“Though we tremble before uncertain futures/ may we meet illness, death and adversity with strength/ may we dance in the face of our fears.”
― Gloria E. Anzaldúa

Mosquita y Mari is a slow paced exploration of being a teenager peering over the brink of adulthood. Set in a Mexican-American neighborhood in Los Angeles, Mosquita y Mari follows the lives of two very different Chicana teenagers. Yolanda (Fenessa Pineda) is a studious high-achiever, a dutiful daughter from a loving home. Mari (Venecia Troncoso) is rebellious and volatile, with a chip on her shoulder that crowds out most of the world. Circumstances toss them together again and again, and they embark on a deep and intense friendship.

In her press kit, writer/director Aurora Guerrero writes:

The inspiration behind my debut feature-film, Mosquita y Mari, was my own adolescence. Initially, when I decided I wanted to write a feature-length script I kept coming back to a series of complex, same-sex friendships I had while growing up. When looking back, long before I identified as queer, I realized my first love was one of my best friends. It was the type of friendship that was really tender and sweet but also sexually charged. Despite the fact that we had the makings of a beautiful teen romance we never crossed that line. The beginnings of Mosquita y Mari was reflecting back on that time and asking myself the questions, why didn’t we cross that line and what kept us in “our place”? I didn’t grow up in a household where my parents forewarned me that if I turned out to be gay they would disown me. They didn’t wave the Bible in my face saying it was wrong. Instead the message was subtle. It was hidden in the silences around sex and desire; it was implied in society’s expectations, you know, like you only experience those feelings of love and desire with the opposite sex. I think all of us are subject to society’s rules so I think many people can relate to this story of censored friendship. That was the initial inspiration. [...]

This process of self exploration that I embarked on while writing this script led me to position this budding love story within the immigrant world. The core conflict in the story of Mosquita y Mari isn’t a homophobic parent getting in the way of their experience but rather the pressures that come with surviving as an immigrant or coming from a legacy of self-sacrifice for the sake of family and status in society. In the end, what I ended up writing was a coming of age story where both my protagonists find themselves paving a new path for themselves and their families.

And you know it’s serious when the credits include a thank you to Cherríe L. Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa.

The movie is in Spanglish, almost as if Guerrero hung this quote on her wall while she was writing:

“Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate. I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue – my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.”
― Gloria E. Anzaldúa

Interestingly, much of the scenes in MyM are specifically constructed to rely on a teen’s body language to convey how they are feeling. The film is constructed with care – showing the struggles between the two girls to grow into who they will become. For Yolanda (semi-affectionately termed mosquita by Mari), her relentless quest for good grades was becoming less and less satisfying, yet the world of drinking, getting high, and boys offered by her old friends doesn’t appeal to her. She finds a third way in Mari’s “live in the moment style” and soon finds herself navigating that difficult boundary between a passionate friendship and romantic love.

Mari, on the other hand, already has one foot into the adult world. After her father dies, her mother has problems making ends meet. Mari routinely blows off school to try to raise money for the household. Her mother is caught between wanting Mari to focus on school and to make a better life for herself, but the money Mari provides is too important to go without. Mari, bright but full of rage at her impossible circumstances, finds solace in Yolanda’s simplicity and steadfastness but doesn’t always know how to balance their idyllic relationship with the demands of the real world.

Interweaving themes of family, duty, love, and belonging, MyM succeeds in revealing the inner lives of teenage girls. The most devastating parts of the film revolve around the petty betrayals that anyone who has been through adolescence will remember – the betrayals by others, desperately trying to assert their identities, and the scarring betrayals of the self, knowing you are trying to be someone you are not. While the heavy emphasis on hazy, lingering shots may have some viewers wishing to hit fast forward, Guerrero nails the messy inner lives of teenagers for what they are. And unlike 2005′s Wassup Rockers, MyM places the burden of the story squarely on the teenagers telling the tale. As it should be.

By Arturo R. García

Just when you thought Satoshi Kanazawa had wrapped up Tone-Deaf Article Of The Year honors for 2011, Forbes’ Gene Marks sauntered his way into consideration Monday with “If I Were A Poor Black Kid,” which spun a speech by President Obama on economic inequality into a privilege-fest with bon mots like these, emphasis mine:

If I was a poor black kid I would first and most importantly work to make sure I got the best grades possible. I would make it my #1 priority to be able to read sufficiently. I wouldn’t care if I was a student at the worst public middle school in the worst inner city. Even the worst have their best. And the very best students, even at the worst schools, have more opportunities. Getting good grades is the key to having more options. With good grades you can choose different, better paths. If you do poorly in school, particularly in a lousy school, you’re severely limiting the limited opportunities you have.

Somehow Forbes chose not to tag the bit about good grades as BREAKING NEWS. But maybe Marks’ editors didn’t want to overshadow the moment when he breaks it down even further than the President. That whole Occupy business? Totally barking up the wrong tree:

President Obama was right in his speech last week. The division between rich and poor is a national problem. But the biggest challenge we face isn’t inequality. It’s ignorance. So many kids from West Philadelphia don’t even know these opportunities exist for them. Many come from single-parent families whose mom or dad (or in many cases their grand mom) is working two jobs to survive and are just (understandably) too plain tired to do anything else in the few short hours they’re home. Many have teachers who are overburdened and too stressed to find the time to help every kid that needs it. Many of these kids don’t have the brains to figure this out themselves – like my kids. Except that my kids are just lucky enough to have parents and a well-funded school system around to push them in the right direction.

And about Prof. Melissa Harris-Perry thinking Marks’ column sounded like something out of The Onion? Well, she’s not wrong:

You know, it occurs to me that you don’t even live in America. And I’ve got to know, what the heck are you doing living in Sri Lanka? What do they have there? Camels? Rugs? Well, I can tell you one thing they don’t have: 100 percent grade-A American opportunity.

America is the land of milk and honey. You can probably catch a flight here from Sri Lanka for as little as $2,500 if you shop around. So what’s keeping you? Okay, I can imagine how it is: you live in a back alley and you eat garbage. And maybe you don’t have the liquid capital to outlay $2,500 on a luxury-like first-class airfare to the U.S. Well, you can always fly coach for about a third of first-class fare, and if worst comes to worst, put it on the plastic. As long as you pay it off as quickly as you can, the interest won’t cramp your style. (See Tip #1.)

It should also be noted that, as, Talking Point Memo’s Callie Schweitzer pointed out, Marks has also applied his “wisdom” to gender-equality issues in the workplace:

Women also have more personal and social pressures than men. And this affects their ability to further their careers and get the experience they need to become good managers. It’s common today for families to have two working parents. But let’s admit it, when little Johnny gets sick at school who’s the first person that’s usually called? When a child is up at night coughing, which parent is staying up with her? When the plumber has to make an emergency morning visit, who’s generally staying at home to deal with it?

It’s usually mom. And even if she has a full time job too.

When my wife and I were younger and our baby would cry in the middle of the night I would put a pillow…over my head. That stopped the crying for sure. My wife (who was working full time by the way) was the one who got out of bed to care for the child. Yes, I was an ass. I’m not saying that many dads don’t pitch in or try to do their fair share. But as much as women have achieved in earning their equality, there are still some age old cultural habits that won’t die. Children need their mommies. And most moms I know, whether they have a full time job or not, want to be there for their child. I know plenty of women who admit they struggle with this instinctual tug on their gut. Men don’t have this kind of instinctual tug. Let’s face it: unless there’s beer involved, men don’t have many instincts at all. We figure our wives will ultimately handle these things. And in many cases, they just do.

I could go on and on, and but, you know – beer. More reaction from around the ‘Net under the cut.

In other words, there’s more to getting a foot-hold in middle class than simply knowing how to use Google Scholar. There are a number of complex and tangle-ly mazes to maneuver when one is climbing up the socioeconomic ladder. Working hard is important; but let’s not be naïve. Gene Marks gives no real mention of the hard road ahead it will be for this kids like – access to a full range of technology, transportation to these those fancy-pants magnet schools. And what about supplies, equipment, oh and perquisite education just not offered at those lousy public schools. You see, no matter how hard a kid tries, when the smartest student from a poor-functioning school district walks into my freshman biology class, I can tell. And from day one, she or he is playing catch-up with the kids who attended those private or suburban school districts.
- DN Lee, Scientific American

Everything about Marks’ stupid, stupid essay assumes as unchanging truth that a poor person will have to work ridiculously hard in order to have a future where they are not poor, and this is the root of the problem that Marks not only doesn’t address but asserts is just not that big a deal in his preamble when, after applauding Barack Obama for talking about income inequality, claims that the superrich aren’t getting vastly more than their fair share. Because there’s nothing wrong with expecting someone to work hard to rise above their current status. But there’s plenty wrong with expecting kids to load themselves to the bone with work in order to have a chance to rise above their current status.5 He’s willing to pay lip service to the idea that inequality is wrong, but he’s not willing to suggest that something be done to address the problem of inequality. It’s just another hurdle for poor black kids to jump, and he’s ever so gracious to admit that he, Gene Marks, did not have to jump these hurdles – and that’s just how it is. Tough luck, poor black kids! Those of you who cannot do these incredible and amazing things to struggle upwards, well, there’s always McDonald’s.
- Christopher Bird, MightyGodKing.com

We Negroes are familiar with this particular brand of help. The #WhiteLove™ style of caring. Movies love to show how, when a white person with an open mind shows up and deals with poor blacks, their lives are magically changed. As I read this piece, I sighed to myself and mumbled, “White liberals.”

Please stop your furious typing. I’m not claiming that all white liberals are as completely clueless as Mr. Marks. I’m not even sure that Mr. Marks is, in fact, liberal — but this brand of “help” normally comes wrapped in an “I’m here with you, man! I understand your pain” bow that is purchased at your nearest “Awesome Liberals Totally Get It” gift shop. It’s the “Let me help you help you” brand of awesome.
- Elon James White, The Root

Excuse me Mr. Marks, while I understand and somewhat agree with your position, when was the last time you heard of Black kindergartners in inner-city Chicago receiving iPads? I’ve got all day.

He goes on to say that poor black children need to try their hardest to research nationally recognized magnet schools in hopes to attend. The accelerated learning material will put them on the track to college and higher learning.

Um, once more. I don’t know a child– white, Black, or otherwise– researching schools to attend in hopes of a better tomorrow. They would much rather be out playing with friends or watching cartoons, ignorant to the fact that the educational gap is indeed widening.
- Camille Travis, Uptown Magazine

If I was a rich white dude I would first and most importantly work to make sure I actually saw what it’s like to live as a poor black kid myself before I wrote a condescending column about how we should solve “our” problems. I would make it my #1 priority to spend some actual time with a working-class black family. Obviously, I wouldn’t know any personally, but I’d outreach to a social services program or an inner city school for help finding one willing to let me talk to them. Even the most privileged and obtuse person can look up the name of a charitable nonprofit in the phone book. And if you’re a technology columnist and business consultant, you’ll have even more resources: You can use Google!

Getting firsthand insights is the key to writing an informed column. By seeing and talking to actual people facing the actual situation you’re covering, you can choose to pen a different, better piece. If you choose to give advice about poverty from the comfort of your heated office, behind your expensive computer, in your ergonomic Aeron chair, you’re severely increasing the chances that you’ll look like an arrogant, condescending jerk.

And I would use the contacts available to me as a columnist for a magazine for rich white dudes. My school teacher says that columnists usually have or can find all kinds of stuff online these days. That’s because (and sadly) it’s oftentimes the only way that lazy columnists who don’t want to do their own reporting can get data to inform their opinions.
- Jeff Yang, WNYC

“Whose food?”

Our food.

Signs of “Turn the beet around!” (an obvious nod to the fact that most beets in the US, the source of a large percentage of our granulated sugar, are genetically modified), “Zucchini Park,” and “Take back our food!” filled Wall Street as the members and supporters of the #OccupyBigFood movement made their way into Zucotti Park, with myself and the toddler in tow, bringing up the rear.

I’d made the decision to go a long time ago, when one of the supporters left a link in my comments regarding the original affair. That scheduled Saturday was also the date of the first “Big Snow” of the pending 2011-2012 disgustingly-wet-and-blisteringly-cold season, so it was ill-attended (which meant that I wound up out there among the #OWS Tent City.)

The human mic system at Zuccotti Park blasted valuable message after valuable message, meaningful morsel of info after meaningful morsel:

“Corporate entities are ensuring big subsidies for themselves while convincing Congress to cut money from programs like SNAP…”

“The Union that makes up the people that SERVE that food stand in solidarity with the people who are treated inhumanely and are made to harvest that food for pennies,”

“We want a sustainable system that ensures and guarantees access for everyone,”

All things that we stand for here, though it may not be coming from the same angles as those at the #OccupyBigFood rally.

I attended the rally because, aside from the fact that I felt some kind of solidarity to a movement that supports living la vida locavore, but I felt like it needs to be clear that the people who complain about the current food climate are not merely wealthy and white. Persons of color, women, mothers, children… we are all affected by poor decision making, favoritism, nepotism and ass kissing that takes place in Congress, and it’s important for us to do what we can do to prevent people from dismissing valuable dialogue as “elitism,” which – as we all know – is code for “privileged white people talk.”

I stood as a part of the huge human mic system and helped convey the message that we are not powerless, we are not to be dismissed as merely “foodies” and we are not going anywhere. We – according to “you” – have money and will spend it locally and support our own system. We’ve decided yours isn’t working.

That’s what I left #OccupyBigFood with – a renewed sense in the fact that not only is the current system an utter failure, but it is up to us to change it for ourselves. If the government that we elect can justify cutting the program that funnels money into small businesses in underserved areas – because, let’s face it, that’s exactly what food stamps is and exactly what it does – thereby causing the businesses in the area to suffer as well as the people who use food stamps to buy their products, then you can rest assured that it’ll be a long damn time before they do anything to secure our food supply. They don’t care like we do, and that – at least, to me, is fine.

Why? Because if we are conscious enough to know that we should buy locally, we are also conscious enough to know that there are those of us who don’t have access, and need help getting there. If we can innovate enough to turn a backwards bathrobes (also known as a Snuggie) into a million-dollar invention, surely we can innovate to create small sub communities that can enjoy produce and meat without adulteration. We can continue to educate about healthy choices and assist, as well as support, our peers in making them.

There were a few speakers at the event – the leader of a food workers’ union, a gentleman who identified himself and his wife as “One of the 1%ers you complain about, but we stand in solidarity with you!” and a certain nutritionist you might’ve heard of, but at the end of it all, I wish I had grabbed the mic and had my OWN mic check:

“In a world where any human being with a heart believes it is acceptable to cut money intended to assist the poor in staying fed as well as funding the small businesses in the area who service those poor, it is unfathomable to me that people could turn their backs on the idea of genuinely helping and supporting one another. These companies, with their lies and disregard for their customers, they don’t give a damn about you and me… they only care about what’s in our wallets… well now, they’re not getting what’s in THERE either! I’m spending my money as far away from those corrupt big names as I possibly can, and maybe THEN the Krafts, General Mills’ and Kelloggs of the world will finally change their ways!”

Alas, I didn’t. I was too busy consoling the ornery kindergartner (!) standing on my leg. My overall point is that we don’t have enough time to wait for someone else to do this for us, and our best means of supporting the movement is by trying to funnel as much money as possible into its expansion. Multinationals started out as tiny operations once, too. Money helps any-and-everything grow. You’ve got to put your money where your mouth is. I think that message was conveyed well without me, anyway.

At any rate, the rally was successful. I’m interested in what coverage – if any – the rally may have received, and whether or not anyone was able to get my full ‘fro in a shot… er, I mean, whether the diverseness of the crowd was covered adequately. I also got to meet a certain awesome author and professor named Marion Nestle, and thank her for her book. If you didn’t notice, I’m a bit of a “follow the money” type, and talking to me in terms of logic and corrupt policy in regards to corporate decision making is a pretty good way to convince me that money, not health, was the reason behind so much of what we see in food today. You follow the money, you can find the reality behind anything. I wish more people thought that way.

Would I attend again? Of course. To help express the fact that there are people who live in food deserts who have no choice other than frito-lay products and lunchables; to remind us all that even in our quest for food sustainability, the issue of compromised health is plaguing those of us who either struggle with affording or struggle for access to fresh and local produce; and to help us realize that education and conscious consumerism are the best ways to affect change. No greater reminder of this exists, for me, than the fact that our community is so culturally and financially diverse. Some of us are in cow-pools; others have given up meat completely because they can’t afford the ethically grown stuff. Some of us are complete locavores; and some of us are strictly frozen-vegetarians. Some of us are wild pescetarians, and others are, well, budgetarians. We know Hippocrates was right – “let thy medicine be thy food, and let thy food be thy medicine” – and now it’s time the rest of the country learns that, as well.

PS: Okra pie, though?

Image credits: Erika Nicole Kendall

By Guest Contributor Jorge Antonio Vallejos, cross-posted from Black Coffee Poet

Mythili Rajiva is associate professor of Sociology at Saint Mary’s University (Halifax, Nova Scotia). Her research focuses on girlhood, the Canadian South Asian diaspora, and racialized identities. Her work has appeared in such journals as The Canadian Review of Sociology, Girlhood Studies and Feminist Media Studies. She is the co-editor of Reena Virk: Critical Perspectives on a Canadian Murder.

BCP: Why a book on Reena Virk?

MR: The idea of working on the case had been in my head from about 2004 onwards, maybe because of a shift in my own identity from being a graduate student just starting a ph.d. in 1997 to where I was in 2004, finishing my thesis. I think it was Salman Rushdie who once said that the journey creates us; writing a thesis on South Asian Canadian girls’ experiences of racism in adolescence made me realize how much I cared about social justice issues.

The case had always haunted me, but up to this point, it had been at a visceral level. When I started analyzing it through the scholarship on racism and identity that I’d read for my thesis, I realized the case mattered to me deeply, both at a personal as well as a political level. But when I started doing research, I found very little academic work.

What little there was, was excellent, and informed much of my thinking around the topic; but the scholars who were offering a more complex and critical reading of the case seemed to be writing into a void, as if no one was listening. It seemed even stranger to me that such a highly publicized case would not be taken up at the very least by criminologists or other researchers in a more sustained fashion. But it wasn’t. Before we published this collection, the only book available on Virk’s murder was Rebecca Godfrey’s True Crime novel, which, as a couple of authors in our collection point out (see Atluri; also see Byers), offered a problematic re-telling of the story.

So I was reading this great scholarship, and wondering why there wasn’t more, and then I met Sheila and we talked about doing some kind of project together. I decided that we needed to encourage more critical scholarship on this case, a next generation so to speak, and even more crucially, we needed it not to disappear from public view, as most academic work does, in a single article in a journal or book. I initially considered a special issue in a journal, but this didn’t seem to offer enough scope, especially since I felt that anything written on the case would have to locate itself in relation to the earlier material. I wanted to bring both the existing and new material together; I think like any solidarity movement, there’s strength in numbers. People are more likely to pay attention to a bunch of people yelling about something than one person, right? So that’s where I got the idea for the book, and then all I had to do was talk Sheila into it, which wasn’t that hard!

BCP: What was the process in putting this book together?

MR: Once we decided we were going to do a book, and that it was going to be an anthology that included the existing material, we got in touch with the scholars and asked if they’d be willing to have their work included as reprints. I have to say that they were incredibly gracious and very supportive of the project from the beginning. Then we sent out a call for papers on the internet, on both social activist and scholarly websites. We got a lot of responses, and some great abstracts, and for awhile we were worried that the project was getting too big.

However, like with any project, life happens; not everyone who originally signed on was able to complete but we were really pleased with the final chapters. Our job as editors was to shape the process and guide the work along, but our contributors really made the substantial contributions.

BCP: How long had you been thinking about ReenaVirk before the book came about?

MR: As I’ve already mentioned, the case had been in my head since it first happened, kind of like those terrible stories you hear and no matter how much you try to excise them from your mind, they linger. It was also a personal thing. My thesis subject was on South Asian girls and racism, and I was a South Asian Canadian girl who had experienced racism in childhood and adolescence, in the form of racial epithets or having “friends” make racist comments or jokes around me.

Obviously, though painful in their own way, I’m not saying that my experiences are comparable to Virk’s, but I think it’s important to point out that they’re on a continuum of racism that people of colour have experienced and continue to experience in our supposedly tolerant and multicultural country. The book is about making links between the ordinary everyday experiences of racism and the more serious acts of violence against people of colour. So I was personally invested in the case, from the beginning.

BCP: Who, or what, are your influences and reasons for doing this kind of work?

MR: That’s tough because there have been so many. But I could name a few scholars that have given me a theoretical lens through which to interpret my own struggles with belonging, as a racialized minority girl growing up in a primarily white society.

Frantz Fanon’s moving work on the pychic violence of racism; Homi Bhabha’s writing on the “unhomeliness” of the immigrant experience and the trauma of the ordinary: when who we choose to love, where we are allowed to sit, what streets we are allowed to walk down etc. become points of political contestation; Chandra Mohanty’s beautiful call to arms, “to make feminist analysis dangerous to empire”, which I sincerely hope is part of what we’ve done in this book; and queer feminist philosopher Judith Butler’s work, especially her post 9/11 writing, where she asks what role grief plays in the service of the national imaginary; why we grieve for some lives but not others, and how we might conceive of a politics of grief that does not justify violence, and retaliation but instead recognizes the mutual vulnerability that constitutes us all as human beings, that we are all capable of being injured and committing injury. According to Butler, “the struggle against violence accepts that violence is one’s own possibility.”

An ethical stance in the world is, therefore, about recognizing one’s own rage and then seeking to limit the injury you might cause through this rage.

BCP: The book is raw at some points, challenging, honest, and stimulating. What are you as co-editor trying to convey to your readers with these 9 selected essays?

MR: So many things but I guess, overall, I want readers to re-think the discourse of violent girls on the playground perpetuated by the media and certain “experts”. Instead, I would like them to think about how Reena’s life and death are a troubling reminder of the racism that pervades Canadian culture, as painful as that may be to acknowledge.

When “we”, which is to say, members of the dominant group (white, Christian middle class, Anglo Canadians), view certain groups as “immigrants” regardless of how long the community has been in Canada; when we see brown or black skin as the opposite of “Canadian”; when we construct certain communities as having barbaric cultural practices without looking at our own social problems, we create an “us” and “them”, with the former being constructed as superior. It’s a seamless transition then to treating those we think don’t really belong as second class citizens. And this sense of superiority is false anyway.

The Canada that we think we know through our mythologies (“the true north, strong and free”, the peacekeeper, the multicultural democracy), is a nation founded on the brutal exploitation and marginalization of indigenous peoples, built through the labour of many migrant groups, not just French, English or European, but people of colour, some of whom paid the high price of alienation, explicit state racism and even violence and death. This history has to be acknowledged so we can have a radical revisioning of what makes someone a “real” Canadian.

BCP: How long were you working on your essay “The Killing Season: Interrogating Adolescence in the Murder of Reena Virk”? Can you briefly give the crux of it?

MR: I wrote and presented a draft of the paper in the fall of 2005 at a conference on child rights, so the final chapter was a long time in the making and went through several iterations before it was published in the book. The main argument is that the Canadian media’s ubiquitous descriptions of growing girl violence and the refusal to ask whether social relations such as race, gender, class or sexuality played a part in the murder, were influenced by a discourse on adolescence pervasive in North America.

So, when incidents like the Virk murder take place, we have a moral panic where people talk about girls becoming more violent and adolescents in general being out of control with boredom, hormones and a lack of moral subjectivity. This really pathologizes teenagers, as if they are the only ones capable of bullying, aggression and murder.

Last time I checked, adult society was winning that competition, but this reality gets erased systematically in news coverage. The teenagers involved in the case were treated as if they symbolized the degeneration of youth in general. But who raises youth? Who schools them? Who offers particular media frames and images up to youth that tell them who belongs for what reasons? Who implicitly encourages the social and peer hierarchies that develop so strongly in adolescence? Adult society does, and then it wants to blame young people as solely responsible for violent behaviour.

For example, children and adolescents don’t learn racism in a vacuum. Sure, children identify differences among themselves at a very young age, but at what point do they realize which differences are important and which are not? They learn it from parents, teachers, larger culture and peers. They pick up very quickly that adult society values certain people and not others, and then they create their own social hierarchies that are partially informed by larger social relations. But this can’t be acknowledged at a societal level, because then we would have to say we are actually not doing a great job of raising children who see others as equals, regardless of race, ethnicity, class, sexuality or ability. In the Virk case, this played out in the media’s refusal to acknowledge racism as even a possible motive. The handful of times that racism was raised in either tv or newspaper articles, it was immediately dismissed, as if it was impossible that these white kids could be racist. They could be vicious, murderous and without remorse, but not racist, because of course, then that might mean that the larger adult society that they were learning their values from, was racist too.

BCP: While reading the book I had to put it down several times because of them descriptions of the murder and the horrific way the media represented the case. Was writing and putting the book together a painful experience?

MR: Yes it was a very painful experience. I didn’t realize how hard it would be when I started.

I was reading and watching all the media, and encountering the brutality that characterized the case. I think being forced to live day in and day out with a recognition of the horror that people are capable of inflicting on one another left some scars. On the other hand, I think that my reaction also speaks to my own first world, middle class privilege. My life is, and has always been, far removed from contexts of brutal and violent domination; I know that a significant portion of the world, including people in Canada, are not so lucky. Violence is simply a daily part of their lives.

So the case threatened my comfort zone, and that is a good and necessary thing for people with any kind of privilege to experience. I felt a similar wrenching at the end of the project.

Alongside a pride in the work and relief at its completion were worries about whether I had ever had the right to embark on this project, and whether it was fundamentally exploitative – stealing Reena’s voice, as it were. I spent a lot of time thinking about this as we wrapped up the introduction to the manuscript as well as a lot of time interrogating my own privilege in relation to Reena. I think none of that is particularly surprising; it’s a form of survivor guilt for those of us whose identities are not simply fashioned through the myth of the western liberal subject. Women, racial, sexual or other minorities, those people who belong to marginalized groups, are always seen and see themselves as something more than individual selves. Their “I” is always linked to a “We”.

In my case, being second generation and South Asian, and experiencing racism growing up, was what made me feel a connection to Reena Virk, a sense that this could’ve been me. But part of my discomfort stemmed from the fact that alongside my marginalization, I had certain forms of privilege that Reena didn’t have access to and, so, in another sense, maybe it couldn’t have been me. I think it’s both my marginality and privilege that pushed me to do this book in the first place, and it’s where I think real social change has to take place. It’s not enough to focus on the forms of marginality we encounter as individuals or groups. As black feminist scholar bell hooks points out, we also have to acknowledge and surrender our own privilege and participation in forms of domination, if we want to change the world.

BCP: What was most disturbing to me was the fact that Reena was not only erased in books and media, as was race, and Reena was not being mourned. The focus, and sadness, was that white girls were on a social decline as opposed to a young Brown woman being killed by such girls and a boy.  What disturbs you most about this case?

MR: I think you’ve summarized exactly what I find most disturbing. Whenever I saw or read media reports on the case, I would feel so angry. While Virk’s image appeared repeatedly, and her tragic story was re-told, it was always through a politics of pity; she was presented through a framing that implicitly constructed her as an Other; as not belonging to Canadian peer culture because she didn’t look like a “normal” girl. She was killed because she failed to fit in. For myself, and I think many other subjects who live their marginality through their embodiment ( racialized, transgendered, poor or differently abled bodies, to name a few), it was pretty easy to read the code behind this hegemonic storyline: she wasn’t thin, white, middle class, heteronormative, she wasn’t the ideal Canadian girl. But the media simultaneously used these images and storylines and yet refused to ask if there might be a problem with the ideal itself; that maybe a lot of Canadian girls didn’t “measure up” to this standard. That maybe the standard was racist, homophobic, elitist and ableist. They never asked if there was a problem with the ideal, just as they never explored whether a group of mainly white girls viciously beating up a Brown girl might raise some serious doubts about our success in fostering racial equality among children and adolescents, let alone in adult society.

BCP: Do you teach this case at your University? If so, what do you make sure your students get from your work? And how do you get them to understand the brevity and complexity of the case? How do white female students respond?

MR: I have taught the case a little bit recently as the manuscript was wrapping up. In some ways, I think I was too close to it, and living with it for a good four years made it kind of an obsession. I needed to have spaces where I could teach and think about other forms of oppression otherwise my concerns with social justice would’ve shrunk to this particular case. Some of the class discussions that did take place were difficult; like most Canadians, the students were horrified and felt very sad that this could’ve happened, but they wanted to keep it at the level that the people involved must’ve been monsters, rather than the murder being an inevitable, if extreme, consequence of both the history and contemporary reality of racism in Canada. The focus was often on whether or not the girls involved in the beating or its witnessing had ever said anything racist, because if not, clearly racism was not an issue.

The fact that Virk was an outcast, at least in part because she was brown, was something many students didn’t want to see. For some white female students, they pointed out that even among white girls, there is a lot of “mean girl” behaviour if a person doesn’t fit in in terms of looks, weight or clothes.

The Virk case for them was another example of this, rather than anything to do with racial belonging. One way I tried to get them to complicate this was to ask if there is an ideal girl image to which Canadian girls aspire. There was often a general consensus that there was, and then I would ask them to describe this girl as she appeared in their minds. After the descriptions, I would ask them whether the fact that this ideal girl was always white, often blonde, thin, middle class and heterosexual, told us anything about how difficult it might be to fit in if you couldn’t meet some or all of those standards.

I think this type of exercise was helpful, because some students did begin to see what I was trying to get at.

BCP: To me, Reena Virk was first a face without a name and later a name without face. That might be the case for many people. Why is there no picture of Reena Virk in the book?

MR: The media continually flashed one particular picture of Virk over and over again. We thought about using this picture maybe as a cover, but almost immediately felt that it would sensationalize the book. Many people are familiar with that picture, but we didn’t want to “sell” the book in this manner. We also did not want to use the picture because it seemed to us that Reena’s appearance was the focus of media attention and the implicit reason given for why this happened (she was awkward, a misfit etc.), yet this was not accompanied by any explanation of what she didn’t fit into. We wanted to move away from this line of thinking to focus on the systemic issues in the case.

BCP: Does the Virk family know about the book? Do the killers? Media and authors critiqued in the book?

MR: I don’t know whether or not the family knows. We thought about contacting them initially, but we also felt that as an act of scholarship, we needed it to be honest in ways that might not have pleased Reena’s family. I also don’t know whether or not Warren or Kelly knows about it. The mainstream media has, for the most part, ignored the book, which is not unusual for an academic book. Of course, given that it’s a searing critique of their hegemonic “take” on the case, it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s why they’re not interested. But it’s hard to say.

Watch a roundtable discussion on the Reean Virk case with Rajiva’s co-editor Sheila Batachary, book contributor Tara Atluri, and community member Mandeep Kaur Mucina.

Television is really comfortable with showing unrepentant racists in the roles of villians; and playing racism for laughs or shockvalue. But what we don’t normally see in pop culture is the urge toward showing full characters. Including the racist bits.

I’ve been following Sons of Anarchy since the beginning of Season 3, and I was initally going to write about how the show treats whiteness. The world of Sons is almost an unauthorized form of whiteness that is rarely depicted without derision – defiantly lower class, quasi-ethnic, and trapped in the same kinds of systems that count as pathology in communities of color, but get the “trash” label when the conversation shifts to whites in the same situation.

However, that piece was put on hold because the subplot on this season is around a character named Juice Ortiz – and the problems that arise between his identity and the rules of the club.

[SPOILERS for the entire Juice story arc as well as other parts of the series ahead. This is your one and only warning.]

Now, the Sons seemed fairly unconcerned with racism. They went to war with a white supremacist crew, and have made alliances with local black and Latino bike gangs, though with mixed results. The older members are a bit more inclined toward racism, the younger ones a bit less so, but it really depends on the individual. In an early meeting with the new Sheriff, Juice’s mixed race background and black father are put on the table as bargaining chips: If Juice doesn’t cooperate, the Sheriff informs the club – which just so happens has a bylaw banning black members. Panicked, Juice is coerced by the Sheriff to steal a sample of the cocaine, attempts to do so, but falls asleep and doesn’t return the sample before counting. Things get hectic, and Juice ends up killing another member of the club to keep his secret. Increasingly weighed down by the increasing demands, his actions, and the secret, Juice attempts to commit suicide, leading fellow member Chibs to start looking after him. At one point, he tentatively asks about the “no blacks rule” to Chibs, another member of the club, who explains that while he didn’t personally agree, the rules were the rules, and if they stopped following the rules, everything would fall apart.

This part, I loved, because it makes the point about racism that we’ve been making all along – that it isn’t just hooded white supremacists that practice racism. Chibs, by failing to challenge an older racist rule, assisted in shaking Juice’s faith in his club, and isolated him even further, driving him deeper into the devious machinations of Lincoln Potter. In his moment of need, Juice doesn’t hear support. But neither Chibs does actively defend racism. Instead, he does so passively – he essentially slides neutral, and as Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” For some people, Chibs’ position may have been unclear – how can he allow racism to continue, but still care about Juice? But that’s easy. Much of racism exists in the abstract – those people over there, not these good people you know, who are the exception. So, of course Chibs could uphold the club’s racist rules – it didn’t affect him. And of course he could then tell Juice not to worry – he’s not one of those abstract people. But notice, Chibs is careful with the language. After Juice’s confession, he assures him things will be alright – not because that rule was wrong and it was racist, or that he had faith that the rest of the Sons are so far removed from racism that they won’t mind, but because Juice’s birth certificate says “Latino.”

The anti-black rule still stands, unchallenged. And while Chibs may think it’s what’s in your heart that counts (as long as you aren’t black on your birth certificate), that doesn’t mean the rest of the club will agree.

Over at Kurt Sutter’s blog, he explains the seed for the story line:

There seems to be some confusion about Juice’s discomfort and fear regarding the discovery of his black father. This is a racial reality in outlaw motorcycle clubs. We’ve touched on the issue lightly over the first three seasons of SOA. The fact is that most of the bigger MC’s do not have African American members. There are black clubs and there are white (Caucasian, Latino, Asian) clubs. Most live in harmony. HA and the East Bay Dragons have been friends for decades. That relationship inspired the Grim Bastards in season 3. We delve into the delicate why’s and how’s of this racial bi-law later in the season, but it was one of those odd, historical barriers that I’ve wanted to explore. It’s a throwback to a different era that is still in practice today. I can honestly say that none of the guys I know in the life are racist, yet they function within a structure that is built upon a form of segregation. To me, that’s fascinating and fertile story turf. The depth and weight of this rule varies from club to club and this season we see how it’s handled by the Sons of Anarchy.

And Sutter does this, beautifully. Perhaps this is the freedom provided to creators who put antiheroes at the forefront of their work. Freed from the idea their characters need to be upstanding citizens to be likeable, they are able to explore more of the contradictions and complexities of human nature. It amazed me to see all the people on Sutter’s post saying that the Sons couldn’t be racist. Why not? Have you been paying attention for the last few seasons? The Sons are thieves, drug runners, murders, philanderers, wife-beaters, and backstabbers. A few episodes ago, Jax led a woman on to get her alone, face slammed her into a table, choked her, and spit in her face while calling her a whore. Did she fuck with the wrong people? Yes. Was it still really horrible to watch sexualized violence? Yes! Can my feminist brain hate that scene, but my fan brain simultaneously root for Jax protecting his club and family? Yes!

So why can’t viewers accept a character that is supposed to be seen as sympathetic that is racist or holds racist views?

For far too long, writers have been using racism a way to practice lazy characterization. It perpetuates the lie that all racists are horrible and hateful people – and not folks who happen to harbor irrational biases toward people of different racial or ethnic backgrounds. However, by using racism as a lazy way to make someone evil, writers have painted themselves into a corner. Audiences have been conditioned to see characters who hold or express racial biases as inexplicably evil. So allowing a character in a work to express or defend racist views is to automatically mark that character as irredeemable. Interestingly, sexism in a character doesn’t quite work the same way – people will excuse that behavior as being true to the character. But a racist is too much for people to try to identify with, so writers normally push that messy aspect of people’s characters to the side. (This has been my ongoing beef with Mad Men. Especially now that a series that takes place during the height of Jim Crow, and a series that focuses on a predominantly white motorcycle club in Northern California made it work.) So while racism is a part of daily life, the idea that we have racism without actual racists has permeated our screens in the same way it has permeated society.

But here’s the thing. Characters are not required to be perfect.

The Sons don’t have to be anti-racist to be awesome characters. Over the last few weeks, personal relationships are frayed to the hilt. Everyone is struggling with the ideas of love, fealty, and protection. Gemma is lying to everyone, trying to protect everyone a little differently. Jax committed himself to a plan he didn’t believe in, in hopes of trading it for a future he would never see. And let’s not even get started on Opie. Everyone is being manipulated, lied to, fighting on a playing field that has irrevocably changed. This is beautifully written drama, because everyone is committing little betrayals for reasons they feel are right. So I wouldn’t be surprised, after this week’s non-resolution, that we shift away from the racism plot to wrap up one of the other dozen plot lines tightening around the Sons. But, as we’ve learned from the past few seasons that nothing is ever really laid to bed. Clay and Tig’s dirty deeds from the first season were just revealed (Edited: See ETA) to Opie in the last episode, so I think that Juice’s parentage may come up yet again.

If anyone survives to the fifth season, that is.

ETA: Welcome, SOA fans. As I mentioned at the very beginning of the post, I’ve been watching from Season 3. Many people have written in to correct the timing – Opie was made aware of Clay’s treachery and Tig’s murder of Donna back in Season 2, it was just revisited after Clay murders Piney. Part of the reason I am holding off on writing the other two pieces on Gender in Sons and on Whiteness in Sons, is because I haven’t been able to catch up on the first two seasons.

Movie theaters used to hold a special kind of magic.

Lined up with my friends, clutching the occasional purchase of popcorn and a soft drink, or sneaking smuggled in snacks, we would watch in awe and horror as teenagers paraded around on screen, seemingly oblivious to the threat of violence lurking around the corner. When I was about thirteen years old, I sat through the original Scream. The rules of horror movies, as articulated by the character Randy, were clear and concise:

Randy: There are certain RULES that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie. For instance, number one: you can never have sex.
[crowd boos]
Randy: BIG NO NO! BIG NO NO! Sex equals death, okay? Number two: you can never drink or do drugs.
[crowd cheers and raises their bottles]
Randy: The sin factor! It’s a sin. It’s an extension of number one. And number three: never, ever, ever under any circumstances say, “I’ll be right back.” Because you won’t be back.

But there were some rules that we knew that never were articulated.

1. The black character always dies, normally first. This is normally related to not being lead characters, but easily dispensable side characters. Sure, we had Tales from the Hood, but we knew the score. I think that’s why all of us at the local participatory theater screamed the whole way through I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. “Run, Brandy, Run! You gotta make it because they already killed Mekhi!”

2. Upper middle class white kids are the stars of these things. In general, no matter how big and bad the villain is, they are still hanging out in pastoral campgrounds or tony neighborhoods, waiting for their victims to sun themselves on their cabanas. The only exception I can think of was Candyman who was black and haunted the Cabrini-Green housing projects. And later, came a few other things we need not name. But in general, horror film villains and heroes alike were in the providence of “not us.”

So when Moses and his crew took to the screen, defending their tower block from alien invasion, my inner fourteen year old wanted to jump up and start yelling.

Unfortunately, my 28 year old self knows we don’t do those things at the Museum of Modern Art, even if we really, really, want to.

[Some light spoilers ahead.]

We’ve already posted Emma’s review of Attack the Block (see here) and Kartina’s analysis of the race in the film (see here) so I won’t rehash already covered territory. Instead, we will talk about the interesting racial subtext director Joe Cornish inserted into the film.

I was fortunate enough to catch the film with a special treat: Joe Cornish was there, along with Luke Treadaway, to discuss the film after the screening. If you didn’t play the trailer above, watch for the first title screen, which reads: “The deadliest species in the galaxy” before cutting to a shot of the kids. Cornish created the film specifically as a reaction to other films that showed those people and that environment on a pessimistic way.  Cornish grew up near tower blocks, noting that they were erected after London was bombed (commonly referred to as The Blitz) in World War II. This appears to have influenced his perception of events as he reserves no sympathy for the press, who often demonize the people living in the tower blocks.

The opening scene, which establishes Moses (amazingly played by John Boyega) as an anti-hero, shows the crew robbing a young white woman. Cornish said he pulled the scenario straight out of real life: he was mugged by a group of teens. But, he explained, “Instead of being frightened, it fascinated me.” So from the start, Cornish aims to reverse the viewers thinking – to start with that act of robbery, allow all the attendant thoughts, emotions, and stereotypes to creep in, and then peel back the layers to expose the teens humanity.

Delectably low-budget feeling, Cornish pointed out that the film was influenced by older American cult classics like The Warriors, The Outsiders, Gremlins, The Goonies, Over the Edge, Predator, and ET. (“I see it as a complete flip of ET,” Cornish emphasized.)

Cornish continued, explaining “You can watch horror as genre movies or as political movies.” He give a nod to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead for the craftily included racial subtext and reveals one of his own: The idea for the design of the alien forms was to take what the press wrote about lower-class kids – feral, dark, unthinking – and physically embody it as the monsters they fight.

It was a joy to listen to Cornish – he explained everything from the awesome soundtrack (by one of my favorite groups, Basement Jaxx, and with overall director by Steven Price, who last scored Scott Pilgrim) to the symbolism behind the names. In response to an audience question, Cornish explains Moses and the theme of redemption. “Subtle, wasn’t it,” he starts, also noting that he liked the extra flourish of the idea of the naming, and thinking of the hopes that the parent had for the child they would name after such a strong religious figure. “It might be a bit heavy with the biblical stuff, but fuck it, I liked it,” he concludes.

He also dropped another Easter egg, explaining that many times, cost plays a major role in what is shown in the film. He indicated he had “an amazing, Errol Flynn style fight with Moses climbing up the balcony and fighting the aliens,” but it was too costly. He notes that sometimes, though, innovation comes from brokeness, pointing to George Lucas’ iconic Death Star as something amazing that resulted from a budget issue.

At one point, I wanted to ask a question – after being so amazingly frank on issues of race and stereotypes, how was Cornish going from a project like Attack the Block to a reboot of Tintin? After I identify myself, Cornish reveals he’s actually read some of our commentary (!) and explains that Tintin is a complex character. He notes Tintin was written from 1929 to the 1980s.  Hergé later regretted some of what he wrote; Cornish points out the most controversial title (Tintin in the Congo) is still popular in Africa. He also explains that Tintin as a character has evolved; Tintin is a pacifist by the final book, so evolution is built into the text. The movie is based on the 9th book.

As I departed, a reader named Keisha caught up to me in the hallway. We talked a bit about the film and she asked a question that I had wished I’d thought of – since the film was well-received in the UK, did the riots change that perception? It’s a question we will have to find the answer to, perhaps another time. Cornish has hinted at a possible sequel (with ideas supplied by Boyega), but the jury is still out.

Since we’ve all become huge fans of the film on Racialicious, some of the folks involved in the promotion have offered us a giveaway – one lucky reader will win a free DVD copy of the film, and one runner up will win the theatrical poster. To win, give us your best idea for what should happen in the sequel OR what they should do (or should not do) with an American remake. 300 words max, in the comments to this post, winner selected Friday. If you are not selected, don’t worry – Attack the Block is out on DVD today!

By Guest Contributor Kartina Richardson, cross-posted from MirrorFilm

On Saturday nights in 1993, the TNT television channel played science fiction movies back to back beginning at midnight. They called this the TNT “Monster Movie Marathon.” As my parents had recently divorced, my sister and I now spent weekends at my father’s house and the Saturday night Monster Movie Marathon quickly became our tradition. We made our bed on the living room floor and taped each movie on the VCR. Them! was a favorite, as was The Day the Earth Stood Still. The Thing, both the 1951 version and John Carpenter’s became beloved, as did The Day of the Triffids and Cronenberg’s The Fly. When I think of great science fiction now, these are a few of the films that come immediately to mind. When my five future children watch sci-fi movies I wonder if my list of favorites will be on their’s. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t but one thing I know is this: they will love Attack the Block with the fervor of their dear mama.

In Joe Cornish’s directorial debut, ruffian teens from a South London council estate (the projects), find their Bonfire Night thievery interrupted by an alien invasion. Lead by boss boy Moses (John Boyega), the boys: Jerome, Pest, Dennis, and Biggz, use their wily and hilarious teenage ways to escape the bad guys (aliens, police, a murderous rapping drug dealer) and defend their home.

Block is a tight, fast, movie, whose pieces (sound, photography, acting, editing, production design, dialogue) fit together in perfect harmony. Energy is palpable in all aspects of production.

Passion is infectious, and after seeing Block, so great was my enthusiasm, that my body, confused by this unusual excitement, grew alarmed and immediately flushed water out my armpits in great rivers.

“Is it hot in here bruv?” I said to the friend beside me.

“Nah blood, it ain’t,” he said. And at that moment I knew. I knew that any movie able to stimulate my glands to such a degree was a fine film indeed.

I luff Attack the Block bruv. Trust.

SPOILERS AHEAD

There are two main reasons behind my adoration. The first is the larger and contains the other: Block is a movie that very happily belongs to our current age, and this feels friendly.

In the future when people watch the film, they will understand it as a movie of the 2010s the way we understand L’Eclisse or the Graduate as films of the 1960s. The boys in Block are deep in today’s popular culture: Ninety percent of their speech is South London slang. They have smart phones (used in one scene to light and/or take pictures of the alien). They text, and make references to ebay, American Idol, Naruto, and playing FIFA. Some scenes are even entirely dependent on the fairly recent widespread access to technology: Biggz is trapped by an alien in a dumpster and uses his phone to communicate with the others.

These things, combined with the film’s saturated colors, rapid fire editing, and music by Steven Price and Basement Jaxx, create a sense of immediacy that defines adolescence. With the majority of teens, everything is about the Now. What, after all is more exciting than the culture currently being created around you? What kind of an idiot looks back and not forward?

There is a certain dishonesty and cowardice about nostalgia that teenagers have a keen nose for. It is in fact a privilege of sorts to not have to deal with the realities of modern life, but instead a safe, romantic version of it.  The weakest character in the film, Brewis, a rich white boy visiting the block to buy weed, does exactly this. Brewis listens to older black music (KRS-One, and seventies dub), but is afraid of actual black people: he sings along to “Sound of da Police”, then nervously hides his headphones when the boys approach.

Related to the previous, is the other reason I love the film: The majority of the main characters are black and multi-racial. The hero is a black teenager!  What’s more modern than that? This is a hugely important part of the movie, yet mention of race is strangely missing from many reviews of the film, as though pointing it out would detract from its merits as a great sci-fi picture and turn it into “Something about race.”

This logic however is flawed, and does the film a disservice by ignoring a giant part of its brilliance. No one who watches Block doesn’t notice that the heroes are black, and that this is an anomaly. The characters didn’t magically turn out black by chance, it was Cornish’s conscious decision. If you don’t want your sci-fi movie about kids fighting aliens to have anything to do with race, you make Super 8.  If you do, you make it about black and multi-racial kids in the South London projects. A film’s plot doesn’t have to be explicitly about fighting racism and classism to still be about race or class, and in fact I bet Block does more to encourage awareness than The Help for example.

Consider this exchange between Sam and Pest in the weed room. Yes, the weed room:

Pest: You’re quite fit you know, have you got a boyfriend?
Sam: Yeah.
Pest: You sure about him? Where is? Cuz he aint exactly lookin ouy for you tonight.
Sam: He’s in Ghana.
Pest: You’re going out with an African man?
Sam: No, he’s helping children. He volunteers for the Red Cross.
Pest: Oh is he? Why can’t he help the children in Britain? Not exotic enough is it? No getting a nice suntan.

Folks who exasperatedly dismiss discussion of color with “Not everything is about race,” are usually people who (unknowingly) have the privilege of being viewed as race-less (white). The race-less of course have the freedom to decide what is and isn’t about race. Those that are not seen as race-less (people of color) don’t. Cornish seems to understand what many people don’t want to admit, that a person’s race shapes their experience in the world. Whether it should or shouldn’t, it very much does. Ignoring this fact, even if well intentioned, perpetuates inequality. The boys in Block, as young men of color, are always aware of racial dynamics. So constant is this awareness, neither positive nor negative, that it becomes unconscious, like breathing. It’s always there. The film takes place completely within this understanding. There’s no need to make heavy handed points. Cornish trusts that we are not morons and so we will understand too.

In a scene where Sam, a white female nurse robbed by the boys at the beginning of the film, gives the police information about her robbers, mention of Moses’ race (usually the first thing noted) is very obviously absent from her description. Similarly, when an older white woman living in the block, talks to Sam about her dislike of the kids, she makes no mention of race. We know however exactly what she means: “They’re fucking monsters.”

We also know why a scene where Sam tries to block the boys from entering her apartment is great:

Thuggish black boys force their way into a white woman’s home!

A woman they just robbed.

Her fear is legitimate …

But the boys are running for their lives! Running from aliens bruv!

Race and class distinctions are absurd in the face of alien invasion!

Just look at Dennis’ face here (standing in the center). It’s perfection.

This scene would not be nearly as funny if the boys were white. Our understanding of its racial implications is what makes it work. Class and race are integral parts of the movie’s comedy.

Toward the end of the film, Moses makes a very poignant speech while hiding with a group of girls in the block. It is seemingly unprompted, but we understand immediately that these feelings aren’t new:

Moses: You know what I reckon? I reckon the feds sent them anyway. The government probably bred those creatures to kill black boys. First they sent drugs to the ends. Then they sent guns. Now they’ve sent monsters to get us. They don’t care man. We ain’t killing each other fast enough so they decided to speed up the process.

Pest: (takes a hit of weed) Believe.

And the girls burst out laughing.

But this laughter is necessary. A teaspoon of humor makes the social commentary go down.

I won’t tell you what the aliens look like, I won’t tell you how much blood is or isn’t shed, and I won’t tell you if anyone kisses anyone else. I won’t tell you anything more except this: Attack the Block is first and foremost a great movie, it is secondly a great sci-fi movie, and lastly, but not leastly, it is great and sly commentary on race and class. It is all three of these things simultaneously, none detracting from any other.

Now go see it yourself and tell me I’m wrong.

By Guest Contributor Mike Miller, cross-posted from Classism Exposed

In 1971, when I was “lead organizer” for what became the All Peoples’ Coalition (APC), I learned a different approach to dealing with some racism I encountered among working-class whites.

APC was a federation of some thirty organizations (churches, block clubs, the neighborhood shopping strip’s merchant association, tenant associations, and other groups in Visitacion Valley, a small neighborhood of about 20,000 people in the Southeast corner of San Francisco.

“Vis Valley” included a number of sub-neighborhoods, including Little Hollywood, Geneva Towers, Geneva Terrace and Sunnydale Housing Project (where I grew up).

Its people ranged from low-to-moderate, and a few middle, income. It was ethnically and racially quite diverse. In San Francisco poverty and race politics, it was largely ignored. While racially “integrated,” there was also substantial racial tension in the neighborhood, particularly between the working class and lower middle-class “white ethnics” (Irish, Italian and Maltese) and the African-Americans.

In my “organizing plan” for building what became APC, I had Sunnydale groups I was hoping to recruit to membership, and the Visitacion Valley Improvement Association (VVIA) largely made up of white ethnic homeowners.

VVIA wanted to talk with the Sunset Scavenger Company, one of San Francisco’s two garbage companies. The company refused to meet.

A major obstacle to Visitation Valley Improvement Association (VVIA) joining the newly forming community organization was its President, Joe Brajkovich. It was from him that I learned what VVIA wanted from Sunset Scavenger Company: a dollar a year lease use of a small lot it owned so that it could be used as a “postage stamp” park in Little Hollywood, and a better way to cover its trucks so that debris wouldn’t fly from them as they passed through Little Hollywood on the way to the City Dump. In the days before “packers,” garbage was piled in an empty bin on the back of the garbage truck that went from house to house picking up its load. When the truck was filled, a big canvass was spread over the top of the load and tied down on the sides of the truck; things would fly out from underneath the canvass littering the truck’s route. Every truck that went anyplace in San Francisco passed through Little Hollywood on its way to the dump.

Joe Brajkovich, President of VVIA, was the 1972 George Wallace-for-President Campaign Coordinator for San Francisco. Wallace was the racist former Governor of Alabama who spewed a mix of populism and racism. His success with white working- and lower-middle-class voters sent a chill down the back of mainline Democratic Party activists; he was a warning of what became the “Reagan Democrats” phenomenon in 1980. Whenever I talked with Brakovich about becoming part of the organizing committee that created APC, he unleashed vitriol about Sunnydale Housing Project, Geneva Towers, blacks, welfare recipients, and how they were all subsidized by working people like himself and his neighbors who had made it in America by pulling up their own bootstraps. When we met, he would rant and rave about “them” getting everything.

I just listened. I listened to what pained and angered him, and what he hoped to accomplish for his members. He was pained by the fact that the neighborhood was going downhill (which, in fact, it was if you looked at things like housing deterioration, city services, and other “standard” indicators); that the Sunset Scavengers ignored his requests to meet; etc. He wanted to deliver for his people.

He was angry that he couldn’t get “city hall” (or the scavenger company) to meet with VVIA and deal with it on these issues. He was most angered by the fact that the neighborhood had a “broker,” a man named Henry Schindel who owned lots of property in Vis Valley, who set himself up between “downtown” and the neighborhood and dispatched favors here and there to keep himself in that “broker” position.

I kept bringing our conversations back to this point: Brajkovich wasn’t getting respect for VVIA and he didn’t have the power to do anything about it. I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know. But I did have an idea how he might get what he wanted: by joining with “those people” he didn’t want to join with. Whenever he gave me his litany about “them,” I asked him whether what he was doing now was working. I did that for about three months. Meanwhile, a number of groups in the neighborhood were in the process of becoming part of the organizing committee that was putting together the founding convention of what came to be All Peoples Coalition (APC). If he wanted his issues to be part of the convention’s resolutions, his people to be among the officers, and a voice in the adoption of a constitution and by-laws for the organization, then he would have to join.

Here’s the picture I painted: As a member organization of All People’s Coalition (APC), VVIA would be able to bring its issues to the federation. With support from Black and white residents who lived throughout Visitacion Valley, VVIA would be able to negotiate with Sunset Scavenger on both littering and the empty lot. Brajkovich finally recommended to the VVIA membership that it join APC. And he didn’t propose a constitutional amendment excluding Sunnydale and the Geneva Towers.

In fact, with APC support, an agreement was reached with the Sunset Scavengers on both littering and the postage stamp park. Ron Morton, President of APC, was part of the negotiating committee. He was an African-American locksmith whose shop was on Leland Street, Visitacion Valley’s neighborhood commercial strip. Other African-Americans who lived in the Federally subsidized Geneva Towers participated in some of the direct action events that pressured the Scavengers to finally meet; so did some people from Sunnydale.

In the brief period preceding the following story, APC had undertaken campaigns for improved neighborhood traffic controls, recreation facilities, job opportunities and public housing. In the Mayor’s revenue sharing hearings, APC demonstrated itself to be the “voice of the neighborhood.”

About a year later, the tenants in Geneva Towers, with APC organizing staff assistance, developed the Geneva Towers Tenants Association (GTTA) and joined APC. By that time probably 80% or more African-American in its make-up, the 500+ units high-rise Towers stood out in more ways than one in a neighborhood that was primarily single-family homes and duplexes. (Years later, the Department of Housing and Urban Development paid to literally blow the high-rise Towers up and replace them with townhouse subsidized units.) GTTA wanted the Towers management company to meet with it and negotiate a series of improvements and services in their two buildings. After showing up for a first meeting, the management refused to further discuss things with its tenants. Direct action by the tenant association followed .

Eddie Wafford, a retired Teamster Business Agent living in Visitacion Valley, showed up on a Saturday morning to ride a rented bus to the Towers owner’s home in nearby fancy Marin County. Eddie shared the anti-Black prejudices of his fellow Irishmen in the neighborhood. But he was a member of the Visitacion Valley Improvement Association (VVIA), attended APC’s founding convention and participated in some of the action that led to the agreement with Sunset Scavenger Company.

By that time I’d gotten to know him pretty well. Given what I knew about his feelings toward blacks, I was a bit surprised to see him, and said so when I first saw him that morning. On the way home from the picketing, he and I had this conversation:

Mike (M): I was a little surprised to see you here today, Eddie.
Eddie (E): Why’s that, Mike?
M: Well, you know, you told me a while back you didn’t have much use for Black people, particularly those living in the Towers.
E: Aw, that was before I got to know them and they showed up for me and Little Hollywood. This is the least I could do.
M: So how do you feel about the Towers people now?
E: There’s some real nice people here, Mike.
M: Whose interests do you think were served by the way you used to think about the Black people here?
E: What do you mean?
M: You think about it, and we’ll talk a little more later.

When we talked about it later, Eddie understood that “downtown,” the Sunset Scavengers and Henry Schindel, the old-style neighborhood political “broker,” were the people who benefited from his prejudices against his black neighbors.

I’d learned this approach to dealing with race from an old union organizer, who told a similar story about how he’d bring Appalachian whites into the United Mine Workers Union-which organized on an integrated basis.

The racist President of VVIA may have never changed his mind about “them” or “those people.” But some of “his people” did, Eddie Wafford included. Equally important, they concluded their interests were better met in relationship with people they hadn’t wanted to work or associate with in the past. I wouldn’t have gotten to talk with the VVIA people if I had “led with race”–telling Joe Brajkovich that he and his members were wrong about their racism, were “privileged whites” or whatever. The door would quickly have been shut or the phone hung up when I called.

My conclusions:

1. Draw the “boundary lines” (industrial union, multi-racial/ethnic turf or multi-racial/ethnic organization which chapters join) so that people come into relationships with “The Other.”
2. Look for circumstances of cognitive dissonance–when people’s experiences don’t fit the stereotypes they came to the experience with.
3. Use self-interest issues-either of the “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” or bigger ones of the none of us can handle it alone variety-to create opportunities for new relationships that cut across historic lines of division.
4. Place those self-interest issues in a larger framework of justice, fairness and democracy values.
5. Those circumstances, interests, values and relationships create teachable moments-opportunities when an organizer or educator really can get people to change their minds.

My observation is that, contrary to what most sociologists and “leading with race” organizers say, working class peoples’ prejudices can quickly disappear or at least be put on “the back burner” when the circumstances are right and the conversation provides a new way to frame reality.

ESPN has certainly hitched its’ promotional wagon to Michael Vick, but first things first: don’t blame Touré for the question, “What If Michael Vick Were White?” – or for that pic above of said hypothetical “White” Vick.

“I had no knowledge of or say in the title of the story and the horrific, misguided picture of Vick in whiteface, which dismayed and disgusted me when I saw it,” he explained in a column for CNN. “I think careful readers will note that the story and the image don’t really interact. They’re like two people who kinda know about each other but don’t really know each other. But this has happened to me before.”

He made a similar disclaimer on Twitter, according to Colorlines:

My essay on Vick is nowhere near as inflammatory as the pic of him in whiteface which contradicts me saying you can’t imagine him as white.

I wrote an essay about Vick & race. ESPN the mag titled it & added art without me (normal procedure). Judge me on the story not the art.

In his CNN piece, Touré also mentioned that he wanted to talk about football more in his Vick column, but that ESPN “was less interested in that.” Reading his essay on the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback again, I think his editors let him down in the process.

Touré’s column starts by describing the “deeply African-American approach” of Vick’s game:

Vick’s style reminds me of Allen Iverson — the speed, the court sense, the sharp cuts, the dekes, the swag. In those breathtaking moments when the Eagles QB abandons the pocket and takes off, it feels as if he’s thumbing his nose at the whole regimented, militaristic ethos of the game.

Denied the chance to place Vick’s game into a historical context, this graf makes Vick seem like the NFL’s answer to Julius Erving, when really he’s not even the first mobile black quarterback on his own team. Surely Touré didn’t forget about Donovan McNabb or Randall Cunningham?

Instead, it’s David Fleming who gets to make that connection in an otherwise hagiographic profile of Vick’s comeback, mentioning that he has become “the next link in a quarterback chain that runs from Fran Tarkenton to John Elway to Steve Young to Randall Cunningham.”

Crucially, three of the four quarterbacks in that chain are white. And all but Cunningham are in the NFL Hall of Fame. What would probably be different, if Vick were white, would be that the gaggle of football pundits ESPN employs to opine on the National Football League – always referred to by its’ first, middle and last name, like it was an unruly child or a serial killer – would frame his exploits differently: instead of showing “preternatural poise,” as Fleming puts it, White Vick’s mobility would show “how hard he works in the off-season;” his on-field celebrations would show us he’s “just having fun out there.” And so on.

So what Vick is doing on the field isn’t new; he’s just doing it at a higher level than anybody else right now – in large part because he’s a team that encourages him to do so, a fact Vick himself acknowledges (even if, as he told GQ, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell nudged him in Philadelphia’s direction.) So it’s unfortunate that Touré didn’t get the chance to discuss Vick’s professional good fortune in his column.

It’s also unfortunate his editors stuck that column with not only the re-colorized Vick pic, but a headline asking a question Touré himself shoots down:

This question makes me cringe. It is so facile, naive, shortsighted and flawed that it is meaningless. Whiteness comes with great advantages, but it’s not a get-out-of-every-crime-free card. Killing dogs is a heinous crime that disgusts and frightens many Americans. I’m certain white privilege would not be enough to rescue a white NFL star caught killing dogs.

The problem with the “switch the subject’s race to determine if it’s racism” test runs much deeper than that. It fails to take into account that switching someone’s race changes his entire existence. In making Vick white, you have him born to different parents. That alone sets his life trajectory in an entirely different direction.

But would it, really? I’m not so sure, and neither is Caperton at Feministe:

Switching someone’s race does not change his “entire existence” – it changes his race. And that’s not for nothing. Take a guy in Michael Vick’s childhood neighborhood and turn him white, and he’s going to have different experiences than his black neighbors. Pick any white kid at an almost entirely white high school and turn him black, and his experiences will be different from those of his classmates and of kids at majority-black schools. But that’s not everything. It’s not the entirety of existence. Flipping a man’s race switch from black to white doesn’t also put him in a four-bedroom home in Peoria with a CPA for a father, a librarian for a mother, a brother, a sister, and a pomapoo, and it doesn’t stop an indescribably busted person from torturing dogs in his swimming pool for fun and profit.

Touré claims to have speculated, “What if Michael Vick were white?” He really speculated, “What if Michael Vick grew up in a two-parent home in a better neighborhood with better friends and no dogfighters around?” and then assigned that as his working definition of “white.” In his mind, White Michael Vick never would have had a dogfighting ring in the first place, because in his whiteness he would have grown up free of the poverty, negligence, and violence that defines Being Black.

Touré, in fact, asks a question similar to Caperton’s later in his ESPN piece: “If Vick grew up with the paternal support that white kids are more likely to have (72 percent of black children are born to unwed mothers compared with 29 percent of white children), would he have been involved in dogfighting?”

Though that “72 percent born to unwed mothers” stat is questionable, as Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote two years ago, it’s not guaranteed that a two-parent household would have dissuaded White Vick from doing something criminally wrong away from the field, as Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger has (allegedly) shown us. If Vick’s dog-fighting operation had been located in the right county, he might have run into an (allegedly) more-forgiving police force. But how much of that is race and how much of that is geography?

In the end of his ESPN column, Touré asks us to look at Vick as “someone in the third act of the epic movie that is his life,” calling his return “heroic.” Personally, I can’t go that far – not just because of what he’s done, but because of moments like this one, captured by GQ’s Will Leitch, who talked to Vick after the quarterback is asked at a speaking engagement, “Are you mad about what happened to you?”:

I ask him if he buys this argument, if he believes he was treated unfairly. Most people convicted of dogfighting don’t spend a year and a half in prison. They aren’t forced to declare bankruptcy. I ask him if he was sent to prison for too long.

“One day in prison is too long,” he says.

Yes, but I mean for this particular crime.

He sighs. I’m not the first person who’s tried to lead him down this road. “For a while, it was all ‘Scold Mike Vick, scold Mike Vick, just talk bad about him, like he’s not a person,’ ” he says. “It’s almost as if everyone wanted to hate me. But what have I done to anybody? It was something that happened, and it was people trying to make some money.”

See, no matter what ESPN wants to tell us, there is a middle ground when it comes to Vick. Nobody can deny his ability, his intelligence, or his dedication to getting his career and his life back. But white, brown or black, remorse is remorse. And not even a Super Bowl trophy can make its’ apparent absence in that explanation any shinier.

It’s hard to navigate New York City with someone who lived his whole life there, without them mentioning “gentrification” at least once.

Lucky me, I didn’t get it once. I got it at least once… a day.

While my time in Cleveland as a kid was spent in areas that could’ve seriously benefit from the privilege that the gentry (those who do the gentrifying) brings with it, my home in Indiana? Let’s just say that it’s highly unlikely that it’d ever need more money to come in. Needless to say, my experiences with gentrification are pretty non-existent.

But what is gentrification? It is, in a nutshell, when money (or perceived money, which is more important than the actual money, to me) moves in. I used to assume that it was about race, much like this guy:

“I used to think it was about race — when white people moved into a black neighborhood,” said lawyer Charles Wilson, 35, who lost to Marion Barry in the 2008 Ward 8 D.C. Council race. “Then, I looked up the word. It’s when a middle-class person moves into a poor neighborhood. And I realized: I am a gentrifier. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t like that word. It makes so many people uncomfortable.”

“Actually, I thought it was if you see a white guy in Anacostia, listening to an iPod, jogging or walking a dog!” joked Sariane Leigh, 33, who writes a blog called Anacostia Yogi, putting her hand on her hip and waving a sweet-potato fry for emphasis.

The friends fold into laughter. They agree not to use the G-word, at least for one night.

Gentrification is always a delicate topic, especially in a city where it usually has meant well-to-do whites buying up affordable houses in predominantly black neighborhoods. The trend is reflected in recent census figures that show that the District is no longer a majority-black city and by ever-whiter neighborhoods such as Shaw and H Street Northeast.

But black gentrification is increasingly redefining the G-word and changing the economics of places like Anacostia. [source]

Why am I bringing this up? After leaving Bar Sepia one night, we passed by one of the mister’s old standard bodegas (basically, a convenient store), but he did a double take… and eventually, a full stop.

“Wow, man,” was all I heard. “Gentrification is real.”

The bodega wasn’t simply a “bodega” anymore. It was, apparently, an organic produce store… with respectable prices. Hell, I can’t even get that.

Like race, money comes with its own assumptions. When money moves into a community, the police presence increases. Why? Because no one wants to bring their money into an environment where it’s bound to be stolen, and everyone knows that. When money moves into an area, businesses are quick to follow (specially if the promise of increased security is looming)… businesses providing services and products that the entrepreneurs believe would be profitable there. I mean, that’s basic capitalism. You go where the money can be found.

This has a strange effect on the availability – and quality – of food in an area. If increased presence of money means increased produce… then increased produce – by nature of trying to one-up their competitors – means increased presence of organics, which means increased presence of local produce… which eventually means decreased price. Competitors are constantly trying to one-up each other, and they do that by decreasing the price of the necessities while offering special and unique products at a premium.

This is a strange situation. Gentrification, that which has been cast off as such a dirty word (and has people, like the above, ashamed to no longer be poverty-status poor?), is actually making food cheaper. I mean, damn – never in my life have I seen an organic red pepper go for $0.99.

But is it always just the money, or was originally right? Is it who (rather, what race) is bringing the money? And furthermore, can the race element be overlooked if other “hipster/urban yuppie-ish” businesses are thriving in the area? (Let’s not play coy, here – as much as I love my yoga, seeing three yoga studios on the same block is the epitome of overkill.) A couple of weeks ago, I received the following comment from Dee, a Chicago reader:

I live in Chicago, which is a very segregated city. I do know that there are some great produce markets with good-quality, cheap produce in many of the predominantly Latin@ communities. I know that the food deserts in the city are all in predominantly African American communities — and that at least in Chicago, food access is correlated to race but not income (food deserts in poor, working class, and middle class communities.) (If you are really curious about food deserts in Chicago, there are good study reports herehttp://www.marigallagher.com/projects/ — I am a teacher and therefore I’m particular about language and citing my sources.)

…which takes you to this .pdf file, dated June 2011, that provides this not-so-awesome statistic for Chicago:

About 70% of the total Food Desert Population is African American. The remaining 30% is roughly an equal split of whites and Latinos.

There’s also a map in that .pdf and, if you know anything about Chicago and its “South Side,” well… let’s just say it’s easy to guess where those food deserts lie.

Now, I’m aware I went from New York City to Chicago in a matter of a few paragraphs, but it all – at least to me – ties into this:

It reminds me of the “bike to work” movement. That is also portrayed as white, but in my city more than half of the people on bike are not white. I was once talking to a white activist who was photographing “bike commuters” and had only pictures of white people with the occasional “black professional” I asked her why she didn’t photograph the delivery people, construction workers etc. … ie. the black and Hispanic and Asian people… and she mumbled something about trying to “improve the image of biking” then admitted that she didn’t really see them as part of the “green movement” since they “probably have no choice” –

I was so mad I wanted to quit working on the project she and I were collaborating on.

So, in the same way when people in a poor neighborhood grow food in their yards … it’s just being poor– but when white people do it they are saving the earth or something.

And YES black people on bikes and with gardens DO have an awareness of the environment. Surprisingly so! These values are in our communities and they are good values. My Grandmother was an organic gardener before it was “cool” –My mother believed in composting all waste and recycling whatever could be reused– it was a religious thing. God hates waste. [source]

Again, the focus on “choice,” something that – as we see often here on BGG2WL – not everyone is afforded. There’s also that class/race-defaulting thing going on here, too – if “poor people” (who are, assumedly, of color – and don’t we all assume poor people are people of color?) are just being poor by growing their own food (’cause, y’know, they can’t afford to pay all that money to eat garbage) and “white people” are assigned the noble position of “saving the Earth” by growing their own food… what are poor white people doing when they grow their own food? I mean, they’re poor, yes… but they’re not default poor, which is Black or “Brown.”

Excerpted from The Unbearable Whiteness of Eating: How The Food Culture War Affects Black America | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss

And, to me, this also very much ties into the original reason I began writing about food deserts in the first place, and that was a posting on The Root that proclaimed that Blacks have some form of hereditary slave palate that prevents them from even wanting fresh produce and quality meat, should they choose to eat it. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a ridiculous theory, but being ridiculous has never stopped a ton of people from believing it, before. It’s only a bigger deal here because that stereotype is affecting whether or not areas that need the healthier produce actually get them.

The article I quoted above speaks of Anacostia, a DC area said to be rife with “crime and violence, now offers yoga studios and chai lattes.” On that link you’ll find a map of businesses, libraries and hospitals in the Anacostia area, with one little organic grocery claiming to be “the first organic grocery store east of the river.” I can’t help but compare that to the area of Brooklyn I called home for a week or so, and the multiple organic spots we had access to within walking distance.

So, what do I get from all this? While gentrification plays a huge part in where businesses go, the money will have a hard time overshadowing the race if it is assumed that, simply because of your race, you won’t have an interest in what’s being offered. I don’t really know how to combat that.

While gentrification absolutely has its pitfalls – “Not everyone, of course, could stay. As neighborhoods gentrify, buildings are sold, landlords raise rents, and some people are forced out. In an ideal world, you wouldn’t have to wait for the dual bugaboos to arrive before you get a decent grocery store or adequate police patrols.” [source] – and its shortcomings, I’m inclined to presume that one of its most peculiar shortcomings is that even the Black members of The Gentry will struggle with overcoming the stereotypes of being “default poor.”

Photo credits: Nostrand Park; BikePortland.org

On Saturday evening 6th of August I was gathered with friends in Peckham, South London celebrating the opportunities and doors open to us. One friend travelling to China for a year, my scholarship for a masters degree, another friend rising in influence in the community. All of us young Black people having grown up in the inner city on Estates and council properties. Graduates with narratives that disturb the monolithic perspective of Black youth identity. But not disconnected from our own context and committed to our community it was with grief, sympathy and solidarity that we turned toward Tottenham, by then, ablaze with anger and burning out brick and mortar. This morning – through the soot and smoke filter – the socio-economic barriers remained.

Numerous stories have emerged but there is no verified account of what turned a peaceful protest into a riot that would endanger lives and ruin local businesses and services. Earlier that afternoon members of the community in Tottenham gathered to demand answers from the metropolitan police, who on Thursday 4th August stopped 29 year old Mark Duggan in a Mini Cab and engaged in a shoot out that resulted in his death. Duggan, father of four, had allegedly been in possession of firearms. This is another of at least three accounts of Black men’s deaths during police operations this year alone. It has only been five months since over a thousand people gathered to protest the suspicious death of Smiley Culture whilst the police were at his home.

Last night’s riots in Tottenham come exactly twenty-five years after the infamous Broadwater Farm riots in the same part of London. Not vastly dissimilar from recent events, Cynthia Jarret died whilst the police conducted a search of her home. Just the week before that Dorothy Groce was shot by police instigating the 1985 Brixton Uprisings. When community members gathered at the police station tensions rose and the peaceful protest in Tottenham erupted into riot. The violence escalated and policeman Keith Blakelock was killed. (The intricacies of this case are harrowing and worth reading).

A quarter of a century on we are asking if police-community relations in Tottenham are any better. That is only for the residents of that area to say but it is evident that they are still not good enough when police accounts are understandably met with such distrust. As we face-off with the returned ugliness of the 80s British conservatism and increasing hostility, conditions are being set for a ‘police army state’. I was disgusted listening to a BBC Radio 5 reporter commenting ‘If you shoot at the police what else do you expect?’ I expect the police to arrest and charge their suspects. I expect individuals charged with crimes to face court and the full length of our judicial process as required. (The Guardian has since published information stating early ballistic tests show that all bullets were fired from the police – evidence of the false account used to cover police corruption.) I have not been so deceived out of my citizenship, nor convinced of the absent humanity of those of us living in the inner city, as to expect and humbly accept rising numbers of curious deaths at the hands of our police – and certainly not when they are all men of African-Caribbean descent. As Reverend Nims passionately expressed standing in Tottenham speaking to BBC News this afternoon, the Duggan family waited for hours to get answers from the police to no avail. Their anger is legitimate and their right to justice persists.

My perspective here is more complex than ‘F@*k the police’. I understand fully that they have a job to do and that many of them are simply executers of the racism that is systemically part of the police force as an institution. It is this foundation that makes me object to Trident (who conducted Thursdays operation) despite the commentary of many explaining the danger of government plans to disband the department as part of budget cuts. Activist Lee Jasper in particular shared very thorough thoughts on his issue here. I however believe that Trident has lead to the increased criminalisation of African-Caribbean people in the eyes of this nation. Consistently reported and advertised as a department developed to tackle gun crime in the Black community our joint citizenship is undermined and we are ostracised as ‘the problem immigrants’. We are specially policed like animals. These may seem like trivial concerns when held against the real and potential work Trident do in reducing violent crime. But the above perceptions fuel racism. There is no clearer denial of our humanity by the government and larger British public than the fact that they are/were willing to invest money into specifically policing Black communities, but resist and resent at every turn investing in our education, employment, specific healthcare needs etc through policy, grants, or initiatives like affirmative action that redistribute power and create fairer playing grounds. The strategy has been to tackle crime without addressing the different types of social exclusion that create the conditions for it, and the injustice of social exclusion is on the rise in areas like Tottenham. This may be why there were many eye witness accounts, and Social Activist and Youth Campaigner Symeon Brown who had been there the whole night went on record with the BBC to express that the police had only secured the banks and police station, and observed while the rest of Tottenham burnt down.

Duggan’s death was not the cause of the rioting but a trigger that set light to legitimate anger in that community. Haringey Council implemented a 75% budget cut to youth services closing down many of the centres and resources most needed by young people especially during the holiday period. With Conservative policies creating higher unemployment, threatening our national health service and stripping our arts sector it is the people in these inner city areas that suffer most.

It is senseless and disconnected preamble to discuss the rioting as rational or strategic. It was impetuous, emotional and in some cases exploitative. But lasts nights violence stands to reason and if the history of the last 25 years is not evidence enough then Frantz Fanon one of the most important thinkers on Black experience describes it for us clearly:

At the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect. [Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth, 1963. New York Press, p93]

The rioting is tragic and regrettable and devastating. Many people in the Tottenham area woke up to the loss & destruction of their businesses and property. That always presents horror but particularly so in this economic climate. Four children have woken up this morning to confront the loss of their father. That is stifling. These are the personal stories. The macro narrative is that time is not linear but circular. There is no more appropriate scripture this Sunday evening than Solomon’s words ‘There is nothing new under the sun.’ (Ecclesiastes 1:9) The conditions were set, the violence followed, no different to what generations before us have known. So much so that it brought together the whole spectrum of multiculturalism in that area. Tottenham was destroyed last night. It is time to rebuild: “A call for engagement, empowerment, education and economic revival” says political activist Rukayah Sarumi.

Let the work begin today.

I don’t live in London, so I will not pretend to write the story of what Londoners are feeling. I live in the nation’s second city, Birmingham—a less than two hour drive northwest of London. This is my perspective on London, Birmingham and other parts of the country.

On Thursday, Tottenham (borough of London) resident Mark Duggan was shot and killed by police. He was being investigated by police for some time. Though armed, reports claimed Duggan had surrendered his gun before shots were fired. On Saturday, his family—tired of waiting for answers about the circumstances of his death—marched to a local police station to speak to senior officers. On the way there, other people joined them. Police were slow to respond to the family’s request for information. The crowd became restless and a young girl was reportedly pushed back by police. It was speculation and rumour around this confrontation that sparked the initial rioting in Tottenham. The looting and arson that followed on ensuing nights had nothing to do with getting justice for Mark. His family is outraged at the behaviour and violence that has spread across London and the country.

We’ve been glued to the TV since Sunday morning when we woke up to news of the rioting in Tottenham on Saturday night. We were gobsmacked at the devastation, questioning why this was happening. On Sunday night when we learned that the violence had spread to other areas of London, I had a sinking feeling that the trouble would reach beyond the capital, and we would see it in Birmingham. In fact, I said as much in an email on Monday morning to my best friend in DC.

On Monday evening, we went to a free cinema preview on the edge of Birmingham city centre. In an unusual move, we decided to take the car and go to the nearby Tesco grocery store afterwards. The supermarket’s parking lot was unusually empty. It was 8:30 PM. As we approached the entrance another shopper arriving at his car told us the shop had closed early due to “trouble in town”. I pressed him about the exact location of the trouble, but he did not know. We decided to go to the Tesco Express at the end of our street in the Jewellery Quarter (a desirable residential area near the heart of the city). My sense of unease continued. I stayed outside in the small parking lot of the store to keep watch while my partner went inside to shop. I noticed a youth in dark clothing with his hood up, surreptitiously talking on his phone. I looked to my right and in the distance spotted about 10 other youths in similar dress approaching. I loudly admonished G to “Get the fuck out NOW!” I could feel myself welling up with anger because they dared to bring their violence and bravado to my neighbourhood. I think I had residual anger from having had all three of our bikes nicked by young kids just two weeks before. G did not heed my words, so I had to yell like a mad woman for her to get out. As I turned my back, the youth were just feet away from me. I saw one quickly take off his balaclava (ski mask) and dump it behind the bin near the entrance of the store. To my left two police vans had just arrived. I begged the youths not to bring trouble to my ‘hood then jumped in the car to quickly get away. Later that night from my side window, I could see police in riot gear parading up and down my street. Ours is the only residential building on a street otherwise littered with jewellery shops. It’s important to note that these youth were not rioters. The term “riot” usually implies political purpose. These youth had gathered with the intention to cause damage and steal.

BBM messages like these have been sent out to organize people:

“Everyone from all sides of London meet up at the heart of London (central) OXFORD CIRCUS!!, Bare SHOPS are gonna get smashed up so come get some (free stuff!!!) fuck the feds we will send them back with OUR riot! >:O Dead the ends and colour war for now so if you see a brother… SALUT! if you see a fed… SHOOT!”

Interestingly, the message above is also temporarily advocating squashing gang turf wars and racial tensions (“dead the ends and colour wars”) in the name of free stuff. These give you some indication of the motivations of those who organized the violent gangs. Their intentions: rain havoc through any violence possible and get free shit while doing so. This was supposedly their way of showing authorities that they could do whatever they want. And they did. Four nights on, they’re still at it. I must stress that any justification the rioters in Tottenham may have felt they had to rail against authority on Saturday night, cannot be claimed by offenders who spread this to other parts of the country. How shameful that social media has been used for this purpose. Recently, we’ve seen how mediums like Twitter were used to mobilize the people of Egypt (and other countries) in their quest for democracy.

There was an appalling lack of coverage of trouble in Birmingham on the BBC and Sky News on Monday. I relied on this industrious young man’s tumblr: http://birminghamriots2011.tumblr.com/ to coalesce all the Birmingham area news. I’ve never been so frightened in my life. In all my years living in DC, I’ve never seen a group of people who don’t give even a hint of a fuck because they feel they have nothing to lose. Those that conducted violence and arson in London boroughs may have started out angry, but the violence that has spread across the country in the last two nights is mostly opportunistic copycat criminality by gangs. Highly organised to be sure. Take a look at the flyer instructing would-be criminals on how to keep their identity protected after looting.

Most of the violators are born and bred in England. While the initial trouble was mostly led by Black youths, the subsequent spread has seen increasing numbers of white youths and adults of both genders. Kids as young as 10 have been seen wearing make shift balaclavas (ski masks) and hurling debris at police. What has to be questioned is the mentality of the opportunistic looters. I saw news footage of a middle-aged man brazenly entering a T-Mobile store after the looters left, copping a netbook and slipping it under his shirt. Watching the images from the violence in Manchester, I could not help but notice the predominately white faces railing against police and kicking their way into stores.
These riots are largely not being committed by immigrants. South Asian groups are mostly absent from the violence (it’s also Ramadan!). In Birmingham, the last night has brought about a surge of “vigilantes” from Sikh, Hindu, Muslim and other communities protecting their properties and religious institutions. Tuesday night, three young South Asian men died in a deliberate hit-and-run collision just outside Birmingham while trying to protect their community.

People are angry. Very angry. I share that anger. In Birmingham, eyewitness accounts indicate that mobs are largely after cash. They have straight up robbed people, casinos, bars and even yanked ATMs out of the walls of banks. I just feel like I want to shake them and say: Is this what you want your life to be? And for what? £25 from a slot machine and a few pairs of jeans? But through all of this, the spirit of community is emerging. It started late Monday night on Twitter and Facebook with people forming #riotcleanup crews. They came out in force in affected communities with their brooms and gloves. This is the spirit of a country that has lived through violence in past decades and the Blitz of World War II. It’s not quite the “Keep Calm and Carry On” motto from the war, but there is a sense of getting on with things even as we grapple with deep questions.

England’s benefits system (welfare) is infamous for how easy it is to exploit. There are generations of people who have known nothing but this benefits system and frankly aren’t motivated to get off it. But much of the criminal behaviour is not coming from mostly poor, disenfranchised youth. In fact, I consider it an insult to blame the poor for this behaviour. It’s also wrong. Violence like this has noticeably not kicked off in poor areas in Wales, Scotland or the very north of England. Young people from poor, rural areas with naff all to do have not joined the fray. So it’s also a question of values and a lack of individual responsibility among those who have made the decision to deliberately ruin cities and lives. Some people have been left with only the clothes on their back. Small business owners have seen years of hard work disappear in hours. Reeling from austerity measures, the last thing this country needs is civil unrest and billions of dollars in property damage. The aftershocks will go on for quite some time.

It’s clear that stemming the violence is only the beginning. Coming from the US where guns are largely prevalent, I am thankful that guns have been absent from the hands of criminals and the riot police. There are two conversations going on as the violence starts to temper in London (but growing in the rest of the country). One is obviously tough talk about catching and punishing criminals, thereby sending a message that behaviour like this is not acceptable. As importantly, the other conversation is about how to prevent this in the future, but not just with police tactics and intelligence. People are beginning to search for the root causes that need to be addressed. The prevalence of gang culture and allegiance to gangs as a replacement for family bonds needs to be further examined and address. Certainly when Parliament is recalled on Thursday morning, some of their debates will focus on this and the consequences of deep cuts and lack of revenue growth. Sound familiar?

–

[R]ace and class issues often overlap, and as the city’s demographics shift — the white population jumped by 31 percent in the past decade, while the black population declined by 11 percent — many less affluent blacks say they are feeling left out of the city’s improving fortunes. In April, the Census Bureau reported that Ward 8, in the city’s mostly poor and black southeast, had the highest jobless rate in the country.

“Change is good, but it kind of kicks some of us to the back of the bus,” said Shirley Parnell, a Department of Motor Vehicles worker who recently inherited her mother’s house near H Street, which came with $11,000 in back taxes. [...]

The Rev. Cheryl J. Sanders, the pastor at the Third Street Church of God, in the Mount Vernon neighborhood, argues that race is important, particularly in gentrifying neighborhoods like hers. Her plan to raze buildings on church property to make room for more parking was blocked by her local neighborhood council in a vote that was divided evenly along racial lines. Blacks voted in favor of the church, long the social heart of the black community, and whites, concerned with preservation, opposed it. City preservation authorities later struck a compromise.

At stake, Ms. Sanders said, is the face of the nation’s capital and who gets to shape it. That privilege has special meaning here in Washington, whose black-majority government has given jobs to African-Americans and a way into a middle class that they had long been shut out of.

“It’s a question of who has the power to determine what this community is going to look like,” she said. “I want to have a voice in that. I don’t want to be told to ‘sit down and shut up while we cast the vision for the city.’ ”

Sanders hit the nail on the head. The vision of the city is essentially being dictated to longtime residents from outside interests – or, worse, from the folks who have settled here while Obama is in office, and don’t see DC as home. The newer visions for the city are heavily cosmetic and heavily skewed to a younger, moneyed class – which is causing tensions. As we’ve spoken about gentrification many times before (see the links at the bottom of the article) and that tough bridge dividing long time residents and the new development.

It’s easier to like things like new establishments, nicer streets, rising property values and many lifers understand why it’s important to woo a larger tax base. But it’s hard to like changes that just feel straight up exclusionary.

In my neighborhood, the people who live there are a pretty much even mix of blacks, whites, and Latinos. Slightly heavier on the blacks and Latinos, since those are the populations who have historically lived in the area. Recently, the white population started coming here, from both inside and outside of the city, due to revitalization efforts. Now, my neighborhood is considered trendy and is a hot spot for people from other parts of the city.

Some people have argued all of this represents progress – but it’s a little strange that the mini-entertainment district that has opened up caters to white people from other areas of the city than the people in the neighborhood. We often see our neighbors on the street, walking by all these establishments, while the patios on said establishments are predominantly white. I suppose many of the neighborhood folks are all just walking down to the surrounding areas for our entertainment. And it’s odd how things tipped – like many things in DC, the segregation is quiet. It isn’t as if shopkeepers are putting up whites only signs on the doors. It’s just in the early forumlative days of a new place you see the whole neighborhood giving it a try, but somehow, the main clienteles always segregate in the end. Boyfriend often jokes that if he wants to go to one of the bars up the street, and be treated like other patrons, he has to wear his work clothes, not his casual ones. But its odd to walk past these establishments each and every day and not feel like there’s a great new thing in the neighborhood, but rather, it’s a signal of the type of city that others want to see.

U street is a beautiful kind of case study on this, and I wish I had done that photo project I said I would do three years back. Three years ago, U street was bearing the fruits of its revitalization projects. The place was always popping, and there were a lot of different scenes clustered in the same place. I noticed then, the bars my white friends invited me to (Axis, Stetsons) were not the same as the places I went to hang out (Jin, Tabaq, Creme, Mocha Hut), but there were still places that prompted crossover (Busboys, Marvin) so the demographics on U – and further up and down, were still fairly mixed.

Now, U Street reminds me a lot of Georgetown. It’s changed from being the casual hangout space it once was – most places now desire reservations. The coffee shop politics are interesting – the Starbucks is a hangout space for all, but heavily skews black. The Mocha Hut was sold, and the demographics changed once it became The U Street Cafe. There was a failed coffee shop on 14th and U, taking a page from Tryst’s worn sofas and armchairs, which was popular among whites for a while – could never figure out what appealed about that coffee shop versus Mocha Hut. A lot of the spoken word nights have gone, though Busboys still does theirs – at a higher price, and far more popular than it used to be. And there are more and more establishments that attract white people, so the streets look different. Outside of Patty Boom Boom (and perhaps Masa 14) many of the new establishments have settled into predominantly white clienteles, while African American patrons have gone much further up U street to 9th to eke out space. The burgeoning Ethiopian population – once growing into a powerful political force – has again receded, moving further and further into the suburbs. Ben’s Chilli Bowl, another mixed race hangout spot, opened Ben’s Next Door – and immediately reshuffled into a new black hangout. One of these days, I’ll try to document this in real time – but for now, it’s just a strange part of this ever evolving puzzle.

You can even see some of this tension on Yelp. What kind of experience does one expect at a carryout?

The trouble with gentrification is that we are carving out enclaves for ourselves instead of truly integrating. It isn’t about building a community – it’s a turf war, with much higher stakes.

When I walk down Mt. Pleasant Street, I love what I see there. Family owned bakeries, tiny Korean restaurants, long time community spot Haydee’s with their stubborn insistence on live music, the temporary library, street vendors selling chilled fruit, the always packed and popping 7-11 – that whole area just looks like DC. It’s a mix of people and cultures, new and old, multi-lingual, and multi-cultural. Those of us who like seeing that don’t want it to change too much. But already, small changes have happened.

Nana, a boutique I liked on U street, moved to Mount Pleasant Street, probably in search of the lower rent that comes with a non marquee area. And next door to Nana, a chill cafe called Flying Fish has opened where a multiracial group of young digital kids go to get work done. I love both these places – but does their coming signal an end to the way of life that I’ve come to love? It isn’t the fault specifically of small businesses like Flying Fish and Nana, who are just looking to survive in a city whose rents are spiraling out of control, both business and residential. I don’t think the owners of these shops moved to Mt. Pleasant to deliberately change the fabric of the neighborhood. In fact, they probably came for the same reasons I did: slightly cheaper cost of living, diverse area, walkability, convenience. And yet, this is one of the costs of gentrification, to feel like every new first is symbolic of the beginning of the end. So far, most of the businesses on Mt. Pleasant street have managed to cater to most of the neighborhood. I keep wondering if that will stay – or if one day, the change will happen – and it will all start rolling out of control again.

Over the weekend, Boyfriend wanted to go out and walk around the changing waterfront. A new tennis stadium has opened up and he wanted to look at the changes to the Arena stage. We decided to start with dinner at the Wharf, a vestige of old DC. When we pulled in, the lot was packed full of black and brown people starting their Friday night with shrimp, crabs, and chicken. I stood there, looking at the appealing seafood set against a grimy backdrop. A few women waiting in line started bouncing to the go-go tune playing from the fishmonger’s stand. The area was busy, crammed full the way Market Lunch is on Saturday and Sunday. But everyone was polite in that genteel kinda way, comfortable with each other and where we were.

“This feels like old DC,” I said to my Boyfriend.

We paid for the crabs and sat by the predominantly white Yacht Club (roughly 15 yards from where we bought our food) and settled in on the public benches, looking out over the water. The folks on the porch politely leaned over to warn us they were going to fire their canon, as they traditionally do every Friday at Sunset. We warned the other people on the path to cover their ears. The canon exploded into the night. Couples and families of all races strolled by, some on their way to Phillips, some just taking a walk, others seeking benches like ours.

Everything was calm. Everything was easy.

We can all coexist together.

But question that arises with gentrification is a simple, yet painful one: Do we all want to be together?

Earlier:

The Gentrification Shuffle
The Gentrification Shuffle, Redux: Rebranding Anacostia
Gentrification has Nothing to Do with White Hipsters
More Notes on Gentrification
Another Perspective on Gentrification
I Colonize

The public school system in DC has fallen out of the national conversation since the departure of Michelle Rhee.

But locally, the debate rages on.

The Washington Post just posted a profile of Bill Kerlina, a young principal initially lured to DC from Montgomery County who has now resigned to open a gourmet cupcake shop.

If anyone had a shot at making it in DCPS, it was Kerlina. He was placed at one of the few high performing elementary schools in the system. In stark contrast to most of DCPS, Hearst Elementary School is beloved by parents and the majority of students are proficient in math and reading. (DCPS averages are dismal, with about 50% of kids in any given school meeting proficiency.)

After enticing Kerlina with promises of a promotion (Montgomery County has low turnover rates for principals) and dangling the mission to close the black-white achievement gap, the transition proved to be rough. While Kerlina loved the students and parents, the lack of support for teachers combined with a school reform that was more hype that action proved to be too much. Compensation factored into his decision. However, Kerlina also shared one more fascinating detail:

A few days before he quit, Kerlina received his annual evaluation from Instructional Superintendent Amanda Alexander. It was a positive appraisal, school officials confirmed, and Henderson sent Kerlina a letter of reappointment. But Alexander raised a concern, he said: Why were there not more white families at Hearst?

The question is sensitive in the D.C. system, where only about a third of students attend neighborhood schools. It is especially sensitive in affluent and largely white areas of Northwest Washington. At Hearst, 70 percent of the 241 students come from outside the neighborhood. Most are African Americans.

D.C. officials say they simply want more neighbors in neighborhood schools. But Kerlina took offense at Alexander’s question, which implied that as a white male, he should have been more successful at recruiting. The next day, in an e-mail to Alexander that he wrote but decided not to send, he laid out a taxonomy of Northwest parents in an effort to show the hurdles to recruiting more neighborhood families.

The well-to-do private school families, “the majority” in the neighborhood, he wrote, were a lost cause. “I have not courted them and do not plan to do so, since they will never consider DCPS,” Kerlina wrote. [...]

Finally, he wrote, there were families with racial prejudices. He said this conclusion came from a series of conversations he had with prospective neighborhood parents “that delicately asked about the number of out-of-boundary families and made reference to the ‘diversity’ of Hearst.”

“They will never come to Hearst because of the number of out-of-boundary black families,” he wrote.

One way to lure neighboring families — restricting the number of out-of-boundary seats — would be a “horrible mistake,” Kerlina wrote, as “the diversity at Hearst is what makes it a great school.”

The comments, as usual on education pieces, are a mix of outright racism, commentary on racism, and conversations about class:

cleancut77
Finally, he wrote, there were families with racial prejudices. He said this conclusion came from a series of conversations he had with prospective neighborhood parents “that delicately asked about the number of out-of-boundary families and made reference to the ‘diversity’ of Hearst
+++++++++++++++++++++++

Shocking!! So the white liberals in DC are not big on “diversity” either. Then why are they pushing it on everyone else? Also how is a school 70% Black “diverse”?

cheetahcats
Perhaps it’s just that many parents choose not to risk their children’s safety by exposing them to bused thugs who have been deemed “behavior nightmares.”

commonsense42
As a former teacher, “behavior nightmares” come in all shades of the rainbow. Don’t kid yourselves and think that only black students are problems….and that only white students are perfect little angels with high GPAs.

thetensionmakesitwork
Very true CS. Could we go further and not make it a race issue? My experience is that children with behavior issues generally come from households with single parents, low prior academic attainments, and low incomes. The amount of melanin, which is based primarily on where their ancestors lived relative to the equator, has nothing to do with behavior.

gusaxa
Kerlina speaks of the problem of out of bound students who are behavior problems and disrupt the school. But when white neighborhood parents speak of these same issues – well, they’re racist and obviously don’t understand the value of “diversity.” WaPo, please for the love of god strike the use of the word “diversity” from the paper. It means nothing. Diversity in what? income? race? education level? ethnicity? Or, is it code for “low-income blacks”? If it’s that, then just say it. Maybe it’s about time DCPS focus on educating children, period. Create a SAFE, STABLE, and ENGAGING education environment and they will come. Unfortunately, too many DC Public Schools reflect the dysfunctions of the communities they serve. No one can blame a white, black, hispanic family for sending their child to Sidwell Friends if afforded the option. And, yes, there are black DC families who send their children to elite private schools.

LuvDCArea
Things like this are why we left D.C. and moved to the Maryland suburbs. We couldn’t afford private schools, for our children, when we lived in D.C., and even though we lived in a good neighborhood, in D.C., the public schools were terrible.
It’s a shame that the system puts good teachers and principals in a double-bind; do well but we won’t give you the resources and training to do so. This sounds about right, from what we experienced, a dysfunctional system, even though there were some very dedicated, talented educators who were trying their best to make the situation better, they were fighting a huge uphill battle, which they couldn’t win.
This makes me continue to support D.C. Statehood. Perhaps, then, some of these problems would lessen.

cutsdeep
and then… that’s why I left montgomery county….

we could afford private school…. but were disgusted funding both our child’s education AND that of another….

So we moved.

where is that tax base coming from next year, maryland?

to issues of bullying and violence (which generally didn’t factor into the out of towner take):

POLOinDC
I went to DCPS from elementary school to high school, and finally graduated in 1985, without getting killed, thank God. After reading this article it would seem nothing has changed. The problems described in this article are the same ones that were present back then, most notably bad students with behavioral problems. I don’t know why school systems allow these bad apples to remain in school and basically turn the entire school up side down. It seems like school systems are more concerned with the rights of the few bad students then what is best for all of the students as a whole. There is a reason why some schools have so many out of boundary students, most of the neighborhood schools, especially in SE, are overrun with bullies and thugs. I begged my mom to send me to Gonzaga, but unfortunately we had no way to afford that, so I just crossed my fingers each day and hoped I would make it back home safe. And going home wasn’t all that better either, because after navigating the thugs and bullies at school you had to do it all over again once you got back to your neighborhood. When I read that some White families didn’t want their kids going to school with some of these kids, I can’t really blame them and while some it might be due to racism, trust me not all of it is. Some of these kids are just off the chart bad and I mean kids in first and second grade who are already showing signs of thuggery and aggressiveness. And a lot of times when you meet the parents you say to yourself ahhhh now I see where it comes from.

Until DCPS wakes up and deals with this menace, nothing will ever change. All the teacher evaluations in the world can not not make up for having to deal with these little terrorist on a daily basis.There is hardly any learning going on when the school day is constantly being interrupted with chaos and shenanigans. I don’t know how the remaining teachers do it, but I couldn’t at least not without a stun gun or some other weapon near by at all times. Teacher burn out is not the exception with DCPS but the norm. Good luck to those that stay, because there are truly some wonderful teachers in the system. Students like myself, who were trapped due to economics, appreciate your toughness to remain.

Clifton Galloway
H.D Woodson class of 85

to a take down of the issues with DC’s infrastructure:

lulu99
It should be acknowledged that Kerlina was nearly kind in his assessment of DCPS central office staff and their practices. The whole truth would be unprintable. The issues he raises wouldn’t even make water cooler conversation at my school. If we had a water cooler that is. Every teacher at my school sees more inane, ill conceived nonsense from Admin every day than he touched on. From parents, students and DCPS central office staff. Teachers are often little more than sh-t filters for all the crap showered on them.
Most well functioning systems do a national search for their Superintendent (our Chancellor). DC? No way, lets give another newbie a chance. Most well functioning school system have a curriculum for teachers to work with. DC? No. Most good system have alignment between Standards and classroom materials. DC? No way. We get random new stuff willy nilly. Why is it nobody is writing about these serious shorcomings? Ledership? Nonexistent in DC.

mr_silverman
What lulu99 mentions at the end of the post is easy to miss but important. When I worked at DCPS there were storage closets packed 15 feet deep and 8 feet high with the jumbled remnants of bygone curriculum materials. I spent one evening wading though the mess and found the scraps of dozens of different programs–much of the material still in the box. Some teacher’s editions and science programs dated back 20 or 30 years. One of the least examined problems in DCPS is that near-constant turnover in leadership is accompanied by near-constant turnover in curriculum. The system, as a result, is completely schizophrenic. As one of the 30-year veterans put it when confronted in a staff meeting by yet another new “curriculum specialist” with yet another new acronym-based reading program, “I was here before that bulls-it, and I’ll be here after it.” S-it filters, indeed.

If Rhee’s approach–get rid of the bad teachers–had beed successful, Fenty would be mayor today, there’s no question about it. But you can’t hope to reform teaching without first reforming a dysfunctional system. I don’t claim to know how to fix DCPS, but at least I know the law of gravity works: s-it still rolls down hill.

DC public schools have been in the spotlight for a few decades now, for various reasons. When I was younger, I remember reports on the news about Maryland residents trying to sneak their children into elementary schools in DC, which caused a lot of problems.

But for this piece, I want to focus on how diversity has become a code word, depending on the person using the term.

I went to three different elementary schools as a kid: Harmony Hills (Wheaton, MD); Anne Beers (Washington, DC), and Weller Road (Silver Spring, MD).

It should go without saying, but my mother moved to Montgomery County in hopes of providing us with a better education. Montgomery County, at the time, prided itself on progressive principles. I’ve written about the housing policies enacted in the 1970s and their influence on counteracting gentrification. When I was in school there, multiculturalism was a huge deal. I remember, from kindergarden on, that we were all told that differences make us special, and we should expect to have diversity in our lives. (I lived on the southern side of Montgomery County in a heavily urban area – the messages may have been different on the richer, northern side and the more rural areas.) So for me, diversity was always presented as something to strive for.

However, as I got older, I noticed people using the term diversity in a negative way, as some of the commenters on the Washington Post site did. They don’t feel as though they have gained anything from diversity. They don’t feel like it is of particular value to them. And they don’t want to pay for the education of those “others.”

But here’s what I find fascinating about the whole thing – the numbers and the attitudes do not lie.

DC has always struggled with segregation in the city, with clear race and class divisions. (What, you think the Gold Coasters didn’t have problems with class?) Montgomery County is starting to feel the same thing, just on a more delayed time schedule. But if you click on the links that I provided for the schools I attended, an interesting pattern begins to emerge. In DC, where people generally stick to their own, you have a dismal educational system, where gains mean that around 60% of students are at a proficient level in reading and math skills. This is considered a huge leap of progress.

In Montgomery County, where roughly 80% of kids hit proficiency markers, there are crisis and improvement plans on the website. Educators noticed that Latino students, special education students, and students with English as a Second Language were dipping below grade level with about 53% proficiency for targets in some groups. So there is an action plan to fix the problems.

Education is a community wide problem. If the community is fractured around the importance of this issue, it should not be a surprise why the problems persist.

If diversity is seen as the problem (“my child deserves a better education than those other kids”), all the solutions will involve things like charter schools, private schools, privatization of public schools, restriction of out of boundary seats at the schools that parents already desperately fight over.

However, if the idea of diversity is embraced, as in “all children deserve a good education”, the entire community benefits. Diversity means acknowleding, as Jane Van Galen writes for the Classism Exposed blog, that different starting points influence children’s outcomes. And all children just do not have the same types of access:

[A New York Times] article describes how in elite schools in New York City, wealthy parents anxious about grades and college admissions are investing tens of thousands of dollars in private tutors to sustain their children’s competitive edge. One parent concedes that her children’s tutoring bill climbed to six figures in a recent year. The schools are discouraging this for multiple reasons, but the parents will not be dissuaded from hiring “stealth” outside support for their own children.

As one of the tutoring providers explains:

It’s no longer O.K. to have one-on-one coaching for sailing but not academics.

The teachers with whom I work are not preparing children for recreational sailing.

They’re charged with preparing diverse children for a productive place in the raveling economic fabric in their communities, to be confident and vocal citizens, to be ready to go on to whatever forms of higher education they choose. And increasingly, they are preparing children for cruel competition for access to any of these things.

And if these children do not eventually find productive and dignified work, find their voices in the public square, or thrive in college, blame will fall on the shoulders of their weary teachers, as blame is falling on them now when test scores predict the odds against their students doing any of these things.

Yet as this article illustrates so vividly, academic achievement is not, and never has been, primarily about what teachers do within the four walls of their classrooms.

Many of my teacher education students will start internships in the fall in schools in which families move mid-week because the eviction notice has been posted, multiple languages are spoken at home, parents struggle to sustain dignity after years of unemployment, and ever-more crowded classrooms are taught be ever-more exhausted teachers.

As someone who lives in DC, it’s disappointing to see the choices made in this city, time and time again.

(Image Credit: IsThatLegal)

Last year, at a Poynter function, I had the privilege of meeting Jose Antonio Vargas in person. Both charming and interesting, with a huge drive to make journalism a true tool of democracy, he seemed like someone I wanted to get to know.

Last week, Vargas wanted the world to get to know exactly who he was. So he took the bold step of writing a piece that could change his life forever. Called “My Life as an Undocumented Worker,” Vargas used the New York Times platform to reveal his secret:

Over the past 14 years, I’ve graduated from high school and college and built a career as a journalist, interviewing some of the most famous people in the country. On the surface, I’ve created a good life. I’ve lived the American dream.

But I am still an undocumented immigrant. And that means living a different kind of reality. It means going about my day in fear of being found out. It means rarely trusting people, even those closest to me, with who I really am. It means keeping my family photos in a shoebox rather than displaying them on shelves in my home, so friends don’t ask about them. It means reluctantly, even painfully, doing things I know are wrong and unlawful. And it has meant relying on a sort of 21st-century underground railroad of supporters, people who took an interest in my future and took risks for me.

Vargas artfully describes the pain of the political becoming personal:

The debates over “illegal aliens” intensified my anxieties. In 1994, only a year after my flight from the Philippines, Gov. Pete Wilson was re-elected in part because of his support for Proposition 187, which prohibited undocumented immigrants from attending public school and accessing other services. (A federal court later found the law unconstitutional.) After my encounter at the D.M.V. in 1997, I grew more aware of anti-immigrant sentiments and stereotypes: they don’t want to assimilate, they are a drain on society. They’re not talking about me, I would tell myself. I have something to contribute.

Something that I adore about Vargas’ piece is how he quietly discusses class in the context of immigration. As he describes the hurdles he jumps through to obtain forged documents or to participate in society, he makes a few disclosures:

Lolo always imagined I would work the kind of low-paying jobs that undocumented people often take. (Once I married an American, he said, I would get my real papers, and everything would be fine.) But even menial jobs require documents, so he and I hoped the doctored card would work for now. The more documents I had, he said, the better.

While in high school, I worked part time at Subway, then at the front desk of the local Y.M.C.A., then at a tennis club, until I landed an unpaid internship at The Mountain View Voice, my hometown newspaper. First I brought coffee and helped around the office; eventually I began covering city-hall meetings and other assignments for pay.

For more than a decade of getting part-time and full-time jobs, employers have rarely asked to check my original Social Security card. When they did, I showed the photocopied version, which they accepted. Over time, I also began checking the citizenship box on my federal I-9 employment eligibility forms. (Claiming full citizenship was actually easier than declaring permanent resident “green card” status, which would have required me to provide an alien registration number.)

Something I noticed, while working in higher class gigs – the subtle indignities of working are mostly removed. At a certain professional level, you are no longer subjected to random drug tests. You have access to an HR department. And most importantly, there are a lot more assumptions that you are who you say you are. I work in DC, where a security clearance is worth your weight in gold – but outside of that, employers aren’t very strict. They may ask to see your documents once, but that’s all. There is no further interrogation. Especially if you possess the highest work document of all, a US Passport. Then, nothing else is needed.

I think about this gap often in terms of Ana. I mention her from time to time, the woman I used to babysit for. Ana fled the civil war in El Salvador and landed in America, only to flee the abusive husband that had come with her. She and her two kids had made a life for each other, but it was one ruled by fear – fear that their father would arrive in the night, and they would have to run again, and fear that others would show up at their door and ruin what she had worked for. I’m not sure, to this day, of Ana’s legal status – since she was a refugee, she could have been admitted to the United States under legal pretenses – or there may not have been time for that. What I remember the most clearly was Ana’s doctorate degree hanging on the wall. One day, as she was going to work as a nanny for a wealthy white couple, she saw me looking at it and informed me she had been a doctor in El Salvador. She often wanted to practice English with me, in hopes of practicing medicine again one day.

Class factors heavily into perceptions of undocumented workers – so I am glad Vargas chose to share his story. The profile that people who are anti-immigration like to paint are people who come to draw on government benefits or people who just commit crimes. Vargas has ascended to the white collar elite – a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, currently employed at The New York Times.

But Vargas explores still more aspects of the immigration debate through one more disclosure:

Later that school year, my history class watched a documentary on Harvey Milk, the openly gay San Francisco city official who was assassinated. This was 1999, just six months after Matthew Shepard’s body was found tied to a fence in Wyoming. During the discussion, I raised my hand and said something like: “I’m sorry Harvey Milk got killed for being gay. . . . I’ve been meaning to say this. . . . I’m gay.”

I hadn’t planned on coming out that morning, though I had known that I was gay for several years. With that announcement, I became the only openly gay student at school, and it caused turmoil with my grandparents. Lolo kicked me out of the house for a few weeks. Though we eventually reconciled, I had disappointed him on two fronts. First, as a Catholic, he considered homosexuality a sin and was embarrassed about having “ang apo na bakla” (“a grandson who is gay”). Even worse, I was making matters more difficult for myself, he said. I needed to marry an American woman in order to gain a green card.

Tough as it was, coming out about being gay seemed less daunting than coming out about my legal status. I kept my other secret mostly hidden.

Read the whole thing.

Vargas’ decision to embrace the truth so publicly hasn’t been easy. His editor, Chris Suellentrop, posted to the Times’ 6th floor blog about accepting the piece:

That afternoon, Peter called back with the news: Jose Antonio Vargas is an illegal immigrant. He had been planning to tell his story in The Washington Post, but for reasons unknown to him, The Post killed his story on Monday. [...] I called Peter and told that we wanted to see Jose’s story, but if there was any chance of closing it in time — of editing it, fact-checking it, photographing Jose, designing it, etc. — we needed to see it right now. Just before 5 p.m., 48 hours before the magazine is supposed to close, Jose e-mailed me a draft of the story.

And within a hour, we decided this wasn’t a story we were going to give to anyone else.

The Washington Post passed. There statement was unsatisfactory to me, but hey, it’s my hometown paper. My heart really wants to believe that the piece was killed because they were worried about Vargas’ safety and legal status – but my more cynical gut says they are worried about seeming too liberal friendly going into 2012.

NPR has been digging up bits and pieces of the story. First they checked in at the Washington Post, to see why they passed.

Post reporter Paul Farhi does give us a clue, though, to the reason the Post spiked the story:

“Given the subject — a reporter’s dishonesty about his personal life — The Post subjected Vargas’s story to an unusual degree of scrutiny. One red flag popped up during weeks of checking: Vargas hadn’t disclosed that he had replaced his expired Oregon driver’s license with a new one issued by Washington state (the license had enabled Vargas to pass airport security and to travel to distant work assignments). Vargas later conceded that he had withheld the information on the advice of his attorney. The disclosure set off internal discussion about whether the newspaper was getting the full story from its former reporter.”

Then, they checked the likelihood of Vargas being deported for his admissions. NPR doesn’t think the odds are high, based on changes in ICE policy:

In memorandums issued by ICE Director John Morton, the agency clarified that its priorities are to focus on illegal immigrants who present “a clear risk to national security.”

In one of the memos, released June 17, Morton said ICE is focused on felons and repeat offenders, gang members, and those with numerous immigration violations such as illegally re-entering the U.S. and committing fraud.

The memo also directs ICE officials to avoid proceedings against a wide array of individuals, including U.S. military veterans, minors and seniors, pregnant women, those who grew up in the U.S. and “long-time lawful permanent residents.”

The Washington Post’s Ombudsman has a better take, asking “Why Did the Post Deport Vargas’s Story?”

Why would The Post punt to a rival a riveting, already edited story that could provoke national discussion on immigration — an issue that sorely needs it — and that also included possibly illegal, and perhaps forgivable, conduct by a former Post reporter and current member of management?

Beats the heck out of many in The Post’s newsroom and beats the heck out of me. The cardinal rule of journalism, or politics, is that if there’s bad or questionable information, put it out yourself, be thorough and transparent, and don’t pull any punches.

Brauchli said in an interview with me and in other public statements that he prefers not to discuss internal Post deliberations about news judgment. “We made a judgment not to run the piece,” he said. Fair enough. Few editors go on the record about internal deliberations over a published news story, unless the story later results in accolades and awards.

And, I, too, see cautionary notes about Vargas that might have led to Brauchli’s decision. He left behind a reputation in The Post’s newsroom for being tenacious and talented but also for being a relentless self-promoter whom many colleagues didn’t trust. Editors said that he needed direction, coaching and constant watching.

It’s also disturbing that Vargas has formed a nonprofit group to advocate for immigration reform. He has crossed the line from journalist to advocate.

There is so much to parse here, but for now, I’ll leave the discussion to you readers. Some things I’m wondering:

1. Are we still trying to hold on to the tattered notion of “objectivity” – or did Vargas usher in a whole new take on radical transparency?
2. Seriously, a relentless self-promoter? Have you met any journalists in DC? Everyone, this writer-advocate-sometimes-journo included, is guilty of that. Or is it only cool when the approved new members of the boys club do it?
3. Considering our changing global realities, shouldn’t America be grateful cultivating talent like Vargas? Why do we want to force out a person who I would consider to be a true patriot?
4. ICE may be under directives to leave undocumented workers like Vargas alone, for now – but how will that change in 2012?

(Image Credit: Business Insider)

By Guest Contributor Emma Felber

Telling the story of the night aliens came to the hood, Attack the Block juxtaposes homicidal extraterrestrials with gangs of disaffected black and mixed-race teenagers in housing estates in the same way its’ sibling-in-production Shaun of the Dead, pitted zombies against twentysomething white everydudes.

Like Simon Pegg’s Shaun, who seemed to be sleepwalking through life until waking up to find everyone trying to eat his brain, these kids from the block are living a story of alienation and violence when they’re plunged head first into serious bloodshed – with serious aliens. But when it becomes clear there’s a battle to be fought, they’re first out to defend their homes. After all, with fireworks, samurai swords, machetes, baseball bats and daring on hand, they’re equipped for it – and practised. “Walking around expecting to get jumped at any moment?” one quips. “Feels like a normal day in the endz to me, blud.”

SPOILERS AHEAD

The story begins on Bonfire Night (an annual festival of fire and explosions) and fireworks are shooting across the sky of South London. Pretty, white Sam (Jodie Whittaker) is surrounded, then roughed up, by a group of hooded black teenagers on bikes, who rob her of her wallet and jewelry. Indistinct in the night, with bandannas covering their faces, the teenagers are a wall of menace, and after the fact their frightened victim spits out over a cup of tea with a neighbour, “they’re f-cking monsters.” But by the end of the film, it’s clear that hoods on bikes aren’t monsters – at least, not compared to great fearsome befanged things from outer space, or, in the words of the protagonists, “giant gorilla wolf motherf-ckers.”

As the battle proceeds, the interwoven characters build up distinct personalities: Moses (John Boyega), the silent leader with a stone-cold thousand-yard-stare; Jerome, (Leeon Jones) is the thinker of the bunch; charming, hyperactive motor-mouth Pest (Alex Esmail); hype man Dennis (Franz Drameh), junior Biggs (Simon Howard) and two even smaller tag-alongs whose gangster posturing is aided by a cap pistol and a SuperSoaker.

Pithy commentaries on race, inequality, police violence and lack of opportunity are strewn throughout the film, but never drag it into being po-faced. The pitch-black shaggy monsters are “blacker than my cousin Femi;” the aliens, it’s decided, are invading the estate because “they’re looking for a fight;” and most seriously, the kids are on their own: calling the police would only result in their own arrest.

Bereft of any support, the gang have only each other to rely on as they try to evade the cops, the local gang kingpin and the fanged horde. And while the latter get more screentime, it’s the boys’ persecution by the police that adds a sinister note of believability to the proceedings At one point, Moses speculates the source of the alien infestation might be the police. “First they sent guns, then drugs, now monsters,” he surmises. “We ain’t killing each other fast enough, so they sent aliens along to speed up the process.”
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The movie starts off fast-paced and builds up from there; there’s enough hair-trigger tension, menace and genuinely scary moments to satisfy anyone looking for a straightforward action film. But it’s also pervaded by humour ranging from surreal to acidly satirical, and a great deal of warmth.

Comic relief is provided by the trustafarian drip Brewis (Luke Treadaway), who comes to the block looking to score weed and gets more than he bargained for, and also by Nick Frost’s relaxed, affectionately sleazy local drug dealer, Ron. The film also has a lot of fun with the characters’ youth, and never lets the street fighting and bravado obscure the fact that our heroes range in age from nine and a half to 15 years old. The mismatch between their gaucheness and the vicious, heavy-handed world of drugs and weapons in which they have to operate is mined for laughs, and then later, for pathos. For most of the actors, it is their debut: they were recruited for their own proximity and first-hand knowledge of the kind of estate life which is featured.

The boys’ relationship with each other, far more than any ineffective family figure, is at the core of what they are out to defend. In that way, this becomes a sort of multidirectional buddy movie. The street London patois of their dialogue is sprinkled with “cuz,” “bruv,” “blood” and “fam,” not without reason; their bond and their loyalty is to each other and to “the block.” It also informs an eventual apology to Sam.

The block itself comes into its own as a setting: the grim inhuman geometry of housing estates makes for a dystopian fortress suddenly under siege. Shot at night, with dim lights flickering off wet pavement and any number of long corridors, sharp corners and twisting staircases, it brings home the hostility of the environment just as the boys show their mastery of it. It is the way that the street gang occupy the space of the estate – that same habit of roaming proprietorially with bicycles and dogs in tow, seen by the state and media as antisocial behaviour – that makes it possible for them to confront the invaders in a fair fight. The cold, sinister backdrop of the estate throws the lively and sharp human drama into relief.

Attack the Block has a solid redemption narrative running through the gun battles and gory death-by-alien scenes. Its setting is also provocatively familiar to any Londoner, complete with betting shops and a clapped-out pizza delivery moped. As a commentary on alienation, it punches its point across: that the “lost boys” who escape from parental control, or who never had it, those boys who sell weed and set off fireworks and mug nice white ladies, can form a line of defence around humankind, with the bravery and integrity to stand up to this threat.

The idea that young black men can be made to seem human when juxtaposed with shrieky, ravening aliens is perhaps not so progressive as the film would like to be, but nonetheless it supplies energy, thrills, laughs and pathos to the end.

By Guest Contributor Tami Winfrey Harris, cross-posted from What Tami Said

On Sunday, I was happy to catch up with blogger New Black Woman. (Definitely visit her blog and be sure to check into her recommended reading list.) I’ve been wanting to talk about her recent post, “”Why do black women continue to sabotage our image?“–a lamentation on the poor portrayals for black women, particularly on reality TV.

Black women are well aware there is indeed a lack of diversity in the array of characters we’re allowed (yes, allowed because these characters are concoctions of a producer or writer’s mind) to portray. The majority of black women on television are making waves in reality TV shows, which are typically edited in a way to play up to the expectations of viewers to see more drama, more cat fights and more angry black women. We do not have the luxury of having 10 different shows that feature 10 different characters of black women. We don’t have the diversity in characters to show mainstream America that we, too, are just as diverse as the white women they encounter on a daily basis.

As black women, however, why do we keep doing ourselves this disservice? Why do we continue to support the madness by proudly embracing the angry black woman stereotype on reality TV, by watching these shows and relishing in the drama black female characters convey to viewers?

This link to the clip from Sunday’s Celebrity Apprentice episode in which the never-ending drama between NeNe Leakes and Star Jones is a prime example of how black women are portrayed–and how they portray themselves–in reality television. In the clip, Leakes of Real Housewives of Atlanta fame bolsters her “street game” by rolling her neck and talking smack in Jones’ face. The white onlookers, including birther,racist fraud Donald Trump and nonsensical rapper Lil’ John, look on amused as if they were expecting the drama to happen. Read More

I share New Black Woman’s disdain for the way black women are framed in the media, including reality television. But I wondered if it was fair to hold other black women accountable for those portrayals. What follows is our discussion.

Tami: So, your post was inspired by Alison Samuels’ piece in Newsweek about the portrayal of black women in reality television. What bothers you about what you’re seeing on the TV screen?

New Black Woman: I think what’s bothering me is the television image of black women seems to be regressing. We went from Claire Huxtable in the 1980s to the “Real Housewives of Atlanta” (RHOA) in the new millennium. What’s more disturbing is how many black women have embraced this “downgrade” so to speak.

Maybe it’s part of the collective regression of television shows that’s occurred in the past three decades.

Tami: I think it is part of the decreasing quality of television and the rise of reality TV that exists to make money through controversy (See Jennifer Pozner’s terrific book, Reality Bites Back). I suspect the impetus for this isn’t necessarily race, but–and this is a big but–marginalized people, including black women, are
disproportionately effected by these rampaging stereotypes, because the public sees little to counter this stuff.

New: Right. There doesn’t seem to be a diverse offering of black women and other marginalized groups on television and in other forms of media. And I think that’s primarily what makes all this unsettling.

Tami: And add to the rise of the angry black woman on screen, the attacks on black women in other areas. Y’know, if one goes by media coverage, we are single, unloved, too educated, too religious, too emasculating, and…as of late…too unattractive.

New: Yes! All of that supposedly prevents us from netting our black prince charming…

Tami: This all adds up to an unfair portrayal of black women–one that impacts the way we are seen by non-black people, but sadly, also how we see ourselves.

New: I think that’s a great point. I also read your 2009 blog post asking “are you a credit to your race.”
It got me thinking about my instinctual habit of feeling embarrassed or annoyed at these stereotypical media portrayals of black women.

[Editor's note: In 2009, I wrote a post inspired by RHOA, asking "Are you a credit to your race?" I wrote:

As last week's "Real Housewives of Atlanta" post has played out here and on What Tami Said and Racialicious (where it was crossposted), I have been thinking about what it means to represent the black race and how black people act as ambassadors to the mainstream world. There is this tendency, from which I am not immune, to feel embarrassed by and to make excuses for black folks who behave badly, or rather, act in a way contrary to a certain set of values and accepted norms. There is a real reason for this compulsion: Black people and other people of color are often unfairly judged as group by the mainstream. In other words, the actions of one equal the actions of all. And so, many of us, learn from the time we are children to mind ourselves around white folks--to not do anything that brings discredit to black people and, ideally, to live life with the goal of uplifting the race through our actions. Admittedly, this idea of being a proxy for the entire race has been tied to excellence and achievement--both wonderful things. But, ultimately, this way of thinking is a tyranny and a perpetuation of race bias. Read more...]

Tami: Yeah, so let’s get into that. Cause when we start talking about black women on television, it gets complicated. Part of me cringes when I watch a Nene Leakes on TV. Why can’t she just act differently? Must she be such a stereotype? Then, the other part of me says, why should this woman be any reflection on me? I know other people think she is, but why do I need to answer for her foolishness?

New: Yep. Whenever I turn on the television and see a black woman acting in a stereotypical fashion, I can only think about what white people must be thinking about us when they view those characters. Until I read your post, I never really thought that instinct to feel embarrassed was just me perpetuating a race bias.

I even found myself doing this in my everyday life. I work in the journalism industry in a north metro Atlanta county that has a black population that’s about 12 percent. There is only one black elected official (that’s counting six cities, the local board of education and county commission).

Tami: It’s instinctual, I think. It happens all the time. Like when you hear about some scandalous crime and sit waiting for them to show the photo of the perpetrator going “Please don’t let the person be black.” It’s because we’ve been so conditioned that the actions of one reflect on the whole race.

New: YES! I find myself doing that with the local news all the time, especially since the Atlanta area has big, black population.

In my job as a journalist for a local newspaper, I have noticed that I’m probably the only black person many of my sources have to deal with on a daily basis. So, whenever I’m around them, I always feel like I have to present my best face. My instincts tell me I need to project the best qualities because, whether I like it or not, I am representing my race…

Tami: Oh, I can so relate. I started my career in journalism on a newspaper copy desk and I’m well aware of the feeling that you have to represent for black folks.

New: I can remember sitting at one city council meeting, a black man came up and began to speak about a piece of property he owned the city was wanting to buy. This man was a native of the county and had a thick, southern accent. I remember feeling embarrassed because I felt like he was “embarrassing us.”

Tami: That’s what makes this all so complicated. Despite our best intentions, we end up judging and stereotyping in the same way the larger culture does.

New: Since I’ve read your blog entry, I’ve thought about that incident and realized I unnecessarily placed that burden upon myself and projected that same racial bias upon him that’s been placed upon us. We end up acting like the same people we chastise for stereotyping us.

Do you have any instances in which you did the same that you can share?

Tami: Definitely. I remember traveling to New Orleans for work with several colleagues. At the time I was the only black person working at this particular PR agency. My white colleagues and I were driven around town by a older black man– thick accent, poor grammar, animated and talkative to the point where it felt like shucking and jiving to me. I could see my colleagues patronizing him. It made me mad at them, but more mad at him for being so damned embarrassing … not acting “right.”

New: We’ve all been that situation one too many times.

Tami: But the thing is … I know about the inequality in New Orleans — the huge gap between the haves and have nots. This man was probably old enough to have seen a the tail end of Jim Crow. His education and opportunity had likely been limited. He was handling his business making a honest living — probably knew how to act to secure tips from tourists traveling to the Big Easy. How dare I be embarrassed by that.

New: I know the man I looked down on at that meeting was in the same predicament.

Tami: And truth be told, if I read about, say, Rush Limbaugh, judging a man like this, I would have jumped all over him, but there I was sort of making the same judgment.

New: I think many black women like myself don’t realize we’re being just as nasty as the Rush Limbaughs of the world. Many women like myself have come to the conclusion that we (the educated ones) have a right to tell the others to mind themselves in front of white folks. Who made us the behavior police?

Tami: And see, I think this is relevant to RHOA, too. In watching that reality show, I have more than once got the feeling that Nene Leakes hasn’t had the easiest life. I suspect her aggressiveness and defensiveness has its roots in feeling powerless and inadequate. Now, she doesn’t handle her pain in the way I would…or in an effective way, imho. But she is not just a stereotype. She is a woman who needs some counseling, if you ask me. But when I saw promos of her looming over Star Jones, loudly going off, I didn’t think of her as a black woman who is hurting. I saw her as a raving Sapphire who is screwing stuff up for the rest of us.

New: I think NeNe has some issues (I can’t remember). From what I can recall, she had a hard life. Watching her going off on Star Jones was probably one of the lowest points for black women on television I can recall from recent history. Did you happen to see the reaction of the white folks who witnessed this tirade? They were reveling in the drama; as if they were used to it …

Tami: I didn’t, but I’m not surprised. Folks love to have their biases affirmed.

New: Even when I watch America’s Next Top Model, the black women routinely get into screaming matches and the white women always are the amused bystanders.

Tami: See, I think this is the crucial thing. Reality programmers seek out the most outrageous, controversial characters they can. They PURPOSELY court racist and sexist and ethnic stereotypes (See Jersey Shore or Teresa Giudice of RHONJ). So, even though Nene Leakes bears no resemblance to any black woman I know, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that most of us have our shit together. They’re going to seek out people that don’t.

New: Because those people provide the best entertainment and the best ratings.

Tami: So, what is a possible solution? How do we address the harm that these portrayals do without making black women the villains?

New: In an ideal world, producers would become enlightened and cast characters who didn’t fall into the stereotypical characterizations of black women. But, we both know producers are all about money and are too proud to own up to their lust for casting the Angry Black Woman in their shows.

That’s the million dollar question.

Tami: I think our options are two-fold. One, I think we as black women, ought to focus on supporting and nurturing black girls. [Editor's note: ... and women, too. It's going to be a hard slog to change the racist and sexist biases against black women, but we can work together to nurture happy, healthy, well-adjusted black women.]

New: I think we also need to teach black boys that black girls are valuable.

Tami: Yes!

New: Another sad facet of this is we see many black men often joining producers in making black women look bad on television. Flavor Flav is a prime example.

Sadly, the black community is male-centered and puts the values/wants/needs of black men and boys ahead of black women and girls. This lopsided system often comes at the expense of black women and girls.

Tami: Secondly, I think we need to be vocal about challenging our portrayals on TV and in other media. It’s not reality TV, but I was heartened by how quickly folks jumped on Satoshi Kanazawa and Psychology Today for that ridiculous piece on black women. We were heard and now Kanazawa lost his spot as a PT columnist and may well lose his academic post, too. We need to use our voices more often.

New: You’re exactly right. I think the Internet has served as an excellent tool to demonstrate how powerful black women can be if we all came together and denounced these harmful images and “scientific conlusions.”

Tami: I agree about our community being patriarchal. I think that contributes to the lack of support women receive. Folks in the black community are way too quick to buy into stereotypes about black women where they would reject stereotypes about black men.

Case in point: In the wake of domestic violence charges against Chris Brown, I was hearing way too much of that “You know how island women are” mess. Xenophobic and sexist.

New: Exactly. We are quick to denounce the stereotypes of black men and boys, but turn the other cheek when black women and girls are stereotyped.

Sadly, given the fact that so few black men stood up in opposition to the Psychology Today article, this will be a revolution that will primarily led and organized by women.

Tami: Luckily, some black men did push back on the PT article. Ta-Nehisi Coates did. Villager did.  Elon James White hosted my blog buddy Mikhail Lybansky on Blacking It Up to refute Kanazawa’s foolishness. and several others. That aside, you are right that we will be the ones leading this revolution. I think our community has a ways to go in recognizing the detrimental effects of patriarchy.

New: I just hope we can reach out to the younger black girls out there who have only grown up with reality TV as their guide to how black women should act…

What affect do you think this would have if black women just stopped watching these shows altogether? Is the boycott of these shows enough to get people to change?

Tami: We could not watch. That would probably be the best thing to do. Or, as Pozner recommends in her book, we can have the “guilty pleasure,” but make sure we are actively consuming all media, including entertainment, which means seeing and rejecting stereotypes.

By Guest Contributor Isaac Miller

While some critics are rightly noting the confusing and inaccurate message of Beyoncé’s new single “Run The World (Girls)” in the context of a world controlled by patriarchy, her song/video also raises the issue of how peoples, artists, and cultures from the global south are referenced and represented by artists from the first world. Several layers of referencing go on within this song/video, which makes this discussion a lot more complicated, lengthy and, at the same time, all the more necessary.

Please bear with me. This is an important conversation to have because of the ways in which this kind of sampling reinforces disparities of privilege and power. Furthermore, its important to note the ways that the profits and opportunities produced from this referencing are disproportionately transferred to people with white privilege or benefiting from larger structures of white supremacy.

I want to be upfront about my position as a white man from the United States. Recognizing my own privileges in this dialogue, I welcome critique and debate and I’m writing this in large part because I want to see what kind of conversation these issues can generate.

Beyoncé and the Ethics of Sampling

Beyoncé’s sampling from artists and cultures of the global south permeates this video. Her creative team saw a YouTube video of the kwaito dance troupe Tofo Tofo performing at a wedding in Mozambique and decided to reach out to them to choreograph and dance in part of the video. Frank Gatson Jr., Beyoncé’s choreographer, told MTV News that “It was hard finding them. They were really in a remote area; we had to get the embassy people involved. That was a process that took about two months or more. Beyoncé really loved them and I’m pretty sure we’ll see them again. It was magical.”

“Tofo, Tofo”

As “magical” an experience as this may have been for Beyoncé, its unclear what the experience was like for the dancers in Tofo Tofo. The MTV News interview with Gatson, Jr. offers the only information on them that’s available on the web. Nowhere are their names or backgrounds mentioned, let alone their opinions. Furthermore, as The Johannesburg Times notes, “While pantsula dance is nothing new to us Africans, it’s the first time that it has been given such exposure. I’m glad Beyoncé saw something great in them and the movement as a whole. But I wish the genre was as appreciated and respected here. Why do our artists always need the American/ European stamp of approval for us to value them?” We in the U.S. could also ask ourselves the same question: Why do we value third world culture only when its mediated via first world celebrity?

In one scene, Beyoncé is holding the chains of two hyenas, referencing the work of White, South African photographer Pieter Hugo and his photographs of Nigerian “Hyena Men.” This work has been stridently critiqued for the racialized and exotified undertones to his photography. This raises the uncomfortable issue of how so many images in Beyoncé’s video echo exotified, Orientalist representations of the third world (Africa and the Middle East in particular).

Gatson, Jr. explained that “The concept the team ended up settling on was a desert landscape ruled by two forces: Beyoncé and her supermodel minions and a very unwelcoming opposing army.” But these representations don’t take place in a vacuum. Particularly perplexing are the images of “Beyoncé and her supermodel minions” confronting phalanxes of riot police. Its unclear in what context we are supposed to read these images, particularly given the recent events of the “Arab Spring,” where protesters across North Africa and the Middle East have been facing the real life dangers of batons, water cannons, and bullets. Notably -in the context of Beyoncé’s video- many of the participants in these uprisings and revolutions have been Arab women who have fought for their freedom from repressive dictatorships. Many of these women have been met with violence, and even death.

Beyoncé’s audience is left wondering whether there is a clear reason for the imagery that she is using. While its possible to interpret these references as an act of solidarity with the protesters across North Africa and the Middle East, the contrast between the glamourized images of Beyoncé’s video and the violent struggles that those images reference seems disrespectful.

Furthermore, that lack of sensitivity for the experiences of women protesters actually undermines the ostensibly feminist message of Beyoncé’s song. Especially given that Beyoncé received $2 million to perform at a New Year’s party for the sons of Muammar Qaddafi, her politics on this issue are questionable. Though she eventually gave this money to Haiti earthquake relief efforts after the uprisings in Libya began, it seems hypocritical to incorporate this kind of imagery with such ease given her history here.

Ethar El-Katatney recently wrote an article (cross-posted on Racialicious), about a song by Sijal Hachem, a Lebanese singer whose video features “women as sexy riot police standing in formation behind barbed wire as men charge them”… “equating men standing up to their nagging wives with people revolting against dictatorships.” El-Katatney writes that “The imagery in the music video is disturbing on so many levels. To see scenes we witnessed in real life paralleled in a music video—of barbed wire, billowing smoke and burning tires and paper; of groups of men wearing masks to protect themselves from tear gas while holding sticks and rocks; and of state security standing in rows and hosing protesters standing peacefully with gallons of water—makes me shiver involuntarily. It was real, it was horrible, and it was traumatic.” Many of these same images also appear in Beyoncé’s video. What is their meaning there?

In thinking about these issues, its also important to examine the idea of “imperial feminism” discussed in Nadine Naber’s recent article “Imperial Feminism, Islamophobia, and the Egyptian Revolution.” Naber discusses the way that first world feminist demands for women’s rights intersect with U.S. geopolitical interests in the Middle East. Naber writes that: “Both rely upon a humanitarian logic that justifies military intervention, occupation, and bloodshed as strategies for promoting “democracy and women’s rights.” This humanitarian logic disavows U.S.-state violence against people of the Arab and Muslim regions rendering it acceptable and even, liberatory, particularly for women.” I wonder at what Beyoncé’s vision of women’s liberation implies when paired with these discourses over the “oppression of women by Islam.”

I’m not saying that Beyoncé’s video intentionally advances an agenda of Imperial Feminism, but that the very character of Imperial Feminism is that it takes a claim that is on one level liberatory -women’s rights- and grafts it onto a political project that in fact destroys the lives of those women, their families, and their communities. So no matter how earnest Beyoncé was in shaping the message of her video, that meaning is malleable depending on her audience. As an artist Beyoncé has the freedom to use whatever imagery matches her vision, but she should be conscious of the potential implications of that vision. Accordingly, does this video’s message subvert or provide sustenance to the imperial agenda that defines women’s liberation as military occupation?

Also striking is the way in which this trajectory of U.S. imperialism coincides with American cultural hegemony, or the way in which American popular culture has become global popular culture. In the video of Beyoncé’s recent performance of “Run The World (Girls)” at the Billboard Music Awards, she is introduced by such pop culture luminaries as Stevie Wonder, Lady Gaga, Barbara Streisand, Bono, and (not insignificantly) First Lady Michelle Obama. This leads into Beyoncé’s re-creating in live performance the music video to “Run The World (Girls)”, which weaves together an array of dazzling digital images, including lion and elephant heads (continuing in animal form the theme of third world inspired imagery). However, one of the most striking images was with the line “Endless Power”, where Beyoncé literally holds (an image of) the world in the palm of her hand. This serves as a powerful visual representation not only of the influence of superstars such as Beyoncé, but also of American cultural hegemony as a whole.

Interestingly, while Beyonce re-enacts the Tofo Tofo dance sequence sans Tofo Tofo (replaced instead by a legion of digitally replicated Beyonce’s), she does include a sequence with Les Twins, a French dance duo made up of brothers Larry and Laurent Bourgeois. Though its troubling that Tofo Tofo’s contribution was absent from this performance (no mention of them in Beyonce’s acceptance speech for the Billboard Millenium Award when she thanked her family, Destiny’s Child, and her husband Jay-Z), they were swapped out as Beyonce’s male backup dancers with Les Twins, two other dancers representing global hip hop culture.

Opening with the words “Power is ever present” echoing through the auditorium, this performance gives little thought the way that power plays out in this very song. Taking this statement at face value, under the guise of a feminist anthem, “Run the World (Girls)” speaks much more directly to the dynamics of power between first world artists and third world culture. But to really get at the racialized dimensions behind Beyonce’s latest mega-hit, its necessary to not only examine her music video and Billboard Awards performance, but also the song and video that “Run The World (Girls)” samples for its beat.

“Pon De Floor”: Major Lazer and the Representation of Black Bodies

“Pon De Floor”

Major Lazer “Pon De Floor” from Eric Wareheim on Vimeo.

Bianca I. Laureano writes about watching the “Pon De Floor” video by Major Lazer in her article “Major Lazer: Cyborgs, Dancehall, Racism, & Colonization in Music”:

“I was immediately excited because the dancing in the video was very much the kind of Dancehall I find fascinating, yet also complex as it is overly sexually graphic. Basically performers are reenacting some sexual activities on the dance floor, yet are doing so in a way that challenges our ideas of athleticism in dancing in this way. Another aspect of the video that I was excited about was that the women dancing were large bodied women. Some may even call them “fat dancers” yet for me their bodies were so much like my own it was as though I was watching myself dance…

My online searching led me to the shocking knowledge that Major Lazer is a fictional Black cyborg created by two White men, Diplo from Philidelphia (of M.I.A. fame), and Switch, from the UK who specializes in “House” music…

At the end of the day I kind of feel duped, hoodwinked, bamboozled. I fell for imagery that was crafted by outsiders to represent something meaningful that I valued as an important part of my Caribbean identity.”

My reaction to the video was different than Laureano’s. Before I saw the video I had followed the work of Major Lazer and knew that the group was composed of two white DJs. Watching the video, as a white person, I immediately felt uncomfortable because it seemed made by and for white people. That is to say it felt exploitative, racist, disingenuous, and totally uncritical of its own white gaze. The video was filmed by a white director (Eric Wareheim) for a group of white DJs. Though the vocalist on the track and the dancers in the video are all people of color and the song, as a Dancehall track, draws on a genre that originates from a community of color, it is interpreted through the gaze of white artists. Eric Wareheim had already created a similarly themed, but even more graphic video “Parisian Goldfish” for the group Flying Lotus and if the comments section of the Vimeo pages for both of these videos are any indication, the majority of the people watching them are white.

As Laureano points out, the Major Lazer project is itself a bizarre racialized fantasy where two white artists created a Black “cyborg” Major Lazer, who serves as their vehicle for representing Jamaican Dancehall culture to the world. What I question are the meanings conveyed when a predominantly white audience views this video and how it plays into racialized depictions of Black people as hyper-sexualized beings– stereotypes that go back to slavery and serve to reinforce characterizations of people of color as animalistic and inhuman (fundamentally Other and inferior to White people).

While “Pon De Floor” incorporates “Daggering” from Dancehall culture, the “Pon De Floor” video, as well as a subsequent one, titled “Major Lazer’s Guide to Daggering”, de-contextualize Dancehall as just another ironic commodity for white people to gawk and laugh at. Clearly these racist attitudes continue to this day (you need look no further than the YouTube comments sections to see this). So to play around with these hyper-sexual depictions of Black people in the name of hipster irony is not only confused but also dangerous. These images are not being controlled by people from the communities that are being represented. The lens is fundamentally different than if, for example, the video was conceptualized and produced by the women who appear in the video, and if they possessed the same level of creative control as Diplo, Switch, and the director Eric Wareheim.

“Major Lazer’s Guide to Daggering”

To highlight the importance of context in determining the meanings these images convey, it is necessary to understand where Daggering comes from. For example, A Newsweek article by Kate Dailey on “Daggering” quotes Jamaican DJ Jah Prince: “The majority of the time it [is] done with full disclosure to the patrons and only enacted by a hand few of ‘characters’ in the crowd.” Dailey writes, “‘Dancehall’ in fact, refers to music so suggestive that it could only be heard in clubs.” Dailey then quotes Annie Paul, a Kingston-based blogger who says “Jamaican society is extremely stratified, and people at the bottom are the core participants of dancehall culture… It is one of the few spaces and phenomenon they have control over.” The context that Dancehall comes from influences the meanings that the culture conveys. When “Pon De Floor” is posted on the internet and viewed by a majority white audience, those meanings change drastically.

And those meanings change even more live. This video interview with Diplo which showcases footage from Major Lazer’s SXSW showcase makes it clear that Diplo has no doubt about who his audience really is…

“Major Lazer Showcase at SXSW”

“We have this wild Daggering video *laughs*, its called “Pon De Floor”… anywhere you go, you can watch it. Its crazy and its just nuts. You can see it today, we’re gonna do it live. We have Skerrit Bwoy… You can expect a party that looks kinda like that video.” – Diplo

Major Lazer can’t be ignorant to the racialized dimensions of Black dancers performing a Daggering routine live in front of a majority white crowd. Diplo seems to glory in the irony of it all. But as with all minstrelsy, the contradictions do not diminish the racism involved. White artists presenting Black bodies as a sexual spectacle to a predominantly White audience is loaded with racism, however ironic it may be.

Diplo’s Relationship to Third World Artists/Artists of Color

Diplo (Wesley Pentz), even before Major Lazer, made a name for himself as a “musical Columbus” discovering the cutting edge of third world musical genres originating in some of the most impoverished and oppressed urban communities of color on the planet. He has been given credit for bringing introducing these styles to the global north, at tremendous personal success. Diplo, a former producer (and ex-boyfriend) of indie hip hop artist M.I.A. -producing her first mixtape “Piracy Funds Terrorism” as well as hits such as “Bucky Done Gun” and “Paper Planes”- is famous for bringing attention to the musical genre of Baile Funk (or Funk Carioca), originating in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The underside of Diplo’s rising success is his history of using the work of third world artists without attribution. This includes his baile funk mixes “Favela on Blast” and “Favela Strikes Back”, as well as the anonymous baile funk tracks he included on MIA’s Piracy Funds Terrorism mixtape, and the song Bucky Done Gun on MIA’s first album Arular, which reproduced without acknowledgement a beat from Brazilian funk DJ Marlboro. M.I.A.’s label later took steps to acknowledge DJ Marlboro (as well as Deize Tigrona, the MC whose song the beat was originally used for), and Diplo attempted to bring more attention to baile funk artists in Brazil through touring with some of them and even producing a documentary on Baile Funk called “Favela on Blast.” However, he continues to come under criticism for exploiting artists of color. This recently resulted in a heated twitter debate between him and DJ Venus Iceberg X (covered in a recent Racialicious post), a queer woman of color producer who played shows with artists signed to Diplo’s record label Mad Decent and noticed some of the shady patterns to Diplo/Mad Decent’s business practices. She called him out publicly after he tried to record one of her shows without permission. As described in another post on Racialicious, “Its Complicated: DJs, Appropriation, and a Whole Host of Other Ish”, Diplo has a pattern of using the work of artists of color who make music in the latest genre that he takes interest in and then leaves those artists behind as he moves on to the next genre that grabs his attention.

What will Major Lazer’s newfound mainstream success mean for all of the artists of color who Diplo has worked with who have not seen similar success? Diplo is now producing for some of the most powerful superstars in pop music. “Pon De Floor” was sampled not only for “Run The World (Girls)” but also for “Ass On The Floor” a Swizz Beatz produced track on Diddy’s Dirty Money album and Diplo recently co-produced Chris Brown’s hit “Look At Me Now.” Furthermore, Diplo recently starred in a BlackBerry commercial and continues to tour all over the world. In contrast, Maluca, an ex-girlfriend and artist signed to his label, recently released a video showing her life beyond the limelight. In the video Maluca contrasts appearing in fashion shows and touring as an opener for Robyn with qualifying for EBT and living with her mother. In the Fader article “Diplo Cannot Keep You Out of the Poorhouse”, the author zings Maluca for holding a Mud Truck coffee cup in her video, and in the comments section someone critiques her for showing up to apply for food stamps wearing a fur hat. But another commenter notes “In her interview with T Magazine she says that she doesn’t have a cell phone, so I think going out and buying a cup of coffee is a fair exchange. Just because she isn’t the poorest person in the world doesn’t mean she is not poor.”

What’s particularly complicated is that Diplo has placed himself in the role of ambassador and intermediary for an array of global hip hop genres originating in the global south (in particular Baile Funk and Dancehall). On the one hand, Diplo presents himself is as someone concerned with the well-being and success of the communities that he engages with. He claims to be committed to their development and has engaged in a number of projects that have brought considerable attention to artists and communities in the global south, as well as artists of color in the global north. He has worked on projects such as the “Favela on Blast” documentary on Baile Funk in Rio’s favelas and the Heaps Decent NGO that supports the development of indigenous hip hop artists in Australia. And certainly Baile Funk has received greater attention and audiences in the global north as a result of Diplo’s work. The same with Dancehall culture via Major Lazer. However, no artists in these communities have gained even a fraction of the mainstream success and attention that Diplo/Major Lazer has. Not. Even. Close. And if Diplo’s career continues to move in the direction that it has been going, that disparity will only continue to grow. Perhaps he will be able to bring increased attention to even more artists and will use his resources to support projects that create genuine impacts on these communities. I wonder, though, for how long and how deep will the impact be.

“Interview with Diplo”

“I’ve gotten a lot of criticism, from journalists mostly, and also other people who do what I do in America. I’ve tried to confront all of them because I think its really important to at least recognize that I’m a white guy from America and I can work under the guise that I’m a White guy from Mississippi, from Florida, I’m from a working-class family… [but] I have a passport and I have access to travel outside my country, which 90% of the world doesn’t have. Probably more. Doesn’t even recognize that they can do these things that I can do. So its important to confront that reality because it exists. I have the freedom to come to Rio and work, while at the same time almost all the favelados don’t have the freedom to leave the favela, or even have the notion in their mind that they’re capable of doing that because of the social aspects in Brazil…”

In this quote it seems like he understands that there are some serious imbalances in power between himself and the artists he works with in the global south. But what does it mean to “confront that reality because it exists”? And, really, what does that mean in practice, as in getting the people who came up with this music in the first place paid? It is significant that Diplo makes attempts to engage his critics, albeit in ways that are often cynical and dismissive. Perhaps this is just a publicity ploy, a learned tactic of leaning towards controversy, because of the resulting buzz. But Diplo doesn’t have to respond to these criticisms. No one is forcing him to acknowledge them, especially as he enters the rarified air of stardom. So it’s interesting that he continues to do so. It seems like a lot of his response is: What do you want me to do differently? That’s an important question for all of us who critique him. And a question that we should consider the answer to, not just when directed at him, but also when the answer is turned on ourselves.

Global Hip Hop: Creating the Alternative

Beyonce’s incorporation of Dancehall, as well as Kwaito through Tofo Tofo and “New Style” hip hop dance through Les Twins offers a glimpse into a more holistic, global hip hop culture. However, this global vision is still mediated through the work of a U.S. superstar. This is symbolic of the overarching global balance of power. However, while the U.S. still acts as the global center of media, music, and film, immense networks of media production are burgeoning across the global south.

It seems like Diplo wants to create networks, audiences, and opportunities for the communities he engages with. But so long as he is the necessary Western interlocutor for artists of color from the global south, I question how much will these artists and cultures actually be “represented” globally. Like other forms of Western “development” that created the very conditions of poverty that these musics and cultures exist in, Diplo’s brand of development reproduces the very inequality that it claims to solve.

Yes, Diplo plays a part in this and should be held accountable…but so should all of us. But what would it mean for us as consumers, fans, critics, and so forth, to genuinely support the work of artists from the global south, particularly women of color/queer artists (both in the U.S./first world and in the global south)? More specifically:

And…

When it comes down to it, this conversation is much larger than Diplo or Beyonce. They are not the creators of the systems of oppression that they participates in (consciously or not). Diplo is not the first white artist to perpetrate cultural appropriation. Beyonce is not the first First World superstar to capitalize on third world imagery and culture. And they will certainly not be the last.

Be that as it may, global hip hop culture has never been as expansive, diverse, and vibrant as it is today. There are musical genres like Dancehall, Baile Funk/Funk Carioca, Kuduro, Kwaito, and Reggaeton. There are artists like Anita Tijoux, ChocQuibTown, Buraka Som Sistema, Bomba Estereo, and DAM. There are documentaries like Homegrown: Hip-Life in Ghana, Inventos: Hip Hop Cubano, Slingshot Hip Hop, Democracy In Dakar, and, yes, Favela on Blast. Hip Hop played a role in sparking the Tunisian revolution and in raising international solidarity with the Egyptian revolution. There are even academic conferences such as the Trinity International Hip Hop Festival, and Stanford’s Global Hip Hop Conference.

If global hip hop is this vibrant, then we—white people and people of color, celebrities and everyday people– in the global north need to help create genuine collaborations and infrastructures with these artists to get them paid instead of continuing to feed off the global south’s creativity.

When I was about 5 or so, I used to go to my grandmother’s house during the day while my Mother went to work. I remember catching the bus and sleeping across my Mom’s lap until we got there, and then her hugging me and heading off to do whatever it was she did all day. (I was five. Clearly, I had no idea.)

Grandma was cool, but there was always a bajillion people at her house. She lived in the projects*, and spent a big portion of her day being “Mama”to everyone even though she was well into her 50s.

I remember, as a kid, how the big thing was for us to run across the street to the convenient store and get a Big Red pop and a bag of chips. All for $0.50. I mean, it was how we spent every afternoon. Because Grandma’s house was full of people, it was never hard for me to get a hold of two quarters – ahhh, two shiny, glorious quarters – so that I could be like the rest of the kids and sit in the middle of the grass and eat my funyuns or my munchos and my Big Red pop.

(I’m from the Midwest. We say pop, thank you very much.)

It wasn’t that I was Grandma’s favorite, but…. well, I was Grandma’s favorite. She invested a lot of time and effort into me. She taught me to read – she’d hand me the newspaper and make me read every page out loud – and she taught me how to be a little lady. She taught me how to love, as a young girl, because outside of that typical adoration that a young girl has for her mother, you learn that that thing that binds you to Grandma emotionally and you understand it even more so once she’s gone. That made her valuable.

However, I must admit. If there’s one thing I don’t remember, it’s going to a grocery store with Grandma. We just.. we never went together. At least, we didn’t go to a grocery store as I know a grocery store to be today. The only store I ever saw her go to was the convenient store across the street.

And now that I think about it, there’s a lot of things I don’t remember about that time with Grandma.

I don’t remember a lot of cooking going on. I don’t even know that I remember any fresh vegetables there. I mean, I remember my Great Grandma – my Grandma’s mother – having that gorgeous garden in her fenced-off backyard, but Grandma didn’t have that kind of backyard. The soil didn’t even have grass on it. It was just hard dirt. I know. I fell on it and scraped myself up a few times.

I guess that’s to be expected. It’s not like it was quality, “prime” real estate or anything. It’s not even like anyone cares to maintain the area. I guess.

I remember running to one particular house in the building in the back of the projects where the free lunch was given out. Bologna, milk, cheese, bread, and little mustard packets to dress the makeshift sandwiches. All the kids used to make a mad dash back there because they were always limited in how much they had and how many kids would be able to sit in there, and if you were last, you went hungry.

As a different woman today, I can acknowledge that that housing project community was a food desert. That even though Grandma was doing all she could to make sure I never went hungry, there was rarely a vegetable on the plate. Even though she meant very well and did the best that she could, I know I picked up a lot of bad habits from that time in my life.

In fact, it sounds a lot like this paragraph from the NYTimes blog:

Poor urban neighborhoods in America are often food deserts — places where it is difficult to find fresh food.   There are few grocery stores; people may do all their shopping at bodegas, where the only available produce and meat are canned peaches and Spam.  If they want fruits and vegetables and chicken and fish, they have to take a bus to a grocery store.   The lack of fresh food creates a vicious cycle; children grow up never seeing it or acquiring a taste for it.  It is one reason that the poor are likelier to be obese than the rich. [source]

When I hear people complain about the cost of fresh food and use this as an excuse to not eat it, it makes me think about those projects where so many people who were, actually, given money by the government to eat couldn’t even access the healthy food. My Grandma, while she might’ve been able to catch a bus to hit the grocery store, might’ve had difficulty doing this since she was the family babysitter. Her, four kids (one of them facing a mental disability), and countless bags with enough food to feed the numerous people that’d be in and out of her house to eat? On the bus? You’re joking, right?

Back to the point. All that food stamp money in the projects, and no fresh food in the area to spend it on.

Whenever we talk about problems with our food system, we often talk about access… and yeah, we might toss around the phrase “food desert,” but is that ever quantified? Are the ramifications of growing up in a food desert ever discussed? Do places like the Morris Brown projects ever come up for discussion? Or are they never mentioned because it’s assumed they don’t matter?

A while back, I wrote the following:

I can specifically remember a time when I lived in a food desert, and the only food store nearby was a gas station. My daughter was on formula at the time, and I used to purchase that in bulk and have that shipped. For myself, though, it was whatever I could get at the store. A bag of chips for breakfast, a bag of chips for lunch, a bowl of ice cream for dinner. If I wanted to go to the grocery, I had to either beg one of my girls to take me or call a taxi. I eventually called the taxi and cut back on groceries so that I could afford the ride, but… it was a lonnng time before I came to that realization.

It made perfect sense, though, that the grocery stores would be on the other side of town from me. The area where I lived was wholly college students living on that good ol’ beer and pizza diet… as evidenced by the abundance of pizza joints, sub shops and drive-thru liquor stores. The stores that a young Mom like me needed… were at least two miles away. With no car, that was quite the struggle.

But if you think about it, isn’t that how Capitalism works? When there is a demand, the promise of profit guarantees that there will always be someone willing and able to jump in and fulfill that need, right? In my neighborhood, there was a high demand for pizza joints and liquor stores. That’s what the college kids wanted. I was the random weird outlier with an infant in a college apartment complex.

Excerpted from The Myth of The Food Desert: Where The Root Went Wrong | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss

The reason that food deserts exist is because it is assumed that the people in those geographic locations cannot afford the products that a fresh food-selling store would provide. This is also an automatic assumption of the projects, because the implication is “if these people had any money, they wouldn’t be living in the projects after all.”

That’s just how Capitalism works. Big C. Supply goes where the demand is located. If there’s no money, then clearly there’s no demand off which the investor can profit.

My question, really, is what do we gain from denying the realities of food deserts? How do we benefit from silencing the voices of the un-privileged? If we can identify that fresh food is expensive, why wouldn’t we want to hear from the people most affected by that? If we deny the fact that food deserts exist, you silence the input of those of us who have been affected by this problem the most. Those of us who have been on government assistance and live in still-impoverished areas offer up the critique of the system that says that the government is giving away money to be spent on the very things making us ill and preventing us from healing ourselves.

We also shoot ourselves in our collective feet when we decide to downplay food deserts because it prevents us from ever finding a solution to the problem. What about offering incentives to investors – franchise, corporate and otherwise – who build in food deserts? Why can’t we do that? Why not offer incentives up the chain – tax incentives for security measures (since a lot of these places fear theft and property damage), incentives for the space of the store dedicated solely to fresh produce? We can’t do that because we’re too busy debating their existence. Y’all know I have a problem with that.

So, it saddens me to know that the big politicians that I vote for to get the big checks are not offering up the answers that we need to solve this problem in particular, especially since they’re never walking through (or helicoptering through, even) the projects (or a trailer park, or a low-income community in general) to see what struggles people like this face. Realistically speaking, they’re facing the same struggles that “middle-class” Americans are facing. Middle-class America , for the most part, just knows how to hide it better. If anything would’ve taught us that, it would be the up-spring of foreclosure signs in our very nice, quaint neighborhoods.

Photo/Image Credits: Caitlin Quade, Tulane University; Slow Food USA

Sometimes there’s love in laughter. And the cast and crew bringing the new web series East Willy B have a lot of love for the real-life neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn, and (most) of the fictional characters.

The series’ heart is Willie Reyes, Jr. (Flaco Navaja) the 30-something Puerto Rican-proud bar owner who inherited the business from his dad, including the barfly crushing on him, Giselle (Caridad “La Bruja” de la Cruz). Wille is trying to keep his bar, which has served as the nabe’s hangout and nerve center, from closing down due gentrification in the form of his ex-girlfriend Maggie (April Hernandez) and her new white beau (and Willie’s longtime rival), Albert (Danny Hoch), and the incoming white hipsters looking for cheap(er) rent.

Transcript of the premiere episode after the jump.

(Music plays in the background. Willy and Gisele laugh. )

Willie: What do you need, Gisele?

Gisele: What I need or what I want? ‘Cause, if you ask me what I want, I’ll tell you.

Willie: OK, what do you want?

Gisele: I want me…a little bit of what you got going on right down there.

Willie: You’re crazy! You want another one?

Gisele: You asked me what I need? (Laughs)

Willie: (under his breath) Jesus!

Gisele: (Grabs for Willy) Oooo-hooo—

Willie: Hey hey heeeey! I’m working here!

(Gisele laughs)

Maggie: …yeah. (Laughs.) Si, mi amor. I’ll talk to you later. ‘Bye. (Blows kiss. Sighs.) I saw you, Willie.

Willie: Maa-ggiiiie!

Maggie: We need to talk.

Willie: Yeah, I’m sure we do.

Maggie: So. I was thinking: I have some ideas on bringing this bar alive.

Willie: Yeah, where’d you get ‘em? From your mom?

Maggie: Funny. OK? You know I’ve been taking classes—

Willie: Where at? Nuyorican College? That shit ain’t school.

(Maggie sighs)

Willie: That’s like ghetto babysitting or something.

Maggie: (exasperated) OK, anyway. Listen: I’m thinking…we can make this bar? More. Emo.

Willie: What the fuck is “emo”?!

Maggie: “Emotional!” You know: slightly depressive dive. We can have some 80s video games, some confederate flags. You also need to start selling $6 malt liquors. Those rich white hipsters love that shit!

Willie: This is still a Latin bar, aiight? I don’t know why everybody’s trippin’.

Maggie: Because no one cares, Willy. OK? You need to let go.

Ceci: Oh hell no! The dog run is around the corner.

Maggie: Whatever, Ceci.

Ceci: Por favor, Willie. You’re not still sweating this bougie-ass bitch, are you? She dumped your ass! Really?

(To Maggie) Looook, whatever it is you’re selling? We ain’t buying it.

Maggie: Shouldn’t you be chasing dudes with tattoos and bulldogs?

Ceci: Are you going to kick her out or do I gotta to do everything around here?

Maggie: Look! Mama? I own half this bar, and I’ll come here whenever I want.

(To Willie) This is what I’m talking about. If you want more people, get rid of these hoodrats.

Gisele: You bitch! (Screams)

Maggie: You know what? I don’t need this ghetto shit anymore! As a matter of fact, I’m gonna sue your ass.

Willie: For what?!?

Maggie: I am going to get controlling interest in this bar.

Willie: Like hell you are!

Maggie: Yeah? OK. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.

Willie: Fine! All right? ‘Cause I got your Colby and Meyers, and they got TV commercials and all that. So bring it!!

Ceci: Yeah? When you gonna grow your balls back?

Gisele: Don’chu worry, Willie. I’ma get her next time!

I’ll admit it: it took me a minute to get into East Willy B. Part of it is simply being an ethnic outsider: I’m not Latina and felt odd laughing with—and sometimes at—the jokes. Then I had to check myself: like I couldn’t recognize That Alcoholic Lecherous Auntie in Giselle (don’t lie: I know some of y’all Racializens have a Giselle in your fam and y’all love her antics at the family gathering); got-your-back (and sometimes gotta-be-in-your-face) Ceci (played by EWB co-creator Julia Ahumada Grob) ; or even soft-hearted-though-over-his-head Willie. And like I couldn’t recognize laughing in the face of New York City’s ongoing gentrification.

What I think East Willy B does best is put a biting laugh on the class politics aggravated by gentrification, ongoing colorism and “authenticity”, and ethnic pride (which comes out sometimes as ethnic chauvinism). Yes, there’s the leitmotif of the white hipsters seen as invading Bushwick, but for the most part, they are a joke in absentia. (And we can argue about the presence of hipsters and other gentrifiers of color.  However, it’s also real that the face of this demographics shift is white for quite a few communities. This definitely holds true for Bushwick.)  And Albert, the “token white guy,” isn’t viewed as “white” (the website describes him as “browner-than-thou,” complete with Latina girlfriend). White gentrification, says East Willy B, is aided and abetted by people from within the community who may see the financial and social upsides of it but may get caught up in some form of false consciousness due to getting some post-high school education (Maggie) or just overall sleaze (John the Realtor). (It’s also that awkward relationship with education that’s my biggest critique of East Willy B.)

And what I love about East Willy B is that it’s a complete online experience, reflecting Internet use among Latin@s. Yes, there’s the show and a vid of the on-camera and off-camera crews, but there are spot-on commercial spoofs and an emerging web series about the real Bushwick, with local activists speaking about the changes. (I like what Jesus says in the vid: “We’d love to have more people come by and see us, but don’t replace us.” I think the same holds true for enjoying East Willy B.) More importantly, the viewer is invited to be a part of East Willy B, both online and offline: the creators asks us to get the word out about the new web series (they have more episodes lined up for the summer) by hosting viewing parties and attending upcoming East Willy B-related events during the summer.

If the events (and the viewing parties) are anything like the series, then I think you’ll have a great time.

Photo Credit: John Walder