links for 2011-08-22

The levels of kyriarchy in this case…click on the Bend Bulletin link for the rest of the story.–AJP 

"Parvaiz’s story seemed to echo accounts like those of Charles Stuart, who said he and his pregnant wife had been shot by a black robber, in Boston in 1989, and Susan Smith, who said a black man had stolen her car and kidnapped her children when she had actually drowned them, in South Carolina in 1993. Both Stuart, who later committed suicide, and Smith, who was convicted, fanned racial fears by blaming blacks for their crimes."

"The United States government has taken the side of four Filipino nurses who were terminated last year from a Baltimore hospital for speaking Tagalog.
"The nurses were victims of discrimination, the US Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) concluded in an August 16 decision, an ABS CBN report stated."

"The bill, AB 199, was re-introduced by Assemblymember Fiona Ma (D-San Francisco) earlier this year and if passed into law, would recognize the contributions of Filipino soldiers and civilians in World War II. The bill passed the Assembly in March with an overwhelming 72-0 vote.
“'[This bill] encourages social science instruction for grades 7-12 to include instruction on World War II and the role of Filipinos in that war, consisting of an accurate history of the contributions of the Filipino American veterans who fought courageously in the United States Army,' said Ma, the bill’s author."

"In the American psychology, when we went from 'We’re the champions of liberty. We’re going to go down to Cuba and free the poor little brown Cuban peasants from the these nasty Spanish imperialists, lessers and then within a couple months, somehow it was OK for us to go to the Philippines and kill Filipinos to take over their country. People were proudly saying, 'I’m an imperialist and it’s about time we became players like the British and the French and the Russians and the Germans and the Japanese.' It was pretty naked. It was racist and it was about 'We should be cashing in. There’s money to be made in the world and we should be in on it too.'”

This is that documentary–finally!–AJP 

"… is an upcoming documentary that focuses on the marginalization of black women between the Black Power and Feminist ideologies of the 60s and 70s, up to the present day."

"Of course, mainstream news coverage of this attack in Jackson, Missisippi, has been pushed aside in favor of the white-washed, blissful, and fictional Jackson that appears in The Help, a new film based on Kathryn Stockett’s book. There have been many justified criticisms of the movie that articulate the countless reasons why the film fails and what that means on a larger scale in history, entertainment, and representation. But my concern right now with The Help is that it presents this idea of a latter-day Jackson, Mississippi, where segregation ruled and was then magically better. The danger with the love that surrounds this film is that it is so easy to watch and think, 'Look at how we were! Look at how we used to be! Look at how far we have come!' This is one of the pitfalls of cultural nostalgia: looking back at our ugly history, cherry-picking the parts we want to remember, and thinking how silly and backwards we were back then."

"Black people can’t talk to white people about race anymore. There’s really nothing left to say. There are libraries full of books, interviews, essays, lectures, and symposia. If people want to learn about their own country and its history, it is not incumbent on black people to talk to them about it. It is not our responsibility to educate them about it. Plus whenever white people want to talk about race, they never want to talk about themselves. There needs to be discussion among people who think of themselves as white. They need to unpack that language, that history, that social position and see what it really offers them, and what it takes away from them. As James Baldwin said, 'As long as you think that you are white, there is no hope for you.'”