Tag: racism

March Rambling: Accidental Racism, Verb Tenses and Marvel Movie Boycott

The first Atelier Mends iPad app, uJigsawArt©, is here

The Kind Of Intellectual

(From The Bad Chemicals; used by permission)

God is a second-rate fiction writer. “There are true stories, short stories, fabrications, misrepresentations, novels, insurance reports, family sagas, testimonials, memorials, fairy tales, myths and arguments, the point of all being some kind of narrative persuasion. It’s a kind of stubborn, human-nature way of insisting things be seen from my point of view because that particular point of view is more entertaining, or more valid, or funnier or more beneficial.”

“When the news broke that ‘This American Life’ was retracting the episode ‘Mr. Daisey Goes to the Apple Factory,’ Ira Glass made an effort to be clear that the show has verification standards, but that they fell short in this instance.”

The sequence of verb tenses: “You get to decide which verb forms to use based on your intentions and your understand of the language from reading, speaking, and hearing it.”

Dangerous Konymania, and that was before the story got really weird
On the other hand, Carl Weathers is not your enemy, plus more fun examples of accidental racism.

The Nazis’ rules for jazz performers.

The Othello rap (via HERE).

From Robert Reich: “America’s problem isn’t a breakdown in private morality. It’s a breakdown in public morality. What Americans do in their bedrooms is their own business. What corporate executives and Wall Street financiers do in boardrooms and executive suites affects all of us.”

Interesting piece on body image.

Albert Wood and the secrets of the funeral reveal

Advance review of the new John Grisham novel about baseball, Calico Joe.

Jim Shooter explains The Cory Doctorow Doctrine and Other Techno-Tectonic Upheavals HERE and HERE and HERE.

The Marvel Super-Heroes cartoon series (1966). And re: those superheroes, Steve Bissette on boycotting Marvel/Disney movies such as The Avengers because of the treatment of Jack Kirby HERE and HERE.

500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art

Military STD Posters, 1918-1945.

Do you want to know a secret? Secrecy News: a favorite source

The first Atelier Mends iPad app, uJigsawArt©, is here and available on the Apple Store for free!

A maker in Scotland has created an elaborate, steampunk-style, hand-cranked corkscrew. Rube Goldberg would be pleased.

Plane 101, verified by Snopes, no less.

Whatever that guy said? Do the other thing! Worf from Star Trek: The Next Generation gets the short end of EVERY conversation.

Here is a video of a person in a Darth Vader mask and cape, and a Utilikilt, riding a unicycle, playing Star Wars music on a bagpipe, in Portland, OR, which took you longer to read than the video runs. Plus, Seussical Siths.

In honor of Robert Sherman, who died this month, one of his and his brother Richard’s most famous compositions, It’s a Small World (via HERE). Oh, and some more Sherman Brothers songs.

Eddie discusses how he sells stuff on Craigslist, much of which could be used selling on eBay, e.g.

GOOGLE ALERTS

From Australia: ROGER Green may be a modest man, but for Vicki Doherty and many others in the Clarence Valley, the well-known Grafton musician is a living treasure.

Unemployment numbers down for sixth straight month: “Roger Green is also looking for something more. ‘I’m an ex-felon, it’s been pretty hard for me personally,’ Green said. He has a part-time gig now but wants to find something full-time. This morning, he’s feeling inspired.”

 

Transformative Presidency?

Did the election of this President, with a mixed record, no matter your political viewpoint, matter merely because he was black?


I’m watching this television program called JEOPARDY! On the episode airing way back on February 25, 2009, which I almost certainly watched at least a week later, there was a category called THE AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, with all of the clues given by black historian Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The $200 clue: “In a recent essay, I cited the election of Barack Obama as one of the 4 ‘transformative moments’ in African-American history; this 1863 event was the first.” The question, of course, was “What is The Emancipation Proclamation?” (The other two moments, which Gates revealed in a video clip leading to a commercial break, were Joe Louis’ victory over Max Schmeling in 1938 and the 1963 march on Washington that featured Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.)

Around the same time, I had come across a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center: Fueled by non-white immigration, the economy and the rise to power of a black president, the number of hate groups rose to 926, a record, in 2008.

Let me admit my resistance to Obama’s election as “transformative.”

Did the election of this President, with a mixed record, no matter your political viewpoint, matter merely because he was black? Surely a historical moment, but “transformative”?

Think of Jackie Robinson – whose entry into Major League Baseball, BTW, I would have put as one of Gates’ “transformative” moments, rather than Joe Louis. If he had failed as a player, would it have mattered as much that he was the first black player in a long while? I think he’d be a footnote in history. I still wonder if the added racial responsibility weighs on Obama, as surely it did on Robinson?

I’m reminded, oddly I suppose, of Vanessa Williams, the first black Miss America, back when Miss America still mattered in the United States. Know that there was some controversy in some black circles because she was so light-skinned, not dissimilar to conversations about Obama’s mixed-race heritage. Then Ms. Williams was booted as Miss America; her great strength is that she did not allow that incident to define her, but at the time, I thought it was a blow to some black people who said: “We make the breakthrough, then THAT has to happen?”

Also, with the increased number of nut jobs out there, I can’t help but continue to worry for Obama’s well-being. Not the least of which is the White Nationalist CPAC panel warning that America’s greatest threat is its diversity.

So I’m still mulling over how “transformative” the 2008 election turned out to be, in terms of justice, social/economic/racial/environmental, but it is not apparent in many aspects.

I’ve long stated that “the first” is important, but it’s not until it’s no longer an issue at all that real progress is made. And if you read some of the right-wing stuff I do, you know we are not there yet.
***
My friend Dan lays out, not in a racial context but just as in a political one, how Barack Obama has NOT had a transformative presidency in far too many ways. While he tends towards harsher language than I, I’d be hard-pressed to negate his overriding premise.

Freedom Riders: An Appreciation

President John Kennedy, and his brother Robert, the Attorney General, needed to be prodded into action, just as President Barack Obama needs political pressure applied to continue on the right path.

While praising New York state lawmakers as they debated legalizing gay marriage, President Barack Obama stopped short of embracing it. Instead, he asked gay and lesbian donors for patience. “I believe that gay couples deserve the same legal rights as every other couple in this country,” the president said at a Manhattan fundraiser [last Thursday], his first geared specifically to the gay community.

Last week, my Internet buddy Arthur posited the question: Has President Obama done enough for gay rights? He included a news video. “Let me be clear: President Obama is dead wrong on marriage equality: Civil unions are not a substitute for real marriage. It’s time for the president to stop “evolving” and get there and support full equality for GLBT people.

“However, Dan Choi is also wrong, possibly because he doesn’t know history. As Brian Ellner of the Human Rights Campaign says, this president has done more than any other president for GLBT equality than any other president in history.”

And this reminded me of a program I watched on PBS last month called Freedom Riders.

FREEDOM RIDERS is the powerful harrowing and ultimately inspirational story of six months in 1961 that changed America forever. Harrowing is right; it took me at least four sittings to get through the whole thing, not because it was boring, but because it was so intense. Just watch the two-minute Freedom Riders trailer.

From May until November 1961, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives—and many endured savage beatings and imprisonment—for simply traveling together on buses and trains as they journeyed through the Deep South. Deliberately violating Jim Crow laws, the Freedom Riders met with bitter racism and mob violence along the way, sorely testing their belief in nonviolent activism.

From award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson (Wounded Knee, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, The Murder of Emmett Till) FREEDOM RIDERS features testimony from a fascinating cast of central characters: the Riders themselves, state and federal government officials, and journalists who witnessed the Rides firsthand. The two-hour documentary is based on Raymond Arsenault’s book Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice…

Despite two earlier Supreme Court decisions that mandated the desegregation of interstate travel facilities, black Americans in 1961 continued to endure hostility and racism while traveling through the South. The newly inaugurated Kennedy administration, embroiled in the Cold War and worried about the nuclear threat, did little to address domestic civil rights.

“It became clear that the civil rights leaders had to do something desperate, something dramatic to get Kennedy’s attention. That was the idea behind the Freedom Rides—to dare the federal government to do what it was supposed to do, and see if their constitutional rights would be protected by the Kennedy administration,” explains Arsenault.

Organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the self-proclaimed “Freedom Riders” came from all strata of American society—black and white, young and old, male and female, Northern and Southern. They embarked on the Rides knowing the danger but firmly committed to the ideals of non-violent protest, aware that their actions could provoke a savage response but willing to put their lives on the line for the cause of justice.

President John Kennedy, and his brother Robert, the Attorney General, needed to be prodded into action, just as President Barack Obama needs political pressure applied to continue on the right path.

Watch the Freedom Riders film, and/or read the transcript, and/or buy the video from PBS.

Ordinary People Making Great Changes: An Interview With “Freedom Riders” Director Stanley Nelson.

 

Civil War books

Blight helps to explain why America today continues to wrestle with the seemingly endless and divisive issue of race, even while a black man resides in the White House.

Late last year, Glenn W LaFantasie came up with The top 12 Civil War books ever written for Salon magazine. A bold list with a lot of caveats (no biographies, no series or multivolume works, no fiction.) And if you’re interested, you can check out his choices, and the four dozen comments about the same.

But I came to a dead stop when he described his #5 book, “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory” by David W. Blight (2001), which I have never read. It’s because the description seems so important to our 21st-century lives in America:

[It] explores how the past is connected to the present by looking at the ways in which Americans have remembered the Civil War. His deeply researched and carefully crafted study argues that after the war white veterans, Union and Confederate, facilitated the reconciliation of the two sections by consciously avoiding the fact that slavery had brought on the sectional conflict, choosing instead to celebrate the courage that they and their comrades had brandished in battle. Less consciously, they and their fellow Americans found this new narrative — this rewriting of history based on a kind of historical amnesia — comforting and restorative. Reunification became a joyful event, but it came at a steep price. After Reconstruction, Northerners and Southerners alike took hold of a “Lost Cause” ideology that showed pity toward the South in its defeat, accepted Jim Crow policies that deprived blacks of their civil rights, and pushed for policies and practices that would ensure white supremacy across the land. Blight carefully avoids grinding axes as he makes his argument, which taken as a whole helps to explain why America today continues to wrestle with the seemingly endless and divisive issue of race, even while a black man resides in the White House. Here is a powerful book, artfully written by a scholar of learned poise who believes that by knowing the past we might better know ourselves.

I was wowed by the description, and if the book is as good as its review, it seems evident that I, and perhaps many of us, should be reading it.

The Readers Reply to the Racism Question

“It seemed to me that everyone was so very quick to disown racism that none of us had anything to really work on. It made me think that if the Church is going to effectively bring healing in this area it is going to have to make a distinction between racism as an ideology that some subscribe to, and racism as the fear, suspicion, or broken attitudes that blight all of us to various degrees as a result of being fallen creatures in a broken world.”

About six months ago, I laid out a scenario, about a white woman going into a halal shop, and asked, “Is it racist?” I was unconvinced that it was, although I recognized a likely ethnic-based discomfort.

And I got three really fine, and well thought out answers:

Francisca, a “white woman living in Asia” noted that “most of the time what I get is profiling to my advantage (it helps that I’m the smiling type and people generally like my face). The scene is complicated by my Chinese-born husband, who regularly gets mistaken as my driver, my interpreter, or my employee…and gets treated accordingly…”

Uthaclena said: “I think that the use of language has become very sloppy; my 15-year old informs me that ‘racism’ is used for ALL SORTS of discrimination, incl. what I myself would identify as sexism. Racism implies to me more of a power-based form of discrimination: ‘I will actively prevent you from obtaining something that is your due because of your race or ethnic background.’ I think that there is far more BIGOTRY than there is out-and-out racism, ASSUMING something about a person because of their stereotypical traits.”

Then there was Anthony: “I think I read somewhere in the writings of N.T. Wright that when Paul speaks of Christ dismantling the barrier between Jew and Gentile, implied within that idea is that Jesus overcame the forces that contribute to tribalism, ethnocentrism, nationalism, etc.” I would specifically add sexism. My Biblical scholarship is lacking, but I recall Jesus being called out by a woman about his sexist attitude.

“This idea is also associated with Christ’s cosmic work: the overcoming of the powers and principalities which distort God’s creation and the healthy functioning of social institutions.

“I mention this, because a number of years ago I was at a Christian college where I and various staff members were involved in a study on racial reconciliation by Raleigh Washington & Glen Kehrein called ‘Breaking Down Walls,’ and it seemed to me that everyone was so very quick to disown racism that none of us had anything to really work on. It made me think that if the Church is going to effectively bring healing in this area it is going to have to make a distinction between racism as an ideology that some subscribe to, and racism as the fear, suspicion, or broken attitudes that blight all of us to various degrees as a result of being fallen creatures in a broken world.”

Boy, did I relate to THAT! Organizing Black History Month in predominately white churches, I have definitely seen that. Not incidentally, this notion of a post-racial country in the US, because the country elected a black President, I always thought was absurd. Our tribalism runs deep. We may not all be racist, but we aren’t finished creatures, either.

I recommend you read all three excellent comments.

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