Links – 2008-01-19
Complied by Latoya Peterson and Fatemeh Fakhraie
Sarah Jaffe writes for Global Comment about our Superhero President: The Commodification of Barack Obama
Obama has become something you have to have a piece of–a commodity for sale, sometimes on eBay to the highest bidder, other times for the bargain price of way too much for whichever tacky design was slapped on some material that will last long enough for your kids to sell it back on eBay twenty years from now.
Middle East News reports Israel bans Arab political parties:
Arab Israeli politicians warned of rising anti-Arab sentiment in Jewish public opinion, vowing Wednesday to appeal a majority decision by the Knesset Monday to disqualify Arab political parties in Israel’s from running in the Jewish state’s upcoming elections.
The Yahoo Group NatNews provides an action alert – “Native Americans Outraged Over Twilight Fraud”
With the commercial success of Twilight, Hollywood is abuzz with agents molding, fitting, and pushing their celebrity actors to pass as Native Americans.
“The Twilight Series is one of few commercial films, a script, and a story with Native American roles.” said Lydia Ponce. “It is a sad day to see that the big power agents are marketing Filipino and Asian celebrity actors to play Native Americans. These are such rare opportunities. When films like Twilight knowingly and willfully select non-Native American actors to play Native roles, it sends the message that we’re not good enough to represent ourselves.”
CNN posts a commentary: Race is still an issue in America
Sherrilyn Ifill offers the most useful characterization of successful solutions in race relations in her book “On the Courthouse Lawn.” Ifill argues that conversations on race are often stymied because they attempt to include the whole of racial history in one conversation.
Thus we try to discuss the Middle Passage, Jim Crow segregation, and Don Imus’ comments simultaneously and therefore end up solving nothing. The most productive conversations — and the ones that occur the least, Ifill suggests — are local ones.
The need for such locally focused, community-based conversations is tied to a basic principle of social change: effective social change occurs by focusing on local issues, using grassroots, nonviolent strategies.
KABOBfest continues wading into the Israel/Palestine issue by discussing The One State Solution:
The one state solution has been gaining credence among intellectuals and the general populations in Israel/Palestine (especially Palestinians) because the two-state solution looks increasingly impossible to implement. Dividing Jerusalem, dismantling Jewish settlements in the West Bank, establishing a Palestinian state bisected by Israel are all insurmountable obstacles to a two-state solution that immediately disappear in a one-state solution.
In a one-state solution reconciliation can truly begin and Jew and gentile Israeli, Muslim and Christian Palestinian, Arab, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi can all coexist. Jews don’t have to be evacuated from Hebron and other holy cities in the West Bank, Palestinians can live in Tel Aviv, Yaffa, or Nazareth. The Holy Land will finally retain its sacred status once more.
The Washington Post reports on how DC’s social segregation is being challenged by an Obama presidency:
With a black first family in the White House and a diverse group of appointees and Cabinet nominees, the all-white dinner party feels all wrong. Certain hosts are suddenly grappling with a new reality: They need some black friends. Overnight, black politicians, lawyers and journalists are hot properties, receiving engraved invitations from people they never got invitations from before.
Blacks have gone from barely being on the list to being in charge of the list.
The International Herald Tribune reports that the “Gaza Crisis may be fomenting violence against Jews in Europe:”
Signs are mounting that the conflict in Gaza is starting to spill over into violence in Europe’s towns and cities, with assaults against Jews and arson attacks on Jewish congregations in France, Sweden and Britain.
Assailants rammed a burning car into the gates of a synagogue in Toulouse, in southwest France, on Monday night. A Jewish congregation in Helsingborg, in southern Sweden, also was attacked Monday night by someone who “broke a window and threw in something that was burning,” said police spokesman Leif Nilsson. Neighbors alerted rescue services before the fire took hold.
The Detroit News notes that “Dearborn Schools urged to ban Arabic:”
A recommendation to bar Arabic speech in the city’s most heavily Arab public high school unless it is absolutely necessary has sparked a sharp debate between those who say it’s necessary to help students perform better and those who say it only helps alienate them.
Frank Rich reflects on being “White Like Me” in the New York Times:
Our new neighborhood included the Sidwell Friends School. My mother, a public school teacher, decreed that her children would instead enroll in the public system that had been desegregated a half-dozen years earlier, after Brown v. Board of Education. In reality de facto segregation remained in place. Though a few African-Americans and embassy Africans provided the window dressing of “integration,” my mostly white elementary, junior high and high schools had roughly the same diversity as, say, today’s G.O.P.
I wish I could say we were all outraged at this apartheid. But we were kids — privileged kids at that — and out of sight was out of mind. Except as household help, black Washington was generally as invisible to us as it was to the tourists who were rigidly segregated from the real Washington while visiting its many ivory marble shrines to democratic ideals.
(Thanks to readers Rob Schmidt, zazel, shygirlj, and ignoblus for submitting links.)
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
TheBlackSheep wrote:
Is anyone really surprised? You all know how racially insensitive that Hollyweird can be. If I had the money I’d start my own production company and fill the holes in representation. Watch the money flow in from all those hungry to see themselves accurately portrayed without a Eurocentric polluted perspective. It would revolutionize Big Studio media. The very fact that it hasn’t been done (or if it has effectively, Bollywood none withstanding because of skin tone and caste racism inherent in the Indian cinema) makes me believe that there is a concerted and subversive effort to make sure that it doesn’t. I always hear White people complain “Why do you get a Black/Asian/Hispanic ect. radio/television station? That’s racist. If WE had done it then there would be all kinds of cries of foul play.”
Well, I wish they would segregate EVERYTHING according to racial specifications. ALL the movies,shows,DVDs,books,ect. with just White characters in one section. The respective People of Color in their sections. One look at the disproportionate and overwhelming truth would give everyone a wake up call and nice big healthy shut the hell up, fuck you very much.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me. I’ve always found it odd that P.O.C. don’t band together. I mean, we are overwhelmingly the Earths majority, yet we are obviously being psychologically mind fucked into thinking that we are helpless in the face of “the Man”.
Bullocks.
Is it just me or does it seem like P.O.C. suffer from P.T.S.D.?? Or Stockholm syndrome…
Posted 19 Jan 2009 at 2:11 pm ¶
Samantha wrote:
Well the producers have put out a casting call for the sequel for native american actors so hopefully they’ll be able to get them.
I often wonder when casting calls are done by race does it sometimes just come down to there not being enough people of that background available or right for the part.
Posted 19 Jan 2009 at 9:19 pm ¶
Roxie wrote:
Uhm, Ok. I am deep, DEEP into the Twilight fandom and I feel bad, b/c a lot of that post just misinformation.
There has been no official word, not even a rumor, about Solomon Trimble NOT being in New Moon. There would be a firestorm of “Support Solomon” and “Team Trimble” groups/icons/banners/posts going about if that was the case.
The Vanessa Hudgens/Brenda Song audition rumors were just that–totally rumors. The screenwriter, Melissa Rosenberg, has stated, “”if Vanessa is auditioning for the role of Leah, she’s written her own pages to read, ’cause I didn’t write ‘em. ”
http://www.twilightlexiconblog.com/index.php/2009/01/13/vanessa-hudgensone-more-time-with-feeling/
However, this hasn’t stopped people from dreaming up who they’d like to see as Leha.
I have to say, what has really bitten me about all this speculation and dream casting is that rarely does anyone mention a Native American actress! You would think, after Hardwicke went through so much trouble to diversify the cast of Twilight (everyone who is not Native American in the book is white) people would keep that in mind.
It really pisses me off.
A fandom suggestion floating around at the moment for the role of Leah, is Q’Orianka Kilcher. She played the role of Pocahontas in “New World”
There is also a deep suspicion about the casting pages that have been posted on the internet.
In “Twilight” (the book) there are not many Native American characters at all. I was surprised they even included Embry, since he doesn’t even have a line. There are more N.A. characters in the rest of the books, however, so it should follow, more characters in the movies (but y’know how page-to-screen adaptations can go).
Posted 19 Jan 2009 at 10:09 pm ¶
Lola wrote:
“I have to say, what has really bitten me about all this speculation and dream casting is that rarely does anyone mention a Native American actress!”
this is what bothers me the most about the Twilight fandom, their “perfect” Sam/Leah/Embry/Jacob is always a Spaniard or Italian with a tan. One fan even said that Solomon and Krys who appeared in Twilight and are actually Natvies looked “wrong” for the role then said her dream Sam was some actor from Spain.
Posted 19 Jan 2009 at 11:05 pm ¶
kakodaimon wrote:
Argh, again? I remember when my home synagogue was firebombed because some idiot thought the handful of old people there were somehow responsible for Israeli atrocities – that was maybe ten years ago, and the community has still not recovered (many books essential for maintaining religious continuity were burned up, and they’re poor). I grew up, moved across a couple of provinces to a diverse, enlightened city, and a shul I go to here was firebombed recently also (past few years), although for who knows what reason.
I wish the Middle East would smarten up. I wish the world would. Every time I reread that Onion article about Sharon and Arafat making out, it gets sadder and sadder.
Posted 20 Jan 2009 at 12:58 am ¶
Zora wrote:
@Samantha – I suspect that with Native Americans in particular (though I’d guess this is true for other groups as well), a large part of the problem is that directors and casting agents have been so conditioned by Hollywood’s Indian image that they don’t understand that that’s just not who Native people are. My guess is they’re looking for the people from the age-old Edward Sheriff Curtis photos, and not for the wide range of looks that you see among Native people today. So there may well be enough Native actors, but they may not look like the kind of Native the producers want. Of the Native people I see around here, most of them don’t exactly look like they walked straight outta Hollywood…
I should add that I mean Native, Native-identified people – who’ve grown up identifying themselves as Native, not white folks who did some digging and found out they’re related to Pocahontas.
Posted 20 Jan 2009 at 2:32 am ¶
Peter Pixie wrote:
People come together on things that make a difference in their lives. Things that truly make them FEEL something.
I do not ‘bond’ with other Persons of NonColor simply because we aren’t POC.
The very notion of it is, to me, simply unthinkable.
A person through my eyes is judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
Often, I believe a persons character is first announced in the choices of clothing, mannerisms, and attitude.
If a person feels the need to show me they follow a ‘thug’ code or a ‘redneck’ code by donning the appropriate vestiges, then I am obliged to recognize that.
Conversely, if a person feels the need to put themselves out as just another person in the world trying to get by, I see that too. Thats most of us, I think.
The issues of Race within many aspects of our lives appears to be a multi-faceted issue with POC and PONC alike holding different corners.
I see and understand as much as I can the anger, but I also see a lot of expectations of others causing the pain from which the anger grows.
Is it really as simple as “White people are in charge and thats why we don’t see more POC in movies/TV?”
Maybe it is. I dont know.
What I do know is there are many organizations out there that do nothing but support POC Media.
So the question raised by TheBlackSheep in their post is a good one. With all the availablity to support POC production companies, why AREN’T they doing better?
Why aren’t POC throwing money and talent at these productions companies to make them HUGELY successful?
While I dont think its PTSD or Stockholm Syndrome, I think the question deserves an answer.
I, for one, cannot offer one.
Posted 20 Jan 2009 at 9:45 am ¶
Lea wrote:
Except that the one-state solution is the Palestinian state solution. With the one-state solution, Israel quickly disappears and becomes just one among many diasporas. One may as well live in America or in Europe.
If you think Israel should cease to exist, just say so, don’t couch it in demographics and talk of co-existence. Certainly there are plenty of people who argue that Jewish nationalism is wrong-headed and inherently racist. Just own up to the argument.
Posted 20 Jan 2009 at 12:53 pm ¶
Daniel wrote:
Regarding the language issue in Dearborn, I’m very aware of many similar cases around the world, including my parents, where people have tried to ban a language in those type of situations. It’s nearly impossible, espcially the many who have a very rich heritage and global reach such as Arabic. Also, it is possible for a language to be revived even if it’s been “lost” of “fragmented” after a generation or two.
I sort of understand the part about the need for integration into the wider community though. However, American society is quite open , mobile and relatively young (always changing-adapting in a sense).
Personally, I don’t think these schools should go that far as to banning speech in that fashion (unless it’s necessary according to the article) more like the schools should come up with more creative ideas to deal with this issue. I’m not even sure what legal grounds can they do that, especially since they have such a high demographic percentage of non-English speakers.
Posted 20 Jan 2009 at 3:29 pm ¶
Daniel wrote:
I read the article again and tried to view it through other angles. Nowadays, I don’t really trust 100% of most news media articles, journalists even bloggers whatever is typed-writtened because they don’t usually tell the whole story. It’s a little hard to cover all the details in an objective manner. Sort of.
I know some language schools and classes have a policy where they must speak the language they are learning whenever they are in class or on campus. It does help speed up the learning process. I’m not sure about dearborn whether a lot of the Arabic-speaking students are immigrants or born/grew up here so it’s hard to say why.
Posted 20 Jan 2009 at 6:12 pm ¶
Spicy_Carrot wrote:
Re: Dearborn…
I think it cannot be overlooked that the language in question is Arabic, which brings a different feel to the issue than would be the case with another language. Speaking Arabic is now (unfortunately and wrongly) seen as anti-American and even close to terrorism b/c of the anti-Arab sentiment that’s so prevalent in the U.S. It’s very telling that the president of the federation of teachers, Kevin Harris, said speaking Arabic in schools “contributes to an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion on the part of English-only speaking adults in the schools.”
Further: “The report’s concern is that there’s an overuse of the native tongue when there didn’t really need to be,” Harris said. When English speakers choose to communicate in Arabic he said, “It does make me suspicious and I think it’s rude for them to do this. If situations were reversed, how would you feel? I don’t think they get that.”
Two things from these quotes: A common theme from the “English only” crowd is that “OMG, I don’t know what they’re saying!!!” but speaking Arabic brings a more fearful and paranoid response from many Americans due to misplaced fears of terrorism and extremism. Even if several people know on some level that the kids aren’t going to hurt anyone, there’s often still that deeper level racism/paranoia lurking in them. Exemplified in Harris’ quotes by terms like “distrust and suspicion.”
Second, Harris recognizes that English speakers sometimes CHOOSE to speak in Arabic, thus admitting that these kids (at least most of them) ARE English speakers. By recognizing that the kids can speak English, well, the argument that speaking Arabic is keeping them from learning English kinda falls apart.
Posted 21 Jan 2009 at 12:33 pm ¶
DivergentDana wrote:
Why aren’t POC throwing money and talent at these productions companies to make them HUGELY successful?
Ah, because POC have less money in general, support between POC groups just isn’t there, especially regarding cultural endeavors, and there’s little to no “crossover appeal” to be had from white audiences, which compose the vast majority of consumers/prospective consumers. Furthermore, if you’re part of a group where multiple languages are spoken, media produced in America may have to compete directly against not just mainstream American media, but with the entertainment offerings of an entirely different nation or series of nations, both of which will invariably be better funded than even the most ambitious American POC efforts.
Posted 21 Jan 2009 at 12:44 pm ¶
NativeAmericanAdvoca wrote:
I read about the Twilight controversy on Indigenous Peoples Issues Today. I can’t believe that with so many Native actors, Hollywood is going with a non-Native.
Posted 22 Jan 2009 at 10:05 am ¶
matt wrote:
Not back long, and still busy, but..
A panel in the Israeli Knesset banned two Arab parties. Not all Arab parties. The language here isn’t very clear on that. It is stupid and racist. It will hopefully be overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court (or already has been… I’m backed up on news). I’m sure there’s a lot to say about it, but let’s make sure the story’s accurate. (It’s unclear here, but I’ve seen it terribly distorted elsewhere.)
There is still an Arab (and at least somewhat anti-Zionist, even) political party in Israel that was permitted to proceed in the election. The ruling was specific to this particular election, not future elections. Arabs still will be able to vote, as many often have in elections where all Arab parties were permitted, for other parties like Meretz, Labor, Kadima, etc. So far, in (I believe all of) Israeli history, the only party that has been succesfully outlawed in Israel has been the anti-Arab Kach party.
UPDATE: It has already been revoked by the courts.
Posted 23 Jan 2009 at 10:31 pm ¶
Sobia wrote:
@ Spicy_Carrot:
Co-sign
Posted 24 Jan 2009 at 8:09 pm ¶