by Latoya Peterson, originally published at Jezebel

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. Continue Reading »

By Sexual Correspondent Andrea Plaid

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. Continue Reading »

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. [...] Continue Reading »

Hosted by Special Correspondent Arturo R. García

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”? Continue Reading »

by Latoya Peterson, originally published at Jezebel

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. Continue Reading »

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.” Continue Reading »

by Guest Contributor Angry Asian Man, originally published at Angry Asian Man

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.

Continue Reading »

by Guest Contributor Dumi Lewis, originally published at Uptown Notes

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. Continue Reading »

by Latoya Peterson

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

by Guest Contributor Tami, originally published at What Tami Said

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. Continue Reading »

By Deputy Editor Thea Lim

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?

Continue Reading »

by Carmen Van Kerckhove

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.

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By Deputy Editor Thea Lim

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?

By Guest Contributor G.D., originally published at PostBourgie

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!

Continue Reading »

By Guest Contributor Tami, originally published at What Tami Said

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. Continue Reading »