By Arturo R. García

A number of ads during the Super Bowl Sunday night focused on the good things about Detroit and the auto industry. But the worst commercial of the day, aimed at Michigan voters, didn’t make the national airwaves.

The ad shown above for Republican state senatorial candidate Peter Hoekstra hinged its attack on incumbent Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) on Orientalism. The actress, playing a “Chinese national,” says:

Thank you, Michigan Senator Debbie Spenditnow. Debbie spend so much American money. You borrow more and more from us. Your economy get very weak. Ours get very good. We take your jobs. Thank you, Debbie Spenditnow.

The commercial, slated to run for two weeks, pointed viewers to its own website, of course, covered in a matching decor, with the video displayed front-and-center. The only mention of any of Stabenow’s policies comes at the very bottom of the page.

This marks the second major political ad in little more than a year to use xenophobia as a primary tactic, after Citizens Against Government Waste’s “Chinese Professor” spot from October 2010:

Hoekstra defended his commercial in an interview with WMMT-TV before the game, saying, “If it’s got their attention we must be doing something right.”

Unfortunately for Hoekstra, it’s getting the wrong kind of attention, too: not only is the ad getting rightly pilloried in media circles, but at least one in-state consultant within his own party, Nick De Leeuw, has criticized the spot, saying, “Stabenow has got to go. But shame on Pete Hoekstra for that appalling new advertisement. Racism and xenophobia aren’t any way to get things done.”

Funny thing, though: even though Hoekstra’s ad accuses Stabenow of letting jobs and money leave their home state, as Politico reports, the commercial wasn’t even filmed in Michigan; it was made in California, something state Democratic party chair Mark Brewer quickly seized upon, calling it “nothing more than a hypocritical attempt at a Hollywood-style makeover.

“The fact is, Pete spends a lot,” Brewer said. “Hoekstra voted for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout and voted for trillions more in deficit spending before quitting Congress to get rich at a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm. Hoekstra is using the big game to play games with Michigan voters, covering up his real record on deficit spending and rigging the rules for the big money insiders he serves.”

By Arturo R. García

Film critic Kartina Richardson sent us a link to the picture above, taken at a McDonald’s restaurant during a recent visit.

“We’re not as race conscious as we think,” she wrote. In fact, it demonstrates that neither Barbie nor McDonald’s has learned much in the wake of other race-related rows.

To be fair, McDonald’s wasn’t responsible for its most recent imbroglio: Last summer, a fake sign asking African-American customers to pay extra fees because of “a recent string of robberies” went viral, spawning the #seriouslymcdonalds hashtag and putting the company on the defensive before the hoax was discovered.

But, for a company that maintains a site called 365Black, McD’s has made other missteps. Like the infamous “Southern Style” sandwich commercials, which touched off such a furor that not only were they pulled from the air, but they’re nigh-impossible to find online. Even on YouTube. But, as AdSavvy recalled in calling it one of its “25 Most Racist Advertisements,” the commercial showed two black women waxing rhapsodic over “Grandma’s fried chicken.” Apparently it got worse from there. Also problematic: the unusually high number of commercials showing black people dancing, jumping, singing, etc.

As for Barbie, longtime readers will recall its S.I.S. black doll line of 2009, which didn’t pass muster with guest contributor Seattle Slim:

The message is clear to little girls, and it’s saddening because they will go on to feel this more acutely as they get older. The message is unless you are “exotic” or multi-racial, you are simply and utterly unremarkable, unworthy and unimportant. They may make a doll with more Afrocentric features, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Little girls will then inevitably draw conclusions that they are not good enough, because they are not pretty enough. You must be multi-racial (or have some indication that you have some “white” or “Cherokee” in your family), with light eyes and long flowing, loose-curly (3A) hair as a minimum.

And most pointedly, the image itself–a black girl dreaming she could be not just Barbie, but the white Barbie specifically–revisits some uncomfortable territory, as Tami Winfrey Harris wrote:

Do black children even want dolls that look like them? That is really the rub. You can give a girl Barbie’s best, urban, black friend, Grace, but even little black girls will recognize that Grace isn’t the star of this show. The coveted one, the truly beautiful one, the worthy one is blonde, blue-eyed, narrow-featured, skinny Barbie. If the black version of Barbie was so damned great, then the little white girls on the commercial would be playing with her, too.

Those of us who are familiar with the heart-breaking “doll test” know that even when given a doll that obstensibly looks more like them, black children are inclined to want and favor the white doll. Black children who are still young enough to play with dolls have already absorbed the larger society’s notions about what is good and what is beautiful–and they know people (and dolls) who look like them are not part of those notions. Mattel’s new Barbie’s won’t fix this problem–the real problem–I think.

And neither will this new campaign. Has anybody else seen this sign at their local McDonald’s?

By Arturo R. García

Nobody’s saying All-American Muslim is perfect, but when was the last time a reality show was attacked for being … you know, realistic?

Yet that seems to be at the heart of the complaint filed by the Florida Family Association, which has resulted in a number of companies, most notably the Lowe’s hardware chain, pulling advertising from the program. On its website, the FFA says:

The first two episodes start off with Muslim youth complaining about non-Muslim Americans’ perception of them as extremists after 911. The show then reports on these youths’ daily, weekly and monthly prayer rituals. Many Imams who are at the head of these prayer rituals believe strongly in Islam and Sharia law. This TLC show clearly failed to connect the dots on this point but then again that appears to be their intent.

Many situations were profiled in the show from a Muslim tolerant perspective while avoiding the perspective that would have created Muslim conflict thereby contradicting The Learning Channel’s agenda to inaccurately portray Muslims in America.

The fear-mongering only goes on from there.

A company spokeswoman, Katie Cody, told The Washington Post it was Lowe’s understanding that All-American “raised concerns, complaints, or issues from multiple sides of the viewer spectrum,” without specifying any of those other viewpoints. Cody added, of course, that it wasn’t the company’s “intent to alienate anyone.”

Well, too late for that.

The FFA is also claiming responsibility for a whole host of companies pulling their ads from the show though at least three denied that allegation to The Post. (A list of sponsors no longer advertising on Muslim can be found here.)

Not only has the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee called Lowe’s out for caving in, but the incident has started to get attention outside television circles: Global Grind is organizing a petition in support of the show, while mogul/activist Russell Simmons took to both the press and Twitter to blast the company:

And the office of California Senator Ted Lieu (D-CA) posted a letter from him to Lowe’s CEO Robert Niblock calling on the company to apologize for its decision:

Lowe’s action is profoundly ignorant. Islam is a peaceful religion practiced by over 1.5 billion people, including Americans across our great nation and Lowe’s own employees. As President Bush declared, and President Obama reaffirmed, America is not at war with Islam.

America is, however, at war with people who pose a clear and present danger, whether they are white separatists like Timothy McVeigh (who happened to be Catholic); mass shooters such as Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech ; or members of the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Army (a Marxist-Leninist group that has targeted US interests with suicide bombings). Lowe’s bigoted action conflates peaceful religions with dangerous people who use peaceful religions (or political ideology) to advance their agenda.

Lowe’s religious discrimination is the equivalent of a company asserting that it is pulling advertising from the Christian Broadcast Network’s 700 Club because the program somehow “riskily hides” the agenda of Christian radicalized groups such as Aryan Nation. That assertion would, of course, be utter nonsense and religious bigotry.

Like many bullies, the FFA doesn’t work alone; it’s an ally of the American Family Association, which was tagged as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center last year. And AFA spokesman lives up to that label at seemingly every turn, whether it be by sounding off on “Muslim turkeys;” arguing that the First Amendment shouldn’t apply to Mormons; or saying Jesus Christ Himself would flog the Occupy Wall Street movement; or offering Muslims a choice: convert to Christianity or die:

So we say to them, look, if you don’t want our missionaries, fine, that’s your choice, we’ll take our missionaries and our Marines, we’ll take them home, but we’re going to let you know we have no hesitation about returning with lethal force if the forces in your country threaten us again. This time it’s Marines and missionaries, next time it’ll be Marines and missiles.

To its credit, a spokesman for The Learning Channel, which airs Muslim, told Entertainment Weekly, “We stand behind the show All American Muslim and we’re happy the show has strong advertising support.”

But you might be wondering, why would Lowe’s kowtow to the views of a discriminating bunch of wingnuts? It might be as simple as sharing political bedfellows: the company makes no bones about being an active contributor … to the Republican party, which actively courts groups like the AFA. “Multiple sides of the viewer spectrum”? Seems more and more like they’re only coming from the right side of the aisle.

I know, I know. It’s just a clothing line! Lighten up! And it’s so kawaii as the ads keep telling me, forcing the word on me like a pacifier to the lips of a crying, reluctant babe. (Wouldn’t be surprised if Gwen Stefani had tried to trademark the Japanese word for “cute” some time in the last 5 years or so. She’s already pretty much got “Harajuku”–the name of a Tokyo neighborhood–locked down legally.) And look, the Harajuku Mini for Target children’s clothes collection, which launches Sunday online and in stores, is“kawaii,” in a “What if a little panda cub who was part skater-punk threw up and it looked like lollipops and rainbows?” sorta way.

But, you know, I can forgive, but I can’t forget. Wait, who am I kidding? I can’t forgive either! Because when I see this ad plugging Gwen Stefani’s latest business venture…

…all I see is this:

And that is still, always, and forever whatever the Japanese word for “bullshit” is.

[The Stir: Gwen Stefani Harajuku Mini Arrives in Target Sunday!]

I really, really wanted to like CNN’s Black in America 4: The New Promised Land: Silicon Valley (which premiered last night) as well as Miss Representation, a documentary currently airing on OWN. Both, however, left me feeling the same way, which looks something like this:

A couple of synopses before I state why I felt this way:

Black in America 4 explores the rarely discussed facts and stories of Black people in digital technology, especially those who are inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Host Soledad O’Brien frames this through the stories of eight African American entrepreneurs who move into together as part of digital business owners Angela Benton’s and Wayne Sutton’s NewME Accelerator program, which provides Black entrepreneurs time and (relative) quiet space—and possible connections with venture capitalists—for their business ideas.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s Miss Representation connects some of the dots between the stats, the personal stories, and media images about women and how those images affect not only those in the media— Margaret Cho recounts the fatphobia and other drama around her 1994 comedy All American Girl — but also those consuming the media, meaning the rest of us.

Now, I know that both shows are, respectively, very much Black Studies and Women’s Studies 101, presented as and for those who may know very little to nothing about either Black tech innovators and owners or media literacy and feminism. So, I can see both try to provide a “hook” for their audiences with that in mind. However, the way their respective creative teams frame their stories does both topics a disservice.

When I asked O’Brien about the aim of this installment at a preview screening, she said, “First of all, [Blacks] are clearly using the technology, but we’re not innovating the technology. And Silicon Valley keeps saying how colorblind it is. So, this part of the series examines that statement.”

Watching BiA4, I felt like I was watching O’Brien trying to mash a news report with a reality show. (“Watch what happens when tech-y Black folks get real…with Soledad O’Brien!”) I can understand that the NewME Accelerator was a good (and, from a seeing-news-as-a-business standpoint, a fiscally feasible way) for CNN to gather a group of Black tech business owners (and the non-Black people who attempt to help and/or comment on them) to tell a relatable narrative about the dearth of Black people in the field.  (BiA4 states early on that less than 1% of digital entrepreneurs are Black. The majority, it says, are white, young, Ivy League and first-tier university drop-outs, which, as pointed out in the post-screening Q&A screening I attended, is a privilege unto itself as far as starting businesses.) But I actually think a better way to tell both stories is to decouple them. If I could reconstruct the story, I would have had O’Brien, say, follow one or two Black digital entrepreneurs in depth as they attempted to get investors and utilized Benton and Sutton as pundits— along with angel investor/philanthropist Mitch Kapor, who directly refutes Michael Arrington’s claim of the digital ownership as “meritorious.” Or I would have followed the NewME Accelerator crew as the main subjects of a full-length documentary to air on CNN.

Also, another questionable point is how Asians and Asian Americans are considered in this report. The show starts off by saying that the tech-innovation worlds are “white and Asian.” Though the presence of Asians and Asian Americans should not lead to Arrington’s erroneous conclusion that the tech world is, therefore, “colorblind,” the presence of Asian and Asian Americans shouldn’t be discounted as failing to bring racial diversity to tech communities. The more subtle equation BiA4 makes, however, is “Black=racial diversity.”

At least BiA4 addresses, albeit imperfectly, race and racism in the tech field, Miss Representation — for all of the visually racial diversity (you see Cho, former Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice, Dreamworlds director Sut Jhally, media-literacy advocate Malkia Cyril, and Newark, NJ mayor Cory Booker, among others) — fails to talk about the issue of race and racism. When I asked why at a post-screening Q&A, the response was “We only had 90 minutes, though we’re planning a second movie to deal with race.” (Refer to image at top of this post.)

However, there were places in the film where race and racism could be mentioned, and it would have taken about 30 seconds. For example, a young Black woman talks about her hair and how media images make her feel about it. The narrator could easily say something like, “Far too many images we see in the media are of white women swinging long, flowing hair. Imagine how that would make a woman of color, whose hair may not do that, feel?”

I timed it: the quote took all of 15 seconds to read out loud. (I’ll be generous and give it about 30 seconds to account for dramatic voiceover.) Or even acknowledge that the majority of media images—both in the film and in entertainment itself, from news to shows to porn—are mostly of white women as both idealized and in variety of roles…and these are, quite a bit of the time, functioning in tandem. Again, all of a thirty-second voiceover or a statistic that could be one of many the film uses to further its argument on how the media hurts women and other people. The silence about race (actress Rosario Dawson is the only person who explicitly mentions “people of color”) — as well as class, gender identity, sexual identity, and  and physical ability, though the film does give a nod at how the media, especially television, fails to acknowledge women above the age of 35 as an audience or as characters — flattens the documentary’s discussion about women to the category of “woman,” as if female-presenting people all suffer from media images the same way. Of course, we don’t.

And I just quite can’t with Black in America 4 and Miss Representation.

Image credit: Bossip

In the midst of her excellent takedown of Urban Outfitters’ “Navajo” appparel line, Sasha Houston Brown focused on one suspiciously-named piece of underwear:

I doubt that you consulted the Navajo Nation about using their tribal name on sophisticated items such as the “Navajo Hipster Panty”. In fact, I recently became aware that the Navajo Nation Attorney General sent your company a cease and desist letter regarding this very issue. I stand in solidarity with the Navajo Nation and ask that you not only cease and desist selling products falsely using the Navajo name, but that you also stop selling faux Indian apparel that objectifies all tribes.

Wednesday, Sasha passed along an update to the story from the Indian Country Today Media Network: a few days after UO spokesman Ed Looram said the company had “no plans to modify or discontinue any of these products,” the word Navajo has been completely scrubbed from its’ website.

In a release, the Navajo Nation Justice Department told the Associated Press Wednesday the move was “more consistent with the corporation’s responsibilities than previously demonstrated.”

As of Wednesday, items with the word “Navajo” in their description are now referred to as “Printed,” like the infamous Hipster Panty, which went from this:

to this:

Of course, the name “Hipster Panty” still makes it sound like it was made out of hair from Zooey Deschanel’s unicorn PBR puppy or whatever. But regardless, congrats to the Navajo Nation on this victory, and to Sasha and everyone who posted about this issue for pushing UO into the change!

By Guest Contributor Jonathan Vogeler

This summer, Citibank began running an advertising campaign that features three young men embarking on a project, financed by the bank, to photograph Earth from space, using a weather balloon and off-the-shelf equipment. The advertisement taps several currents of our national mythology – independence, ingenuity, discovery, and superiority in space (which is itself an extension of our glorification of colonial conquest).

This is not an entirely fictional story. Two years ago, Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh, two Asian-American MIT students, made international headlines when they used inexpensive, readily available materials to photograph near-space orbit on a $150 budget. They describe their project here, and received national media coverage.

There is a remarkable visual similarity between the Citibank ad storyboard and the real-life project documented by Lee and Yeh on their blog. But there are a few key differences.

As you can see in the commercial above, the most obvious discrepancy is that Lee and Yeh have been replaced by two young white men and a third who appears to be African-American. Within this group there is also a clear racial dynamic: the white men initiate and execute the project, while their friend drives the vehicle and points appreciatively at their success.

America has a long history of mis-attributing credit to white men. But the specific erasure of Asian-American men is indicative of deep cultural paranoia toward the challenge that Asian-American success poses to white hegemony. If the ad were to feature the real-life heroes of this story, many white Americans may read it, not as a feat of American ingenuity, but a dangerous manifestation of their loss of power. This fear is evidenced both internationally, in apprehension toward the rising economies of Asia, and domestically, as resentment of Asian-American students at elite universities. The narrative of enterprising white men achieving success (with an assist from a person of color) is less threatening, because it reinforces the identity that white American men like to imagine for themselves.

A second, less-apparent difference between the commercial and the real story is the source of funding. Citibank positions itself in the commercial as a benevolent patron of small-scale innovation. You may have the idea, the ad says, but the big banks make it feasible. Therefore, white people have an interest in allying themselves with big banks, in the same way that Citibank is tacitly allying itself with the cultural demands of whiteness.

One of the most inspiring aspects of this story, however, is that Lee and Yeh were able to compete with NASA on a budget of only $150. They did not need a bank loan; their seed money was a $200 donation. As they describe it, the specific barrier that they faced was a lack of access to resources. They simply could not afford the expensive equipment that would be needed for near-space photography (and presumably no bank would have lended them the money). Their accomplishment was not only an expansion of scientific knowledge, but the pioneering of a technique that allowed them and others who imitate them to overcome the financial obstacles that restrict scientific access.

The story of ordinary people achieving their goals by tapping small donations and economizing is just as threatening to banks as Asian space-flight is to many white Americans. So this inspiring all-American tale of hard work and ingenuity is rewritten as an alliance between white hegemony and the banking system. Sadly, this the only version of the story that most Americans will ever hear.

The problem, as many bloggers have pointed out, is that the ad relies on the trope of the savage black man, an idea as old as the nation that has only changed rather than disappeared over time. Today, there are “good” and “bad” black men – the former are what then Senator Joe Biden thinks are “articulate and bright and clean” and the latter are probably what he sees on the Music Television. It must have been quite a shock for Biden to see that then Senator Obama did not end his campaign speeches with Yo yo! 

The recent Times piece on black dandyism, “Pushing the Boundaries of Black Style,” which ran just a day before the Nivea controversy, has received a favorable reception. And yet for me, raises feelings of unease not unlike the Nivea ad. While the article is a celebration of the style and savvy of the bloggers of Street Etiquette, Travis Gumbs and Joshua Kissi, the article takes on a slight tone of wonderment I imagine Biden experienced when he saw this young, black man whip him during the Iowa caucuses.

I should be clear: Street Etiquette is one of the best personal style blogs out there. It has everything that any reader interested in fashion would want: history, know-how, cool, and lots of shiny photos of beautiful people. And yet, I found the language they used to champion black dandyism to be uncomfortably reminiscent of the Nivea ad. Speaking about his blog, Kissi says, “It shows people of African descent in a good light…Where they’re from and where I’m from, self-refinement isn’t welcome in a sense.”

Throughout the piece, “dandyism” is posited as classy, refined, and aspirational, while “hip hop style” is imprecated as unrefined, coarse, and well, uncivilized. The black dandies are constantly trying to get away from the paradigm of hip-hop, but in doing so, embrace another, arguably more dominant, paradigm. As if there were any further indication needed, their largest photo shoot, “The Black Ivy” is a not-so-subtle embrace of “our kind of people.”

Furthermore, this “self-refinement” is expressed not simply as an evolution of style, but also one of growth. “I used to wear size 42 jeans. Coming from that to a tie and shirt, people perceive you in a whole different way,” says Kissi. He isn’t wrong. Those baggy pants have been quite a site of contention; in 2007, cities across the South passed anti-sagging pants ordinances. Legislators weren’t just trying to police fashion, but specifically, what they saw as an expression of a dangerous black masculinity. Atlanta Councilman C.T. Martin said such laws are a “remedy” for “a prison mentality.” Other lawmakers believed the style invoked fear in others. Ooga booga, indeed.

Is it possible for multiple expressions and styles to coexist? Mos Def, also quoted in the article, probably has it closest: “White people have all kinds of archetypes, from Brad Pitt to Al Bundy, everything in between. The cultural paradigms that are aggressively promoted to young black people and young poor people are extremely narrow.” Multiple style paradigms – and relatedly multiple masculinities – are vital, especially in communities of color. But does the ascension of one necessitate the denigration of another? Can’t I have my high-tops and wear them too?

And here’s Stephen Cobert’s response, for all the Ds in the house (also NSFW):

I really enjoyed VH1′s short documentary on the history of Soul Train, but the icing on the cake was definitely the archive of retro commercials. The ones for Afrosheen – especially where they use an appeal to black history – are hilarious.

Best Afrosheen line ever: “Isn’t it made with cocoa butter from the motherland? So it’s for sisters! If it was for brothers, wouldn’t it be from the Fatherland?”

Afrosheen will even help you fight a cartoon hawk!

By Guest Contributor Akiba Solomon, cross-posted from Colorlines

Remember that racist anti-choice billboard in New York City that pimped misused a stock photo of a 6-year-old black girl, Anissa Fraizer, to sell the slogan, “The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb”?

Well, according to similar billboards sponsored by the Latino Partnership of Conservative Principles (LPCP), Latina wombs are lethal, too!

Using pictures of really cute babies and the slogan, “The Most Dangerous Place for a Latino is the Womb,” the boards popping up in Los Angeles advertise a Spanish-language medical distortion site, Unidos Por La Vida. An eponymous anti-choice confab is slated for Sunday at the L.A. Arena.

Update: According to Campus Progress, The LPCP’s Los Angeles event on June 12 drew 5,000 attendees, and speakers included Texas Governor Rick Perry, possibly looking to boost his profile among Latino voters.

- Arturo

I’m not going to re-debunk (is that a word?) the billboards. They’re silly, racist, cynical and misleading. Go here and here for why.

I’m more interested in how LPCP — which appears to consist of a couple of brown folks fronting for the ridiculously homophobic American Principles Project—has been sangin’ in the chorus of anti-choice Christians trying to gut Planned Parenthood.

In a March 4 discussion on NPR’s “Latino USA,” executive director Alfonso Aguilar made the familiar claim that the health care provider uses federal dollars to perform abortions, which would be illegal under the Hyde Amendment.

“The truth is that the Latino community — Latina women — are under attack. Twenty two percent of abortions in the United States are performed on Latina women. Latina women are 2.7 percent more likely to have an abortion than non-Hispanic white women. And clearly these organizations go to our communities to promote abortion. Most of the federal funding that Planned Parenthood receives, whatever they say, the truth is that it goes to abortion.”

Aguilar also claimed that the organization’s non-abortion services aren’t compatible with Latino values:

“The Latino community is a socially conservative community. … There are sex education programs where [Planned Parenthood] is promoting a specific idea about sex that goes against the very values of the Latino community. They promote, for example, values exploration programs in K through 12. So you’re going to kids, perhaps kids that come from Catholic backgrounds and Planned Parenthood is going directly to them and asking them to question their core beliefs.”

Silvia Henriquez, executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, valiantly attempted to inject research into the discussion:

“We know from polling and also from personal experience and our work on the ground for the past 15 years that while some Latinos are Catholic, they welcome conversations about safe sex and want to be able to be open with their familes and want to be able to engage in these conversations. They do in fact rely on medically accurate sex education and want their children to have the same type of information. Women are the pillars of their families and their households and women want to [have access] to the full range of reproductive health care services.”

But given LPCP’s sponsorship of the sensationalist billboards, they have not been moved. Because this ain’t about facts. It’s about sexist ideology. Latinas are just the pawn-du-jour.

By The Racialicious Editorial Board

Beyonce might not completely run the world, but she’s certainly dominated the blogosphere news cycle since the release of the video for “Run The World (Girls).” Rather than each of us having a go at analyzing the song and the video, we decided it best to get together online and talk about not just the message Beyonce’s song is promoting, but how it fits in with other representations of Girl Power, as well as the song’s problematic backstory.

Latoya: Here’s something I’m pondering:  Beyonce bought this beat from Diplo’s Major Lazer outfit. I was already a bit skeeved because it’s Diplo and we’ve had some issues with his work in the past.  But I could almost overlook that part – the beat is sick and everyone doesn’t necessarily pick up a track looking for past appropriation.  Then I made the mistake of watching the song video for Pon de Floor:

Pon De Floor featuring Afro Jack & VYBZ Cartel from Mad Decent on Vimeo.

I had no words y’all.  But to put my shock into written terms, it’s an outfit designed to amuse hipsters at clubs, peddling in images of black depravity.  This isn’t about dancing or dancehall – it’s just straight up black women as fetishized sexual object/black men as crazed beasts stereotype feed.

Just check the audience for these shows:

Most folks felt the same way.  Couch Sessions couldn’t even comment, except to say “The video is … um, yeah. If there is nothing else you can take from this, at least maybe you can find some new positions in bed.”

And in case you were curious about who made the video, Stereogum explains:

Tim & Eric’s Eric Wareheim continues stockpiling hipster cred by taking a directorial credit on this new Major Lazer video. He brought a bit of an Awesome Show Great Job! sensibility to that clip for MGMT’s “The Youth,” but this one is more akin to his work on that hardcore-sex-masked-by-cute-animations piece for Flying Lotus. Maybe Eric misread the title as “Porn On De Floor.” Or maybe Eric just really loves putting banger beats to people banging. Anyway, great job!

Arturo: I am not at all surprised that T&E were responsible for that bit of T&A. I suppose that vid is what passes as a Couples Skate for their audience.

Andrea: “Great job?” Ummm…ok. I can get to why some folks may be down with this vid: beyond the amazing beat, you do get to see plus-sized women moving their bodies and being what some may see as playfully sexual. (That whole seeing empowerment in imperfect spaces.) Beyond that, I completely agree with your assessment, Latoya.

Much in the same way I can see why Arielle Loren and some other folks can interpret Beyonce as a feminist icon, especially after “Run The World (Girls)”:

It’s one thing to complain that there are too many Beyonces in the media. I’d agree, but suggesting that she isn’t about the empowerment of women is blasphemy. Too many Destiny’s Child songs and black female karaoke sessions have proved otherwise. And there’s a reason why our First Lady can publicly state that she loves Beyonce.

Beyonce plays her role in feminism and admittedly, she’s not the spokesperson for “the pay gap between men and women or the degrading lyrics of hip-hop,” as my writer-friend Bene Viera argued. Her brand of empowerment definitely focuses on women stepping outside of the realm of shame for being sexually confident, independent, and driven in their careers.

I am disappointed in feminists that simply label Beyonce, tits and ass. Her multi-platform success has proven otherwise, she’s not just “another video vixen.” Until feminism stops becoming a clique and something primarily exclusive of the Academy, it will continue to lose power and fail to connect with a new generation of women.

Latoya: I can feel that. Like Marisol LeBron likes to say, we take what we need from what we are given. The subversive is everywhere. It’s why I feel two kinda-ways (excuse my appropriated Southernisms) about Bey’s video. It does nothing for me now. I’m grown. But it’s hard to figure out how it will impact younger folks. For example, I was the quintessential Spice Girls feminist. Really into the girl power pop days, saw the movie, thought Scary Spice was the most fabulous chick on the block, and rocked a tee shirt purchased for about $5 at a fast fashion spot that said in big silver letters “Girl Power.”

Arturo: I had a major crush on Sporty. She liked football – the real kind – rocked Adidas and drank pints. (Sorry, had to include that.)

Andrea: What? Bro… (gives Arturo side-eye)

Arturo: I was in college! I was in Kansas! I was barely old enough to drink! Different mindset, is all I’m saying. (No, but really, her solo album wasn’t horrible. Uh, I heard.)

Thinking about it a little more, though, that shows how the Spice message worked on somebody who hadn’t really thought about issues like privilege and empowerment: Sporty and the rest of the group were positioned as having taken different avenues toward independence, but the presentation was just cheeky enough so guys like me – or, perhaps more pointedly, any fathers who went to shows with their daughters – didn’t feel threatened.

Latoya: LOL – wait a sec, Art – are you copping to being a Spice Boy? Aww snap, I know what we’re doing in the karaoke bar. Anyway, back on topic. For me, that hyper commercialized super-femme performance art meets pop culture madness actually  prompted a feminist awakening – because I wore the shirt and a guy friend laughed.  “Girl Power?” He smirked at that, which pissed me off – and did start me critically thinking about “girl power” and what it actually meant and why people responded with rage, mockery, and indifference.

So, awakenings happen for all kinds of reasons.  If hearing “Girls run the world” works for some, it works.

But still – saying it in it self a feminist statement is a stretch.  I can see the critique about losing an understanding of (cis)women’s (heteronormative expressions of) sexuality – but it’s not the root of all power.  Neither is financial security, though that is a major part of women and security and freedom and power. It’s a lot of things, but it bothers me when only the bits of that are currently pop-culture acceptable are framed.

Also, just because something is fun doesn’t mean it’s feminist.  That’s why we have the fuck it, I like it rule.  Everything doesn’t have to be feminist to draw value from it.  But I think the idea of feminism has gotten super muddled.  I was watching Love and Hip Hop (more stuff to write about) and Mashonda, Swiss Beats’ ex-wife, was talking about being dropped for Alicia Keys.  And she was like “You know, you listen to these songs [like “Karma”] and think, ‘Girl Power!’  And then this happens.”

And I was sitting there on couch like “How the f-ck did you get a girl power message from ‘Karma’?”  What goes around comes around, yeah I can see that. Being jilted by a lover, can see that too.  But that song wasn’t feminist! Just like most of Bey’s songs aren’t feminist – she’s generally singing to a lover, either about loving him or leaving him.  Same thing when people were telling me “Pretty Girl Rock” was feminist – about being the cutest chick and letting boys look but not touch? Okay then…*Johnny Bravo whatever*

Again, you don’t have to say something is feminist to derive value from it.  I don’t remember people hollering that Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” was feminist, but it’s the same basic formula with a couple words swapped out.  It’s a great step song, a great cheer song … but I’m not seeing feminist intent in the Bey machine.

Andrea: I applaud Southernisms, wherever we can get ‘em in.

I know the Bey stans may want to jump on me for saying this, but here it goes: Bey tends to be behind the curve on what some may think of as subversive or transgressive visual ideas of gender and feminism, compared to artists like Ciara. When Ciara released the (still) brilliant drag-king video, “Like a Boy,” quite a few people of color were like, “Well, all right, gurl!” (We’ll skip over the overall white-feminist silence around that vid. And the bullshit misgendering from the colored quarters.)

Then, Bey followed her with “If I Were a Boy.”

And at that point, everyone just looked at it and said, “Oh.” She’s doing a “man’s” job that folks are more used to seeing women doing instead of doing a full-on take on masculinity, which really was rarely done in a mass medium like TV until Ciara.

Same thing with Willow Smith and her song, “21st Century Girl”:

Parts of the WoCasphere were in awe with her (literal) girl-power message. Beyonce rolls out this:

And there’s contention about if she’s even feminist. Take @NineteenPercent’s excellent breakdown on what’s so jainky about the video’s message. I would disagree with her on Full Frontal Feminism being the be-all-end-all of feminist texts/ideas/whatnot. That’s a book that helped her and other people formulate their thoughts around Bey and feminism–like empowerment, people find feminism in what seems like imperfect spaces. And quite a few Indigenous people would even tell her to check her facts about her claim of matriarchal societies never existing – it’s from First Nations peoples that quite a bit of what we think of as “feminism” in the West is rooted.  (To be fair, Amber agreed with this point when I brought it to her in a separate discussion.)

On the other hand, some of folks who see Bey as “girl power” may have never heard of Valenti or may even want to be bothered with her writings or what they perceive to be “white feminism” that she embodies. Bey is their feminist text and their idea–and ideal. And whatnot.

I posed this question to folks on my Twitter timeline: What’s the difference between Beyonce’s Girl Power message and Willow Smith’s Girl Power message.  Of course, folks came back with some variation of “Willow’s ten. Beyonce’s a grown-ass woman.”  More than that:

@ChrisMacDen: [Willow’s] not saying girls run the world; she is saying love your girl-self…is more “we can do it together” than “we made it.”
@ShelbyKnox: Willlow’s video is saying, “I believe girls can be powerful if we do it together.” Lots of sisrteerhood, self-love imagery.

Racializen @KJenNu tweeted this insight:

“Beyonce, this time, is more direct about her support for girls…[it] seems B needs to refute the idea girls are inferior, but Willow assumes that girls are equal, so she can talk about other things.”

Fair enough. On the real though, Bey is not my sort of feminism — and that’s not blasphemous to say. Then again, neither were the Spice Girls … or the Riot Grrls, for that matter. And I remember folks tripped on each of those pop-cultural “generations” of feminist representations, too, trying to figure out their effects on younger people. And, in the midst of those worries, we got “Like a Boy” and “21st Century Girl.” And, yeah, we got Valenti — and we got To Be Real, The Color of Violence, The Hip-hop Wars, and Feminism for Real. Feminism is rather malleable as each generation figures out what it means to them, even when we’re fighting the same old battles.  Or because of them.

Arturo: Isaac Miller and I seem to have arrived at a similar conclusion regarding the “Rule The World (Girls)” video: it struck me as an unintentional counterpoint to Sijal Hachem’s “Khalas,” video:

That song also traded in “wartime” imagery (though, as Ethar El-Katatney noted, “Khalas” takes on another context when viewed in the wake of the Arab Spring.) As a song, though, Beyonce’s track didn’t seem to have anything to it. It’s a beat pretending it’s looking for a meaning, interrupted by the hook every so often. For the sake of comparison, “Pretty Girl Rock” came across a lot clearer, even if it’s not as heavy, thematically.

I also have to agree with @NineteenPercent on the “bill of goods” argument here: what’s Beyonce is presenting (again) is a rather vague bill of goods. It’s sort of empowering, but without any examination of what’s going on in the world around the subject. And, not to get too tin-hat here, but it does what “good” pop-culture product – like my gal Sporty – is supposed to do: keep the consumer coming back to the artist for more of the same, without asking more critical questions for him or herself.

Latoya: I think that’s an excellent point, Art – this whole idea of consumption without critical thinking leading to co-option.  I think, at the core, that’s what much of the feminist protest is about.  Movements, after they make some progress, tend to be co-opted in mass culture, even as people are acting against the core values of that movement.  We see this in race, where suddenly talking about race openly is by default “racist” and people hide behind words like diversity while still excluding nonwhites from full participation in society. And we see counterculture icons like Kurt Cobain and Sid Vicious being used to sell shoes (Doc Martens, specifically, before Courtney Love raised hell.) So it’s frighteningly easy for today’s rebel cause to become tomorrow’s marketing shtick.

But the other hand is that because the personal is so political, it’s hard exactly to state what women, as a whole, should be doing, because we all come from such different spaces and have vastly different relationships with feminism.  Samhita sent me a link from a rant by Natasha Theory defending Beyonce’s vid:

I like stiletto heels and make up. I like men. I like attractive men. When I was a single woman, I liked to look at attractive men and I liked them to look at me. Does being a feminist mean that I cannot love and embrace these parts of myself?

I used to feel a deep internal conflict between who I was and what I thought my feminism should look like. But like Joan Morgan said in When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, I’ve learned to embrace a feminism that’s not afraid to “f*&k with the gray areas.” A feminism that lets me find peace in the understanding that my job as a feminist human being is to constantly work on checking the “isms” within myself, while also loving the parts of me that are healthy and conducive to my growth—even if they don’t fit into someone’s pre-conceived notion of who I should be.

And, it’s worth noting that the fabulous Ms. Morgan also wrestled with this issue herself, writing this:.

Can you be a good feminist and admit out loud that there are things you kinda dig about patriarchy?

Would I be forced to turn in my “feminist membership card” if I confessed that suddenly aking up in a world free of gender inequities or expectations might bug me out a little.

Suppose you don’t want to pay for your own dinner, hold the door open, fix things, move furniture, or get intimate with whatever’s under the hood of a car?

Is it foul to say that imagining a world where you could paint your big brown lips in the most decadents of shades, pile your phat ass into your fave micromini, slip your freshly manicured toes into four inch fuck-me sandals and not have one single solitary man objectify – I mean roam his eyes longingly over all the intended places – is, like a total drag for you?

Am I no longer down for the cause if I admit that while total gender equality is an interesting intellectual concept, it doesn’t do a damn thing for me erotically? That, truth be told, men with too many “feminist” sensibilities have never made my panties wet, at least not like that reformed thug nigga who can make even the most chauvinistic of “wassup baby” feel like a sweet wet tongue darting in and out of your ear.

I understood these things in one way, when I first read her book back in 2003. My politics have changed since then. I see these things very differently. But I bet Joan Morgan does too. It’s part of the complications of having ideals and living in society – navigating these ideas and structures and trying to parse out who we are from who we are allowed to be.

Joan Morgan asked above, so what if you don’t want to pay for your own dinner?  But later, she talks about the power of fiesty money – enough cash for a cab ride home if you and your date aren’t getting along.  I learned about the power of fuck you money – first in the context of dating (always have enough to cover your half…no, I don’t owe you $46.97 worth of pussy, I paid, thanks…and enough to get home after), then in the workplace, as a way out of really abusive and damaging work environments. And my understanding has grown.  From money and finances as a personal point, to a political point, to a global economics point.  So our understandings of things do change.

My understanding of empowerment has also changed, which is something I picked up in Natasha’s post:

I think any form of empowerment starts with an internal decision to be empowered. Beyonce’s song is just that…a creative, aesthetic, call to empowerment. NineteenPercent thinks Beyonce is a liar because she failed to speak about all of the challenges faced by women. I think Beyonce is an artist doing what artists do…creating her vision of what reality should be.

I think this is the issue with making everything in feminism about individual women’s choices.

Arturo: I would suggest, however, that Beyonce – much like, say, Lady Gaga now and Madonna back in the day – is an artist who’s positioning herself as a leading figure. Like it or not, that gives her both more attention and more scrutiny. I would agree that the lack of a bigger context behind works like “Run The World  (Girls)” and “Born This way” isn’t the artist’s fault, but it’s a part of the discussion that the market doesn’t want us as consumers to address, so it ends up surrounding the artist – and attempts to engage the issue more critically comes off as “hating.”

Latoya: Or, we can just quote Renina:

We need to be honest about who we are tying to be equal to.

Women do not run the world. The world shits on women. Ask Ester Baxter. Ask SusanGiffords. Ask the woman who claims that she was assaulted and raped by the former President of the IMF. Ask Shaniya Davis’s family.  Ask Ayianna Jones’s family. AskSakia Gunn’s family. Ask. Ask. Ask.

Now if we want to celebrate the catchiness of a Beyonce song, or honor her athletic ability, her fierceness as a dancer, that is perfectly legititmate. But to call her the face of modern day feminism is ahistorical and a slap in the face to Black, White, Latino, Asian, Muslim, Native American women and men who have been working to change our world so that being born with a vagina does not automatically mean being raised to be someones wife, street harassment material, nanny, slave or prostitute, but a fully developed human being.

Latoya: I also really liked Samhita’s point here:

Beyonce herself is in many ways acting within the system she was brought up in, being a performer from a very young age, her parents and record companies handling her entire career and most likely influencing, if not limiting, her choices in terms of creative direction and depth of politics. She is a product of a system that exploits women for capital gain and frankly in the face of that has done amazing, brilliant things, but that doesn’t change the system.

System dynamics are also important – again, it comes down to people being able to understand what goes into what they consume.

Andrea: I also think what we’re dealing with in talking about in this convo is the “suicide gene” of “the personal is political” ethos, which started in feminism: in saying that people make choices in their daily lives has these macro effects not only leads to this individualistic feminism but also to discussions about who is and isn’t a feminist, who fighting the system correctly and who’s not. It’s as if we’re not sure about what’s feminism but we’re going to say who’s *the* face of feminism? That, to me, gets into that slippery slope of “more-feminist-than-thou” policing. While we’re carrying on over here, marketeers are grabbing the muddled message, reshaping it, and lining their pockets with it.

Latoya: Right! It all comes back to a key issue – feminism is about equality, and everyone’s equality doesn’t look the same. So while we’re over here debating, someone is trying to figure out what kind of price tag to put on the next single. There’s gotta be a way to acknowledge two truthful and contradictory ideas, such as: (1) different people need different things out of feminism and (2) we have to have some common ground, as a movement, in order to take action. Because I am so not trying to have this conversation 20 years from now.

Andrea: There has to be a synthesis of, – or, at least a detente on – this, on how to talking about Bey’s message and Willow’s message and Arielle’s message and Joan’s message and Amber’s message and Samhita’s message and Renina’s mesage.

Can’t it be something like, “Y’all work it like Beyonce and grab your gurls and whip it like Willow. And Bey and Willow got some things right and some stuff a little off-key. Come on over here and check the women of color who allowed Bey and Willow to say what they’re saying – and even at that, they don’t have all the feminist answers. And then boogie on over and check out some of the women nowadays who are talking about Bey’s and Willow’s messages on a grander scale, on issues that do and will affect our lives, like having access to reproductive options, getting paid at the job where you work or want to work, getting your representatives to hear you, getting your own voices heard in media, and so on–and these women are still struggling with feminist responses to making the world better. So let’s take Bey’s and Willow’s songs, remix them, and do our part by, say, throwing a block party in honor of Octavia Butler and Duanna Johnson, and have the proceeds go to the Sylvia Rivera Law Project? Shall we all pitch in to fund the party? And who’s got the turntable?”

**TRIGGER WARNING**

I recognize the women in this preview: these women were me when I was growing up. The kids at my mostly black Catholic school called me just about every black-related perjorative ever since 3rd grade, letting me know and telling others within my earshot that I was physically inferior solely because I was dark-skinned. I even remember a boy in my 7th grade class drew a picture of me being nothing more than a solid black square. Even though the same kids voted me 8th grade class president…I was still considered in their estimation an ugly (vis-a-vis my skin tone) girl. Even had the only boy who was my boyfriend (we were in 8th grade) dump me for a lighter-skinned and younger girl, to the mocking laughter of the lighter-skinned students.

My mom—a dark-skinned African American herself—told me something that didn’t make any sense through my woundedness: “You know those light-skinned girls people think are pretty in school? Wait ‘til you’re grown and see where you’re at and where they’re at.” Added to this was my mom’s constant admonition to “get an education.” Well, sure enough, what my mom said came to pass. I’ve had photographers approach me and ask to photograph me. I had lovers of various hues—even had a husband. (He was white.) And women of various hues, races, and ethnicities have given me love on the streets, at the job, and at workshops.

I’m not sure how—or even if—some of the women in the clip worked through the pain some black people have inflicted on them. But, instead of the usual devolving, derailing, and erasing conversations of “that’s happened to me, too, though I’m a lighter-skinned black person!” (that’s a thread for another post) or “it wasn’t me! I’m a down black person!” (will be met with an exasperated eyeroll)…it would be a really good thing to simply listen to these women’s truths, as uncomfortable–sometimes, as implicating–as they may be.

Transcript after the jump.

Dark Girls: Preview from Bradinn French on Vimeo.

Voiceover: Rise, dark girls.

Interviewee #1: I can remember being in the bathtub, asking my mom to put bleach in the water so that my skin could be lighter. And so that I can escape the feeling that I had about not being as beautiful, being as acceptable, as lovable.

Interviewee #2: If we’re all just hanging out and a dark-skinned girl walked by, [some would say], “oh, she’s pretty for a dark-skinned girl.” And I’m like, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Interviewee #3: I’d used to wish that I would wake up one day lighter or would wash my face and think that it would change. I thought it was dirt and would try to clean it off but it wouldn’t.

Interviewee #4: Just doing something small as standing in front of class to do show-n-tell, I wouldn’t look up or make eye contact with anyone. I would hold my doll really tight because I knew my toy loved me even if they didn’t.

Interviewee #5: “Here comes Blackie”…”here comes Tar Baby”…I remember one in particular: they’d say, “You stayed in the oven too long.” And that was really hurtful.

Interviewee #6: And they would do it every single day without let-up: on the playground, in the classroom, in the cafeteria. Constantly you got it, so I really didn’t have a high self-esteem.

Interviewee #7: It was so damaging. It made us feel like we were unwanted, that we were less than…

Interviewee #8: My mother and her friend, we were driving somewhere. And she bragging on me: “My daughter is beautiful. She’s got great eyeleashes; she’s got the cheekbones; she’s got great lips.” And she’s going on, and she adds,”Can you imagine if she had any lightness in her skin at all? She’d be gorgeous!” And just that last little part…all that pride I had about, you know, her bragging on me, just dissipated. Just dissipated. And I think that that moment I really became aware.”

Questioner: Show me the smart child. Why is she the smart child?

Child: Because she’s white.

Questioner: OK. Show me the dumb child. And why is she the dumb child?

Child: Because she’s black.

Questioner: Show me the ugly child. And why is she the ugly child?

Child: Because she’s black.

Questioner: Show me the good-looking child. Why is she good-looking?

Child: Because she’s light-skinned.

Interviewee #9: I think I remember most saying, you know, if I have a little girl, I just…I didn’t want her to be dark.

(Chokes back tears)

I remember saying that. I didn’t want her to be dark like me.

Interviewee #1: When you’re around so many people that you trust, you know, just because you’re looking at another black person, and you’re thinking, “I’m black, you’re black. They’re not going to have anything derogatory to say about me.” But when you live so many years with people having certain judgments relative to your skin tone, you start to believe it.

Interviewee #10: A friend of mine had a baby. It was my first time seeing the baby. The baby was beautiful. [The friend ] said, “Gurl, I’m so glad she didn’t come out dark!” and when she said it, it felt like a dagger, like someone took a dagger and stuck it in my heart because I was used to expecting hearing things like that from other races. But this was someone I considered to be my sister.

Interviewee #11: Skin color amongst the black community is a huge issue in our time

Voiceover: This is not a phenomenon, It’s just the reality in the black culture.

Interviewee #12: I believe we didn’t like ourselves. Sure, it started in slavery, but we kept the vicious cycle going.

Man on the street: I mean, you know, dark-skinned women…I really don’t like dark-skinned women. They look funny beside me. So, you know, I’d rather not date a dark-skinned woman.

Off-camera interviewer: You’d rather [date] a light-skinned girl?

Man on the Street: Yeah. Light-skinned pretty girl. Long hair.

Interviewee #10: My experience with Black men is I’m exotic, I’m beautiful…they’re fascinated by me—behind closed doors. But when it came to dating, coming to the front door and taking me out in public? Doesn’t happen.

Interviewee #1: The darker you are, it’s more of a sexual approach. It’s more of a relationship-without-much-meaning sort of approach more than I-could-get-married-to-that-woman-and-have-a-few-kids.

Interviewee #7: All my lighter friends had those boyfriends. They were always seen together. But if someone wanted to date me, it was “I’ll meet you after school.” It was more of a hidden thing. Nobody ever just wanted to be with you.

Intervierwee #5: There’ve been places I’ve gone that there are just a lot of whites, and they would tell me, “You have such beautiful skin! Is that your hair? Did you dye it? Is that your natural hair?” It’s really questionable to me that they think I’m so beautiful and my own people don’t see any beauty in me at all?

Interviewee #13: I was once on CNN, debating the whole controversy about Beyonce ‘s L’Oreal ad. When a picture of her in motion was placed against a picture of her in print, everyone said there’s no way that they didn’t lighten her skin. And I don’t want to believe that that’s still happening in this day and age.

Man #1: And she’s got that good hair, too.

Man #2: You like what?

Man #1: I like girls with that light complexion.

Man #2: You’re a moron.

Man #1: I can’t help it.

Man #2: What? Being a moron?

Man #1: Yeah, that too.

Interviewee #14: Several years ago, I had decided I wanted to, umm, wear a ‘fro. I remember one young lady said to me if she ever had hair look like that, she’s had to cover it. I said to her, “Well, if you take the perm out of your hair, that’s exactly what it looks like.” And she said she’s never seen her natural hair because, from when she was small, her momma had always put something in it.

Young woman: It doesn’t look clean, I feel like. It looks, like, nasty almost. If you just roll out of bed and your hair is nappy, it’s, like, the most disgusting, most unclean thing.

Interviewee #11: I’ve had issues with having longer hair since a small child. And it did come from black kids.

Interviewee #1: Being in school, there was just such a separation among girls who were lighter-skinned and girls who were darker-skinned

Interviewee #15: It was really bad in junior high school. With Nair, I knew people who threw bowls of it in their hair just to take it. So, yeah, we were separated, and it caused a lot of friction among children. Which now, as an adult, just seems stupid to me.

Interviewee #16: The racism we have as a people, among ourselves, is a direct backlash of slavery. The “house niggers” versus the “field niggers.” The paper-bag rule: if you’re darker than a paper bag, the whole thing. We as a people were so disenfranchised that we adopted some of that. A lot of that.

Interviewee #17: I think the problems within the black community has to do more with our lack of unity. We really don’t see each other as being part of the community, partly because we don’t have a language or have something tangible besides our skin color to say, “I am a part of you. You are a part of me.” In the black community it’s, “No, I’m not black! I’m Caribbean,” or ‘No! I’m not black! I’m Haitian.” No, you’re black.

Interviewee #9: Rise, dark girls. Rise.

(Music)

Yes, these women in the clip remind me of myself, where I could have gone mentally (emotionally, spiritually, etc.) if I didn’t have the mom I have. Watching this clip made me want to loan my mom to each and every one of them so they could hear her intervening message and wipe their tears. Moms may even update her advice: “And I’m going to tell you what I just told my own daughter: look at the First Lady and tell me that a dark-skinned woman is unattractive and unloveable.” I may even send Moms over to the house of Interviewee #8’s mom to verbally whup her ass.

At the same time, as I told sex blogger/filmmaker Arielle Loren in our Facebook conversation about the preview, I feel a bit skeeved by the clip. Even though the conversation about shadeism and its particular effects on darker-hued black women is needed, it also plays on the “pitiful, unloveable dusky Negress” trope that can be emotionally exploitive for the participants and for the viewers…and seems to be a new spin on the “unattractive and unmarriable black woman” trope that’s been on the uptick for a minute. As Arielle said in the thread, “While I don’t want to shake the finger at something “positive,” if the director still is in the editing process…It’s important to also show dark girls who were empowered and managed to build strong self-esteem despite the overwhelming negative opinions of our community and society at large.” I responded, “ But what you’re saying makes me wonder if 1) the doc makers (Bill Duke and D. Channsin Berry) even interviewed anyone with an “empowered” perspective or 2) when this clip was edited for the ‘ad campaign’ the thought was ‘let’s use the trope of the ‘unloveable, pitiable dusky Negress’ to get the buzz going and, eventually, to get people to watch it.”

But again, this is a preview. According to the Vimeo page, the film won’t be released until Fall or Winter 2011. I think this film is participating in a conversation that’s so necessary—if, for no one else, for the women in the documentary and for quite a few darker-skinned black women carrying and maybe destructively acting from this wound. But, as we say in these parts, Black people—and that definitely includes Black women—aren’t a monolith. So, I hope this film presents more sides to this issue, more and varied voices of dark-skinned black women to speak about this hurtful issue. And that this clip will be re-edited to reflect those women’s experiences.

If need be, I’ll happily volunteer my mom and me.

Photo credits: Courtesy of Andrea (AJ) Plaid

Remember this?

Toni Bond Leonard, President/CEO of Black Women’s Reproductive Justice BWRJ), said this about it (from RH Reality Check):

“The groups behind these heinous attacks upon Black women care nothing about Black children or the Black community. These are some of the same groups who fought against healthcare reform and oppose government safety net programs that would directly benefit Black women, our families and our communities.”

“This billboard and the twenty-nine others they plan to erect are offensive to Black women and the Black community, overall. We saw them cowardly placing the billboards in the dark late last night. These billboards are painting an abhorrent image of Black women as perpetrators of a plan to eradicate the future Black race.”

“That they would place these billboards in the Black community with such a despicable lie is reprehensible. It also must not go unnoted that they placed the billboards on the side of a building facing a vacant lot filled with garbage and broken glass. This only further shows their disrespect for Black women and the Black community that all they could think to do was put up billboards telling us Black women are preventing future leaders from being born. What about highlighting the need for economic resources to remove garbage-filled lots in urban areas and creating safe communities.”

And, according to BWRJ, Life Always, the anti-choice group who placed these billboards around Chicago’s South Side,  is backed up by the same funders who are down with Sarah Palin. o_O

Akiba Solomon, in her analysis of the Chicago anti-choice ads, writes on how artist Stacey Muhammed re-imagines them:

(The small print says: “Police terrorism, incarceration, medical apartheid, miseducation, poverty, racial profiling.)

As well as this:

(The copy: “The most dangerous place for an African American is in a world that criminalizes its mothers.”)

Then, thanks to a tip from reproductive-justice advocate extraordinaire Aimee Thorne-Thomsen, we heard that Chicago Tribune reports on a group–who wanted to remain anonymous beyond identifying as “social workers and community members”–who felt like this about those ads:

This sign says, “In 21 minutes this sign should be gone.” Another sign from the protesters said, “Abort Racism.” Chicago Tribune’s Megan Twohey writes that one blew away.  Unfortunately.

Photo/image credits:  Life Always; Stacey Muhammed/Colorlines; Heather Charles/Chicago Tribune

“[I]t’s clear those who fight against reproductive choice for women of color know nothing of why women choose abortion Rather than create fake concern for a community these people have never set foot in, Life Always should spend their energies helping us address the reasons why women decide to choose abortion.  The procedures we help fund are because out community is among the least likely to have regular access to healthcare, family planning and comprehensive sex education.  Our services exist because our women are among the most likely to be victims of sexual assault…

“Women have a legal right to access abortion services and should not be shamed regarding the personal choices they make.  Abortion is a personal decision, not a political discussion.  We will not be moved moved by this anti-choice attempt to hijack our communities.”

~~Chicago Abortion Fund‘s Executive Director Gaylon Alcaraz

If you want to let Life Always know how you feel about their billboard, you can sign a petition here.

Photo credit: groundswellfund.org

Hat tip to reproductive-rights activist Shelby Knox for this:  today the anti-choice group Life Always, the group behind the billboard that was taken down in New York City due to the melding of online and offline activism, reveals its latest billboard in a press conference in Chicago.

According to Life Always’ press release, about 30 of these outdoor ads will be place around Chicago’s South Side, where President Obama served as a community organizer and where First Lady Obama grew up.  So, since using the image of a darling little Black girl stirred up a fiasco instead collective guilt over not wanting to carry a fetus to term,  the group decides to go for double-barrel sentimentality with the placement of this message: the soft spot that some Chicagoans have for their  hometown heroes and connecting the termination of a pregnancy to the nationalist trigger-word of “genocide.”

To further push the racial-guilt sappiness, Life Always Board Member Reverend Derek McCoy, one of the attendees at today’s press conference said, “Our future leaders are being aborted at an alarming rate. These are babies who could grow to be the future Presidents of the United States, or the next Oprah Winfrey, Denzel Washington or Maya Angelou.”

::Direct laser side-eye::

What would be great is if any or all of these celebrities–especially the POTUS and the FLOTUS–publicly told the anti-choice group to get their names out of the group’s mouth because they’re not feeling the anti-choice  message.

According to Huffington Post Chicago, other leaders joining Rev. McCoy include “former 2nd Congressional district GOP candidate Rev. Isaac Hayes, Rev. Ceasar LeFlore, [sic] and Pastor Stephen Broden, an anti-choice activist who ran for office as a Republican in Texas last year.” The press conference for the first billboard, to be hung in an empty lot at 5812 S. State Street, Chicago, will be held at 11AM.

After getting pelted with a flurry of criticism, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason announced on Friday that it would be pulling its’ “Tibetan restaurant” Super Bowl commercial from the air.

What he didn’t do was apologize.

Instead, his statement on the company’s blog hit on some all-too-familiar talking points for non-culpa explanations, like, “We hate that we offended people, and we’re very sorry that we did,” and, “To those who were offended, I feel terrible that we made you feel bad.”

The ad, the second in a series of commercials to air throughout the day Feb. 6, veered from having actor Timothy Hutton seemingly discussing the plight of the people of Tibet to boasting about getting a good deal at a Chicago restaurant thanks to Groupon. According to Mason, the ad, which cost $100,000 per second during the Super Bowl, will have stopped airing as of Feb. 12.

Meanwhile, the Pepsi Max “Love Hurts” commercial, which featured a hyper-aggressive black woman physically harassing her husband into sticking with his diet, and then hitting a white woman with a can after he ogles a white woman, has picked up at least one defender since drawing its’ own share of online criticism. In a column earlier this week, the Daily Beast’s Raina Kelly called it “classic marital humor”:

If kicking your husband under the table defines a mean, angry, emasculating shrew, than I am guilty as charged and a disgrace to black women everywhere. Allow me the slightest autobiography in explanation. Not long ago, my husband volunteered to shovel my parents’ roof. It was a lovely thing to do, but saving his in-laws’ house was no defense when he expressed doubts about my proposed safety precautions. My response? “If you take that rope off your waist, I’ll come out there and kill you myself.” Yes, I played into stereotype, but hurling threats is a lot more efficient than calming (and whitely?) saying, “Honey, darling, love of my life. I would be bereft and despairing if you fell and broke your neck. Please wear the rope. It may be pointless but it would soothe my agitated soul.” I was trying to save a life, same as the wife in the Pepsi Max commercial. Obesity related diseases run rampant in the black community. Just being black is a risk factor for these illnesses so I say she should be applauded for her efforts, not demonized.

Picture courtesy of Shanghaiist

It didn’t take long for Groupon to bust out the “quirkyness” defense after its’ Super Bowl ad campaign went over like the Black Eyed Peas’ halftime show. But the company has only itself to blame. Video and transcript of the ad in question are under the cut.

To recap: the spot – the second of three Groupon aired throughout the day – used the oppression faced by the people of Tibet as the set-up for a colossally tone-deaf joke of a pitch featuring actor Timothy Hutton.

Here’s the script:

Mountainous Tibet – one of the most beautiful places in the world. This is Timothy Hutton. The people of Tibet are in trouble, their very culture in jeopardy. But they still whip up an amazing fish curry. And since 200 of us bought on Groupon.com we’re getting $30 worth of Tibetan food for just $15 at Himalayan Restaurant in Chicago.

A post on Groupon’s “serious” blog said the company chose Crispin Porter + Bogusky because their pitch that appealed to its’ “peculiar” sense of humor.

Unfortunately, the joke has been on Groupon since the spot aired. The response online has been quick and brutal, on Twitter and beyond. Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb summed up the case for why the spot fell flat:

It was an attempt at post-serious humor – but most people with common sense agree that the struggles of Tibet still deserve respect and seriousness. The joke is on anyone who really cares. It came across as the kind of out-of-touch humor that overprivileged, spiritually mean, advertising industry creatives (specifically, the kind that kids refer to as “douchebags”) would come up with.

Sunday night, the company tweeted a link to its’ “Save The Money” campaign, which provides the context the commercial was sorely lacking, with the ability for people to donate to The Tibet Fund. But what Groupon doesn’t seem to understand is, the ad doesn’t reflect the company’s efforts in any way – the campaign’s website wasn’t even displayed during the spot. The big brains at Crispin Porter + Bogusky were so busy being ironic, they didn’t think of writing a line for Hutton that could have tied it all together: The people of Tibet are in trouble, their very culture in jeopardy. But, if you sign up with Groupon.com, you can help them survive – and save a little money, too.

Vivek Kunwar, one of Himalayan’s co-owners, told CNN the commercial was “an ‘uh-oh’ moment”:

“It came out the opposite of what they were hoping for,” the co-owner said.

Kunwar said the advertisement was not filmed in their restaurant but on a set.

“From our part, we hope people realize it was not us,” Kunwar said.

“We participated because we liked the cause. (Groupon) should’ve considered the sensitivity of the matter,” Kunwar said Groupon has not reached out to the Himalayan Restaurant since the commercial aired.

“Nobody has called me but I definitely do want to talk to their people and ask them what they were thinking,” he told CNN.

“It makes Groupon look bad, it makes us look bad and it was not the way it should’ve been done.”

Kunwar said he expects the three-restaurant chain will receive complaints, and he is concerned about future business.

Tibetans and Chinese in their community may “be a little unhappy with it,” he said.

**********
Even though Groupon was the most prominent offender, let’s not forget this number from Pepsi Max:

One has got to say this: that’s an impressive amount of stereotyping to cram into 30 seconds.

As for that halftime show … well, if you’ve got a few minutes, maybe this can help chase those memories away:

In a way, author and journalist Jennifer L. Pozner’s latest work was endorsed by The Learning Channel, without her even having to appear:

We have made it known from the start that Sarah Palin’s Alaska is not a political show.   Sure, there has been plenty of conversation of Sarah Palin’s Alaska through a political lens — some of it on our blogs — but when the focus turns political the conversation goes off track.  And for that reason we try to avoid conversations that are seen as being political wherever possible.

- Brian Reich, host, Sarah Palin’s Alaska podcast

Over the weekend, Pozner, founder and executive director of Women in Media & News, and more recently the author of Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth about Guilty Pleasure TV, was invited, then un-invited from appearing on the channel’s Alaska podcast after Pozner called the series a “series-long unpaid political advertisement.” Her post and subsequent live-tweeting of an episode, Reich went on to say, “created an untenable environment tonight that wouldn’t allow for us to focus on the topic we both want to discuss.”

Translation: the call-in portion of the show would veer into flame-war territory, because Pozner’s analysis would have revealed some truths TLC and Palin’s fanbase weren’t comfortable confronting.

Indeed, Reality Bites Back makes its’ stand not just on analyzing the goings-on in front of the cameras in shows like The Bachelor, America’s Next Top Model and Flava Of Love – identified as three turning points in the Reality TV genre – but in shining a light on the behind-the-scenes machinations that go into making this kind of “entertainment” possible. The tone is set early on, as we get a closer look at the thought process of Mike Darnell, the Fox executive who changed the game 10 years ago, when he brought Who Wants To Marry a Multi-Millionaire? to the airwaves with executive producer Mike Fleiss:

Mike and I … knew that the National Organization for Women would hate us. That this would be the most controversial show ever! We thought it was all good, but it got so hot, so crazy red-hot. They said it was the most talked-about show since Roots! It was the lead sketch on Saturday Night Live.

Fleiss went on to launch The Bachelor in 2002, and Fox promoted Darnell, giving him the all-clear to launch shows like Joe Millionaire, The Swan and Temptation Island. Fleiss provides a chilling summation of these and other programs’ calling cards: “It’s a lot of fun to watch girls crying. Never underestimate the value of that.”

Under Pozner’s lens, the multi-pronged assault on these shows’ female participants and feminism in general is only confirmed: the emphasis on restrictive norms concerning body type; the faux-Cinderella narratives; the consumerism; and, as regards race, the wholesale revival of the worst of stereotypes, with the introduction of Flava Of Love setting the stage:

Producers made sure viewers understood that race was the reason why this show was so different from anything we’d seen before. From the archetypal reality TV limousine during the series premiere, Flav screamed, “I know y’all heard of that show called The Bachelor. Flavor Flav is the Black-chelorrrrrrrr … orrrrrrr ….” Lest that prove too subtle, he yelled, “I’m the pimp behind the wheels!”

While Flava and its’ extended family of spin-offs pick off contestants’ self-esteem at the “street” level, another chapter in the book focuses on Tyra Banks and the high-rise abuse on Top Model. On the page, without the camouflage of mood music or product placement, the show’s pattern of victim-blaming and hypocrisy is laid bare, from the framing of Yaya DaCosta in Season 3 as pretentious to the “sexy little animals” photo shoots. Yet, Pozner theorizes that Banks herself is dealing with her own form of brainwashing:

From age fifteen on, Banks was raised by the fashion and beauty industry and its advertisers. In loco parentis, they gave her fame and fortune beyond her wildest dreams – but always while pitting her against other women, requiring her to hide her natural hair and reminding her that her value depended on being young and thin. And so the cycle continues.

Pozner makes it clear she doesn’t want people to not watch the genre, but, through games, how-to tips on writing to programmers; and community-oriented mini-commentaries from an array of guests, she devotes the book’s final two chapters to a sort-of self-help guide of her own: how we as readers and viewers can watch these shows and their ilk more critically – and, hopefully, stem the tide of faux-reality a little bit at a time. On a personal note, I’d recommend buying this book for the avid Flava, Tyra or Bachelor fan on your holiday list as part of that process.

By Arturo R. García

A reader sent us this ad for what Duncan Hines is calling “Hip Hop Cupcakes.” Uh huh.

I couldn’t embed it because the coding’s wonky, but as you might expect, the commercial for these cakes takes its’ cue from the old California Raisins ads, which adds another layer of weirdness: if you’re going to call them hip-hop cupcakes, then shouldn’t at least one of them at least do a verse? Or was “Beatboxing Biscuits” already taken? At least some folks on the ad campaign’s YouTube page have caught on to its’ problematic nature and pointed it out.

Meanwhile, in Indiana …

Thanks to Tami for pointing this story out: a defense attorney in Noblesville, IN was found to be selling soaps with names like “Darkie,” “Monkey Brand” and “Kolored Kids” at a store he and his wife own, and wastes little time pulling out all the stops in defending the merch to WXIN-TV: the Historical Value card (they’re “nostalgic” and stored in a “joke drawer”); the Victim Card (“You politically correct people can dance to your own tune”); the I’m Not Racist card (both of them note they defend black clients) and, in a partial transcript of their conversation with reporter Kimberly King, the C.R.E.A.M. Card:

You’re making money off of racism.
Gary: Racism? Our country was built on racism. If it didn’t sell we wouldn’t sell it. People buy it.

But should you be the middleman to make a profit off racism?
Gary: Racism?

People are going to be appalled at this.
Gary: They are? Then people are just too politically correct. How about gay people in our country. Would they be offended by “Gay Johnny” and “The Fairy soap.” (Gary then showed the soaps labeled “Gay johnny” and “The Fairy soap”). This is free publicity and I hope it makes every channel, because people will come in here.

People will think you’re a racist because you’re selling this soap.
Gary: I’m a businessman selling a product people buy

Why would you want to be making a profit off of racism?
Gary: Because it’s a legal product

But don’t you have a moral principle not to promote something like this?
Gary: In our country the almighty dollar says it all, ma’am

Can’t wait to see the grand opening at their new store.