banks: Black model, creator, host, head judge and executive producer of the show. You’d think that she would be sensitive to racial issues. I have to assume her intent was probably to showcase bi-racial beauty. Is this a case in which the action can be forgiven if the motive comes from a good place?

Or you can also visit any of the growing number of posts we’ve put up recently dealing with blackface:

Blackface and the Violence of Revulsion

Convo about Blackface on Episode 121 of Addicted to Race

And then share your comments. Y’all are going to have to do the deconstructing for me today.  I will return when I regain control of language.

Two weeks without Heroes and yours truly still feels great. But as the Roundtable will explain, watching “Gimme Some Truth,” it’s becoming more apparent that Flash Forward is beating Heroes at some of its’ own strengths – even if Mark Bedford there looks like a bit of a weenie in the pic above. Still, in a show made of WIN, as the kidz say, one moment shone above the rest:

John Cho doing Karaoke: Awesome or REALLY Awesome?

Diana: REALLY AWESOME. I forget what ’80s song he was singing, but it was tugging at my nostalgia heartstrings. I’m even more in love. [sigh]

Andrea: Neither. John Cho sings harmonizes better than the angels; he shoots like a gunslinger; he shut down some kyriarchal shenanigans with a single snap; he helped counter the balderdash regarding Black women’s hair; he gives good glow. Naw, Cho’s not Awesome or REALLY Awesome—he’s Ultimate. So Ultimate there’s a mini-movement to make Cho the patron hottie of Racialicious, right?

jen*: Barry Henley and John Cho together on Sister Christian? Who says that’s not gold? And he’s right – with 5 months to live – karaoke has got to be part of it.

Building on that a little bit, it hit me: this is the first time in awhile I’ve seen a sci-fi program show a bunch of boys – POC men, even – being … well, Boys. Not in that Spike TV Lowest Common Denominator sense of the word, either. There was a real camaraderie shown here in the karaoke scene, and especially in the gunfight in the parking structure; Stan’s nod to Mark – a moment of “Dude, we’re in this together” – was a really nice touch.

Diana: Definitely there was a big bromance going on, especially in the karaoke bar. And I wasn’t hatin’. It’s much like anytime you go out of town with a bunch of colleagues. I wasn’t feeling the gun battle quite so much, but that was because it was a bit out of nowhere for me. But it was nice seeing dudes willing to go into the trenches for each other. Very Machismo.

Andrea: Maybe I’m clueless to the inner workings of male relationships, but I didn’t get “bromance”—when I think of “bromances,” I think David and Jonathan-levels of friendship, not some Judd Apatow/Paul Rudd smirky-snark bullshit. I just saw co-workers who got along well enough to josh and hang together. What I gleaned is the unit got along for a while before we entered the story; the Flashforward/Mosiac project—because it’s so supernatural—fortified the working relationships. The gun scene just showed how well they functioned as an FBI unit, especially after watching one of them twist in the wind at the Senate hearing.

jen*: Feel you on David and Jonathan, Andrea – these guys are just a good team. But I still see myself here for the story – not so much for the characters, yet.

Speaking of Stan, the revelations of his past were really welcome from a storytelling standpoint. Funny thing: this show is already drubbing Heroes in its ensemble work; now it looks like they’ve created their own Gray Man.

Diana: I’m ecstatic to see Stan getting some depth. He’s a political power broker, playing with the big boys and girls. This is what Heroes lost ignoring and doing away with their strong POC characters. I hope it continues.

Andrea: Couldn’t agree more, Diana.

jen*:I loved the reveal that Stan’s tight with the Prez. I want to see more of his background story – maybe I’ll get into his character. And I wouldn’t mind seeing Gina Torres again, either…

After all the pre-season hype from Heroes about a same-sex romance, the relationship between Janis and Maya (O HAI Navi Rawat), short-lived as it was, just outclassed the more-ballyhooed Cletchen.

Diana: If I was Janis, I don’t know if I would have gotten bent out of shape about someone looking up my flashforward–she made it public after all. Maybe Maya shouldn’t have asked if she also liked dudes. There are ways to get pregnant without having an actual man involved. Quite frankly, I was hoping Janis got pregnant during the blackout–that would be a freaky twist that could go all kind of ways–alien abduction, impregnation by Suspect Zero, wacky science experiment,etc.

Andrea: Yes, Diana, yes! I was reeeeeeeally put off by that whole Janice-Maya confrontation for the exact same reasons. I got the impression the writers are implying Janis never considered children because she’s a (cis) lesbian or a (cis) bi women who leans more toward other (cis) women–sexual identity has nothing to do with wanting or parenting children. (She never heard of adoption?) Janis’ reaction–that whole argument–as written also reflects a stereotyping about these women because sexual attraction can be also in flux—same-gender-loving people may very well find themselves attracted to people of other genders, cis, trans, and nonbinaries and integrate that into their sexual identities. A (cis) woman who’s a lesbian can (and do) sleep with (cis) men and may still be considered a lesbian in some communities just like the women who don’t. And the ones who do get pregnant via penile-vaginal penetration as well as via artificial insemination. Also, has Janis thought to investigate what the “child” could mean? Like the white guy in last week’s episode who thought he was literally going to get his “Black Like Me” on, Janis’ fetus may not be a literal human offspring, but a symbol of her giving herself to something outside of her immediate world, like becoming a self-defense class instructor or give birth to a religious movement or something. Oh one more thing: I don’t watch FF on TV. So someone pleeeeeeease tell me Janis survived the shootout. ‘Cause it would bite if FF did to (cis) LGB characters what Heroes does to characters of color: kill them off on the regular.

jen*: Um – I dunno how long she’s gonna make it, but Janis was still moaning and groaning at the end of the ep. I’m gonna be majorly pissed if she dies – why get us invested to just yank her away? I was thinking though – if she can die, Demetri can live!

Open Mic!

Diana: What did Stan do to that senator? Her palpable hostility towards him gave me flashbacks to the 2008 presidential debates. Yikes! Also thought it was pretty badass how Janis responded to the attack–she went down fighting. I was like, go on, girl!

Andrea: See, I was thinking what the hey did the senator do to Stan? And I wanna know what deal was brokered to make Ms. Hostile the VP, especially since Stan is the show’s Michael Clayton. I’m glad that Janis got her very own shootout, but it also brings into high relief what these flash-forwards really mean. Are they literally everyone’s future that some folks seem hell-bent in preventing? Are they manifested symbols of deep fears/aspirations? Or are they all an elaborate prop to let John Cho be great?

jen*: I just need to see how this dude from Lost figures into this puzzle. And if Janis lives.

On Monday, Madonna broke ground on a new school project in Malawi; today, she takes to the Huffington Post to ask for donations. Her megawatt star power helped engage media attention – but are high profile celebrities actually hurting progress?

In the new issue of Arise, reporter Hannah Pool examines the idea that “all Africa ha[s] to offer the world was begging bowl.” The article, titled “Good Will Hunting” starts off with a bang:

“When high profile celebrities get shown visiting disadvantaged areas in Africa and those images get beamed out to the rest of the world, I believe they almost do more damage than good,” says Moky Makura, Nigerian-born, Johannesburg-based author, M-Net presenter and founder of the Africa our Africa blog. “We don’t want to keep reinforcing the image of a helpless continent. We will only eradicate our problems when we build economies based on commerce, not charity. To do this, Africa needs to be seen as an investment destination or trading partner, not as a charity case.

Pool then delves into the conundrum that faces many activists on the African continent – if many people are embracing the idea of “trade not aid” as a way to push forward development, who benefits from this “charitainment?” Pool elaborates:

The merging of charity and entertainment – or, as Time magazine called it, charitainment – has led to some damaging consequences. Celebrities (and their agents) have realised that being seen to care about Africa brings instant cool. About 25 years after Live Aid, A-list celebrities are forever falling out of the pages of magazines such as Hello! or OK!, tearfully waxing lyrical about how spending five minutes in an African orphanage changed their whole view on life. And thanks to Madonna and Angelina Jolie, some Western media appear to be under the impression that the best way to empty Africa’s orphanages is not the eradication of poverty but mass adoption by wealthy pop stars.

“Whether it’s Bono shilling for AIDS dollars, Angelina and Madonna toting their African offspring, Gwyneth [Paltrow] and David Bowie declaring they are African, or Matt Damon and George Clooney rallying for Darfur, it appears that a new generation of philanthropists have taken up the ‘White Man’s Burden’,” says South African academic Zine Magubane on the pan-African blog Zeleza Post.

As soon as Pool mentioned Matt Damon, I immediately thought of this bit from Entourage:

“Gimme the fucking check Vince!”

At any rate, Pool dropped the bomb that’s been hovering over any discussion of aid and Western involvement in Africa. The idea of The White Man’s Burden actually stems from a Rudyard Kipling poem of the same name:

Take up the White Man’s burden–
Send forth the best ye breed–
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild–
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit,
And work another’s gain.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
The savage wars of peace–
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Scholars have long debated if White Man’s Burden is a love letter to imperialism or a satirical take-down – Kipling was an avid imperialist but was also a satirist, and his intentions with the piece aren’t fully understood. However, the poem and the term have been propelled to the heights of infamy due to the application of the core concept around the globe.

Personally, I prefer Henry Labouchère’s acid-tongued retort, The Brown Man’s Burden:

Pile on the brown man’s burden
To gratify your greed;
Go, clear away the “niggers”
Who progress would impede;
Be very stern, for truly
‘Tis useless to be mild
With new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

Pile on the brown man’s burden;
And, if ye rouse his hate,
Meet his old-fashioned reasons
With Maxims up to date.
With shells and dumdum bullets
A hundred times made plain
The brown man’s loss must ever
Imply the white man’s gain.

Pile on the brown man’s burden,
compel him to be free;
Let all your manifestoes
Reek with philanthropy.
And if with heathen folly
He dares your will dispute,
Then, in the name of freedom,
Don’t hesitate to shoot.

Fascinating how both of these poems were written in 1899, but still resonate to this day. (By the way, these are excerpts – the full poems are available by following the links.)

The line from Labouchère – Let all your manifestoes/Reek with philanthropy – cuts to the quick of how a “trade not aid” movement developed on the African continent. All this “philanthropy” normally comes with strings and conditions, and it can actively undermine those looking for long term solutions to a problem. Pool then discusses the work of Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian economist whose book, Dead Aid, who argues that aid only breeds dependency:

“Aid has been, and continues to be, an unmitigated political, economic, and humanitarian disaster for most of the developing world,” says Moyo. Rather than wanting to promote Africa as a place of business and opportunity, the West prefers to have Africa as its needy child. After all, imagine how scary a strong capitalist Africa would be. Moyo argues that aid keeps Africa politically and economically pliant, and that celebrities, with their passion for doing good rather than doing business, simply help maintain this status quo (whether they mean to or not).

However, there is quite a bit of dissent to these ideas, by those who believe any attention that directs awareness and funds to needy causes is beneficial.

For some, ‘glamour aid’ is a non-topic. Africa needs money and fast. Getting people to focus on anything else – business opportunities, the arts or tourism, for example – is tantamount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The fact is, celebrities raise billions of dollars for Africa, and they generate immeasurable amounts of press coverage for previously ignored causes. Who in the West had given Malawi a second thought until Madonna pitched up, bringing with her the international media and, undoubtedly, valuable donations? And wouldn’t thousands of African children be without antiretroviral drugs if it wasn’t for Keys and her Black Ball fundraisers in aid of Keep a Child Alive? [...]

“Africa as a continent is torn by many issues, which are beyond the people’s control, including poverty, AIDS, and genocide, says [Paschorina Mortty, of events company The One Event which deals with foundations], “so the more celebrities who want to support this beautiful continent, the better. Celebrity support opens up media space and allows the issues to come to the attention of the public and policymakers. Rightly or wrongly, we live in a society where the media and public have a strong interest in celebrities.” [...]

Does this interest translate into the public good, or does it just become another way to prolong a problem? In the case of Madonna, I’m not too sure. Her earlier interest stunk to high heaven with the white savior complex, and the controversy over David Banda’s adoption added further fuel to the fire. After spending some more time in Malawi, she seems to have shifted out of the idea that one raises awareness by adoption and horrific images of suffering, and has shifted to promoting projects and infrastructure. The new school is a good start, and a step in the right direction. But what will Madonna do next? Will she continue learning and implementing projects that contribute to long term solutions? Or will she go back to the standard celebrity charity junket? (If her plea on the Huffington Post is any indication, we are heading back to “your one time donation” territory.)

As Pool says:

But if all celebrities do is talk, demand money and portray the same old Africa of war, famine, and poverty, should they really be congratulated? Shouldn’t we challenging them to come with something new to say about Africa?

Madonna launches Malawi school construction [Reuters]
Official Site [Arise Magazine]
The White Man’s Burden [Wikipedia]
The White Man’s Burden [Modern History Sourcebook]
The Brown Man’s Burden [Dan McDowell's History Projects]
Dead Aid [Amazon]

Related:

Meet the Neo-Colonialists: Madonna and Vanity Fair [Racialicious]