By Arturo R. García

With apologies to fans of Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling, et al., by far the most pleasant surprise of this week’s Academy Awards nominee announcements was seeing Demián Bichir get nominated for Best Actor–alongside “conventional” choices like George Clooney and Brad Pitt–for his role as an undocumented single father in A Better Life. 

As Colorlines noted, Bichir’s nomination was one of several nods for Latinos in this year’s Oscar race: cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, also from Mexico, was nominated for Best Cinematography for Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life; Bérénice Bejo, a native of Argentina, earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her turn in the The Artist; Brazilian Sérgio Mendes was nominated for Best Song for “Real in Rio,” his collaboration with Siedah Garrett, of “Man In The Mirror” fame, from the animated film Rio.

But a look at some relevant figures further illustrates how painfully rare Bichir’s accomplishment is.

2: The number of Mexican-born nominees for Best Actor, with Bichir joining Anthony Quinn, who was nominated on two separate occasions, for Wild Is The Wind (1957) and Zorba The Greek (1964).

2: The number of white actors nominated for this category for playing Latino characters (Marlon Brando, 1952, Viva Zapata! and Spencer Tracy, 1958, The Old Man and the Sea).

47: The number of years between Quinn’s nomination for Zorba and Bichir’s nomination.

61: The number of years since a Latino actor born outside of Mexico and the United States was nominated for Best Actor; José Ferrer (born in Puerto Rico in 1912, before it became a U.S. territory) earned the honor in 1950 for Cyrano De Bergerac.

1: The number of:

• Latino actors (going into this year’s ceremony) to win Best Actor, with Ferrer taking the Oscar home.
• Latino actors born in the U.S. to be nominated for the category (Edward James Olmos, 1988, Stand and Deliver.)
• Latinas in Oscars history to win the Best Actress award (Rita Moreno, 1961, West Side Story.)
• Mexican-born actresses ever nominated in that category (Salma Hayek, 2002, Frida.)

0: The number of Latina actresses born in the U.S. to be nominated for Best Actress.

$1,759,252: Total domestic gross for A Better Life, per Box Office Mojo.

$75,524,658: Total domestic gross (as of Jan. 24) for Moneyball, starring Bichir’s fellow nominee Brad Pitt.

11,000,000: The total number of undocumented workers in the United States, as quoted by Bichir in a statement to US Weekly, as he dedicated his nomination to them.

6,650,000: Estimated number of undocumented Mexican immigrants in the U.S. as of 2009, according to the Department of Homeland Security (PDF).

25-to-1:  Current odds of Bechir winning the Oscar, according to Vegas Insider.

Juan Williams, Fox News: Speaker Gingrich, the suggestion that you made was about a lack of work ethic and I’ve gotta tell you my email account and my Twitter account has been inundated by people of all races who are asking if your comment was not intended to belittle the poor and racial minorities … you saw some of this reaction during your visit to a black church in South Carolina by a woman who asked why you refer to Barack Obama as a “food stamp president.” it sounds like you’re trying to belittle people.

Newt Gingrich: first of all Juan, the fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by barack obama than by any president in americanhistory. I know that among the politically correct, you’re not supposed to use facts that are uncomfortable. Second, you’re the one who, earlier, raised a key point: the area that oughta be I-73 was called by Barack Obama a “corridor of shame” because of unemployment. Has it improved in three years? No. They haven’t built a road, they haven’t helped the people, they haven’t done anything. One last thing … so here’s my point: I believe every American, of every background, has been endowed by their creator with the right to pursue happiness, and if that makes liberals unhappy, I’m going to continue to help poor people learn how to get a job, learn how to get a better job, and learn someday to own the job.”
- Video via The Grio

The growth partly reflects an increase in need, as millions of Americans have lost income and lost jobs or remain out of work. In addition, food prices have increased, eligibility has been expanded, and the 2009 economic stimulus law temporarily increased benefits.

Before Mr. Obama took office, food stamp participation was rising, in part because of federal policies that encouraged low-income people to seek aid for which they were eligible.

Nearly half of food stamp recipients are under age 18. Nearly 30 percent of food stamp households have earned income. Only 15 percent of such households have income above the poverty level ($18,500 for a family of three in 2011).

– Robert Pear, New York Times

“Do you see how these remarks might offend people?” Williams asked.

Newt replied, “No, I don’t see that.” He then defended his position, citing anecdotal accounts of young people who prospered as janitors, or as doughnut deliverers. Gingrich went on to say that he got the idea from a Joe Klein article about New York City schools, which is true.

“Only the elites despise earning money,” Gingrich said. But as Benjy Sarlin points out, if you hired 30 kids for one janitor contract, those kids wouldn’t be able to form an emotional attachment to earning money, because they wouldn’t earn very much.
- Jason Linkins, The Huffington Post

- Video via Buzzfeed

The audience at the South Carolina GOP debate interrupted a question to Mitt Romney that referenced his family’s ties to Mexico with an audible boo from what sounded like several people as the question was asked.

Romney’s father was born in Mexico, where his parents were part of a Mormon enclave that had moved temporarily from the United States.
- Benjy Sarlin, Talking Points Memo

In New Hampshire last Sunday, Romney mentioned that his father, George, was born in Mexico and came to the United States at age five. On Wednesday he took to the airwaves in Florida with a new Spanish-language ad entitled “Nosotros,” meaning “us.” The Republican National Committee got in on the act, too, announcing a beefed-up outreach effort to Hispanic voters.

But it may be too little, too late. Even before his DREAM Act comments, Romney faced an uphill battle with Latinos. A poll conducted by Latino Decisions for Univision in November found that among registered Hispanic voters in the 21 most Hispanic-heavy states, Obama held a whopping 67 percent to 24 percent lead over Romney.

While Romney could make up some ground among Latinos by selecting someone like Cuban-American Florida Sen. Marco Rubio or former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush as his eventual running mate, the GOP may have missed a golden opportunity to swing the 2012 election by earning the backing of Latino voters.
- Matthew Jaffe, ABC News

From the TV cutaways they seemed clean, well-dressed, and drug-free. And yet their reactions would scare off any sane, sensible person. In previous debates the right-wing GOP audiences booed a gay soldier. Someone shouted “Let him die!” in response to a question about an uninsured person.

But in South Carolina they took the cake. The crowd booed the mere mention of the name of the country of Mexico. Just the name. I might understand it if they booed, say, North Korea or Iran or Texas A&M—centers of evil. But Mexico? Good luck with that Latino vote in November, guys.

Then, when Ron Paul said the Golden Rule should guide our foreign policy, the crowd booed. They booed the Golden Rule. Apparently nobody told them that Jesus wrote the Golden Rule. On second thought, they’d have booed Jesus.
- Paul Begala, The Daily Beast

In September, I wrote a piece describing my perspective as a disabled woman of color and psychiatric survivor. I explored how race-specific self-killings are differentially represented by the media to demonstrate how public perceptions of suicide depend on social and political contexts. My intention was to de-sensationalize model minority suicide in order to draw attention to how particular non-white bodies are often presumed to be volatile and violent.

This month, I look more closely at clinical explanations of ethnic minority suicide and respond by citing current non-clinical and community-based anti-racist reflections on the significance of emotional pain and anger.

Before I proceed, I would like to draw attention to how the term suicide is invoked by the viewer rather than the subject of suicide: the neighbor who calls 911 rather than the person exhibiting suspicious behavior. This can have negative repercussions on the “allegedly suicidal” that we don’t often think about. In fact, daily we are surrounded by public campaigns that encourage us to report at-risk behavior with the intention of saving lives: we believe it is our civic duty to do so. This is especially true in communal living environments such as campus residences.

The “peril of help” arises in (1) how we, as the public, determine what is suspicious or at-risk behavior and (2) how our social infrastructure then deals with the people we “call out.” Behavior can be “cut out” of context, of an individual’s life history, when it does not make sense to onlookers, including family, friends, and employers. Behavior might not make sense and alarm us because an individual’s actions are inconsistent with social rules and, furthermore, associated with narratives of harm we are taught to recognize daily by institutions around us. For example cutting is strongly associated with suicide. Seen in the absence of context, most of us would be compelled to stop this action and probably call on professional expertise to intervene and solve what we identify as a threat.

However, a growing number of self-advocacy groups and allies assert that attention-seeking and attempted suicide are professional myths about self-harm. According to Mark Cresswell, these groups critique the underlying pathology and disease assumed with self-harm, despite there being socially acceptable forms of self-harm such as smoking, body modification, and waxing. More importantly, he notes that people with experiences with self-harm identify strongly with the concept of survival. Activists such as Louise Pembroke have spoken about needing to self-injure to stay alive and survive the pain of sexual violence and institutionalization.

Thus, when a mobile crisis intervention team is called because someone appears to be a danger to himself, it is important to reflect on the potentially negative effects this can have on self-harm survivors because of existing mental health laws.

When mobile crisis teams work jointly with the police, the police — regardless of the outcome of an intervention — may keep a record, which can affect civil liberties. According to Ryan Fritsch, legal counsel for the Psychiatric Patient Advocate Office in Ontario, there have been eight recorded cases of non-criminal contact between police and Ontarians with various psychiatric histories appearing in the Department of Homeland Security in 2010. None of this actually benefits the well-being of persons in distress and can create numerous lifelong barriers, all thanks to one phone call. By equating mental health records with violence and criminality, border control has prevented people from traveling and immigrating.

Combined with the criminal justice system’s unsavory history of racial profiling, this link has at times produced deadly results. For instance, in 1997 police shot and killed Edmund Yu after he raised a small (toy?) hammer over his head on a bus in Toronto. Psychiatric survivors in Toronto have remembered Edmund Yu through memorials such as Edmund Place, which provides supportive non-medicalized housing to ex-users of psychiatry, who are typically discriminated against in other forms of housing.

As someone who has a psychiatric history and who identifies as “mad,” my survival hinges upon having a network of loved ones who can approach the subject of distress with an open-mind and willingness to learn about other “rhythms” to our existence — on knowing people who will not assume that X or Y thought or behavior will equate with danger to myself or others. Besides the everyday violence of medical records and police reports, increased suicidality has been associated with the use of various anti-depressant medications, such as the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor fluoxetine.

This kind of evidence complicates the professional consensus that ethnic minorities are at higher risk of suicide in North America and in need of specialized services. McKenzie and Crawford argue that rates of ethnic minority suicide have been consistently higher than those of the majority group in the USA and Australia, especially in areas where there is a lower concentration of ethnic minorities. They suggest this is because of “a relative lack of support by people with similar social situations or the perception of a more hostile social environment,” and that on an individual level “socio-economic stress, thwarted aspirations, racism, acculturation, culture clash with parents, loss of religious affiliation, difficulty with identity formation, and loss of family and community support may have effects on suicide risk.” While I would like to examine these claims carefully in separate post, what concerns me are the solutions that McKenzie and Crawford propose.

They suggest that untreated mental health problems in ethnic minorities (due to factors such as a reluctance to seek services, conflict with services, and poor compliance) exacerbate rates of ethnic minority suicide. They combine the above with “skewed age distribution” towards “younger age groups,” and recommend further investigation of risk factors to develop youth-focused prevention strategies.

The ever-expanding circle of “risk” factors turns an increasing number of people and whole communities into disabled targets of mental health services, and helps to justify psychiatry’s expertise and expansion at the exclusion of suggesting or fostering other kinds of explanations for distress or other types of support for racialized communities. McKenzie and Crawford assume that the community is incapable of developing its own strategies to prevent death and that they have already failed due to second-generation suicides. What if we reconsider rates of “death” beyond sensationalized self-killing and reflect on how we get to live day to day — what Jasbir Puar refers to as the unevenness of our rights to a certain lifespan? For example, poor housing infrastructure changes the everyday bodily comportment of marginalized communities, displacing long-term goals such as education with the immediate need for shelter.

In the context of the myriad ways in which racialized people slowly die, educating “at-risk” individuals redirects us to be happy in conditions that are reasonably unhappy. What possibilities exist for us to grieve this everyday struggle without the imposition of becoming normal — indeed, “civilized” — and okay with our conditions? I don’t have any fast answers. However, I can say that non-clinical modalities such as community acupuncture can illustrate some of the possibilities growing across North America. In an account I shared with Six Degrees Community Acupuncture, I described how community healers who work in solidarity with queer, Indigenous, and people of color political organizing are sensitive toward the bodily labor of resistance and anger, accepting rather than rejecting the need to put our bodies in potentially compromising situations for social change. Here acupuncture has served as a tool to mediate how strong, yet informative emotions register on the body. I am amazed by how acupuncture can be a thread of connectivity between different communities of color who all want alternatives to Western medicine — a source of dialogue.

There have also been non-pathological ways developed by artists and activists to talk about and speak out about our distress, such as Yolo Akili’s perspective on emotional justice. Rather than drawing conclusions about how oppression leads definitively to illness or suicide, Akili encourages people to explore the emotional texture of social inequity by transforming the way that activist work typically occurs. In activist spaces, Akili suggests we challenge misogyny by revealing our feelings and intuition, as a way to begin our intellectual work while at the same time mediating that expression by avoiding hurtful tactics such as interrupting, yelling, and belittling. His objective is to address, but not remove, pain by thoughtfully expressing it within our support networks, which include activist networks.

On the West Coast, there is also Creative Collective Access (CCA serving the Bay Area), a group of disabled queer and trans people of color working to create interdependent care networks. One of their goals is to resist the culture of individualism through resource sharing. Their most recent project is The Living Room Project, a multi-disciplinary space for healing, wellness, art, and youth events — founded by Micah Hobbes, a somatic doula and healer.

Anthropologists such as Miriam Ticktin have begun to trouble how “biology plays in the politics of immigration,” determining who is worthy of citizenship and asylum. Scholars should likewise trouble “psy” technologies (such as the criteria for “competency”), as they are deployed by institutions like mental health and law to determine who has freedom of movement — to determine who is fully human. This relationship between psychiatry and detention, from forced institutionalization to border control, particularly affects the lives of people of color.

Ironically, as social workers and psychologists (many of whom are African American and Asian American themselves) seek to use mental health as a tool to fund anti-racist community services, their research fortifies an ever-growing body of knowledge about race-specific mental illness, knowledge that can be appropriated by other institutions to increase the surveillance of ethnic minorities. We are left with the question of how service providers who are critical of the power relations between helper and user can be better allies to (take greater ‘risks’ with?) patients who are looking for support, and not be another source of barriers. Though the alternatives I have described are largely grounded in social justice movements (which may or may not appeal to your needs), they demonstrate just some of the possibilities that exist for living.

* * *

Louise Tam is a graduate student in Sociology and Equity Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.

(Image Credit: “Image of a Lonely Lady,” Low Chin Han, via Shutterstock)

The whole area is in lockdown. Drive down Buford Highway northeast of downtown Atlanta and the vast parking lots along the once-bustling strip of Vietnamese, Korean, Cuban and Mexican groceries are empty. In September the Guatemalan pupuseria was closed and the Mercado del Pueblo boarded shut. “You used to see day laborers waiting on that gas station forecourt every morning,” Jadma Noronha, a former resident turned community activist, says. “Now, no one.”

Less visible than the boarded-up businesses is the devastating effect Georgia’s new law is having on women like Arriaga, who fears deportation as much for her daughter’s sake as her own. It’s tough enough to be poor, nonwhite and female in today’s crisis-struck USA, but without legal status a woman is stripped of even those rights and resources that equal-rights and labor fights have secured. The Wild West quality of law enforcement when it comes to such new immigration laws—amid myriad state, federal and, frankly, ad hoc regulations—makes it virtually impossible to use existing protections against harassment, violence or exploitation. And abuse thrives in the chaos. Migrant women face particular threats at the border, in the workplace, even at home—and stiff odds stacked against them as they try to keep, and raise, their kids. This is what inspired women from around the country to travel to Atlanta in September under the banner We Belong Together for a conference organized by the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. A similar delegation met in Arizona in May.

“We believe that when you see the world through the eyes of women you see an up-close, clearer picture of the full impact of what’s going on,” says Ai-jen Poo, director of the NDWA.
- From “Why Immigration Is a Feminist Issue,” by Laura Flanders

By Guest Contributor Maegan La Mala, cross-posted from Vivir Latino

It’s a long way from April, when hardly anyone paid much mind to my critique of the role Cecilia Muñoz, the Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, was playing in her defense of the indefensible, the increase in detentions and deportations, and the growing criminalization of communities these increases requires.

Now, there are petitions, open letters, appearances, articles, and attacks. I knew that taking a position that directly challenged Muñoz as the Latina spokesperson for an administration that has actually done worse to our communities would be controversial and would also demand that community organizations who claim legitimacy in their role as community representatives be held accountable. I did/do this, not because it is in my mission statement, nor because I am beholden to any entity beyond the vecinos I stood doing laundry with on Sunday mornings, whom week after week watched Muñoz lie to them on behalf of an administration that promised change. The words in the American Prospect article are completely my own and I stand by them.

It is easy for organizations, their leadership, and the public relations departments housed within them, to attack an individual writer, calling them ill-informed and accusing them (me) of doing a disservice to the community. What has proven more difficult is answering the questions that remain. This is not about what services a specific organization provides nor about if they have condemned an immigration policy that deports an average of 400,000 people a year, leaving thousands of children in foster care. What it is about is answering precisely how does supporting Cecilia Muñoz serve the community? Claims about her attempting to change immigration policy fall flat in the face of reports that show that prosecutorial discretion is not being exercised, bolstering accusations that the Morton Memo and alleged reviews of deportation cases are nothing more than public relation tools.

As more data and documents are released and ICE fights tooth and nail to hide a paper trail that more than likely contains proof of the intentions behind their detention and deportation policies and practices, it falls on organizations claiming to represent community to show why shielding spokespeople for an administration that has failed in fulfilling it’s promises is beneficial.

Everything else, just like in the Obama administration is just PR.

20-year-old Eiman from Darfur sought shelter at the UNHCR-run Chousha camp on the Tunisia/Libya border

By Guest Contributor Simba Russeau

With more than 140 tribes and clans, Libya is considered one of the most tribally fragmented nations in the Arab world. Despite modernization, tribalism remains a prominent force in a country now awash with weaponry.

In the aftermath of Gaddafi’s reign, nearly forty different independent militias that reportedly emerged during the rebellion remain at large.

Raising questions as to whether the National Transitional Council (NTC) has the ability to reign in all the various groups, many of which have competing interests like settling scores from the past.

For Libyans from the far south this daunting picture has already become a reality.

Tawergha – which lies some forty miles south of Misurata along the western coast of the Gulf of Sirte – was home to an estimated population of over 20,000 people. Now it’s become a ghost town.

According to some Libyans, the name Tawergha was given to the towns black population because they had dark-skinned features like the original Tuareg.

The Tuaregs, who inhabit the border area of Libya, Chad, Niger and Algeria, were historically nomads that controlled trans-Saharan trade routes and had a reputation for being robbers.

During the seventies, Gaddafi assembled the Tuaregs and other African recruits into his elite battalion known as the Al Asmar. Ironically, Al Asmar means “The Black” in Arabic.

Under Gaddafi¹s supervision, these militias were oftentimes sent on military expeditions into neighbouring countries and at the onset of the country’s revolt in February of this year many Tuaregs were unleashed on protestors.

20-year-old Eiman from Darfur sought shelter at the UNHCR-run Chousha camp on the Tunisia/Libya border

As a result, racial hatred fuelled by unconfirmed rumours that African mercenaries had been hired by Gaddafi to squash discontent created another common enemy – dark-skinned Africans.

In the eyes of Misuratans, Tawerghans were the perpetrators of some of the worst human rights abuses during Gaddafi¹s siege on Misurata in March and April.

On August 15, in what human rights groups are calling reprisal attacks, rebels forces going by the name of The Brigade for Purging Slaves, black Skin have reportedly detained and displaced hundreds while other Tawerghans have disappeared without a trace.

“If we go back to Tawergha, we will then be at the mercy of the Misurata rebels,” a woman, who has been living in a makeshift camp with her husband and five children, told UK-based Amnesty International.

“When the rebels entered our town in mid-August and shelled it, we fled just carrying the clothes on our backs. I don’t know what happened to our homes and belongings. Now I am here in this camp, my son is ill and I am too afraid to go to the hospital in town. I don’t know what will happen to us now.”

Also caught up in the crossfire of vengeance are economic migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers from sub-Saharan Africa, many of which have sought refuge in neighbouring Tunisia or Egypt.

For them, Libya was a transit country but for others it had become a place of rebuilding.

“Fearing for their life, my parents who are from Al Fasher City in Darfur fled to Tripoli in 1998. I had never lived outside Libya before the conflict started. My father worked as a cook and my mother was domestic worker. Before fleeing I was in my third year of University pursuing a degree in the medical field,” 20-year old Eiman told Witnessing Life.

“Unfortunately the uprising in Libya took a bloody turn because people no longer respected the law and started raping women, taking hostages and killing people. For two months my family remained trapped in our house. They were accusing and killing all black males caught on the street of being mercenaries, which meant that our mother had to try and gather food but there were many days that we starved.”

In an article published in September, the Wall Street Journal quoted Jibril as saying, “regarding Tawergha, my own viewpoint is that nobody has the right to interfere in this matter except the people of Misurata. This matter
can’t be tackled through theories and textbook examples of national reconciliation like those in South Africa, Ireland and Eastern Europe.”

Calls by human rights groups urging the NTC to protect black Libyans in the newly liberated Libya seems to have fallen on death ears, which could set a precedent of what is to come.

By Arturo R. García

And things only got more disturbing after that video.

CNN’S partnership with the Tea Party for Monday night’s Republican presidential debate in Florida was definitely a double-edged sword. On the one hand, a news organization that likes to paint itself as being above political pettiness was visibly validating an astro-turfed faction of a party even longtime supporters are comparing to death cults. But on the upside, this was a chance for more people to see just how beyond the pale these folks really are.

In that regard, they did not disappoint.

So while many of the contenders busied themselves taking shots at Texas Governor Rick Perry, the audience made its’ presence known in ways perhaps not even the candidates anticipated – or wanted.

Perry, who came into Monday evening with some media-driven momentum, was jeered by members of the crowd for defending the Texas DREAM Act. Of course, he was also behind a state ban on sanctuary cities for immigrants, but it was enough of an opening for Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) to accuse him of supporting “people who have broken our laws or who are here in the United States illegally.”

For his part, ex-Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum doubled down on the xenophobia. Not only did he accuse Perry of trying to attract “illegal — I mean Latino — voters,” but he took aim at Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-TX) criticism of U.S. foreign policy before this past Sept. 11th, leading to some pushback from the audience. The transcript of the exchange is under the clip.

SANTORUM: We were attacked because we have a civilization because we have a society that is antithetical to the civilization of the Jihadists. And they wanna kill us because of who we are and what we stand for. And we stand for American exceptionalism. We stand for freedom and opportunity for everyone around the world and I am not ashamed to do that.

PAUL: As long as this country follows that idea, we’re gonna be in a lot of danger. This whole idea that the whole Muslim world is responsible for this and they’re attacking us because we’re free and prosperous, that is just not true. Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda have been explicit (boos begin).They have been explicit and they wrote and said, ‘We attacked America bcause you had bases on our holy land of Saudi Arabia. You do not give Palestinians fair treatment and you have been bombing (boos intensify) I’m trying to get you to understand what the motive was behind the bombing. At the same time, we had been bombing and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for ten years. Would you be annoyed? If you’re not annoyed, there’s some problem.

Paul was also involved in the other major audience flare-up, when host Wolf Blitzer asked him about healthcare costs:

BLITZER: You’re a physician, Ron Paul, so you’re a doctor, you know something about this subject. Let me ask you this hypothetical question: a healthy 30-year-old young man has a good job, makes a good living, but decides, ‘You know what? I’m not gonna spend $200 or $300 a month ’cause I’m healthy, I don’t need it. But something terrible happens, all of a sudden he needs it. Who’s gonna pay for, if he goes into a coma -

PAUL: In a society that expects welfareism and socialism, he expects the government to take care of it.

BLITZER: What do you want?

PAUL: What he should do is whatever he wants to do and assume responsibility for himself. My advice for him would have a major medical policy.

BLITZER: But he doesn’t have that. He doesn’t have it and he needs intensive care for six months. Who pays?

PAUL: That’s what freedom is all about – taking your own risks. (Applause) This whole idea that you have to prepare and take care of everybody …

BLITZER: But, Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Yeah!

Late in the debate, businessman Herman Cain said he would bring “a sense of humor” to the White House if elected, “because America is too uptight.” Right now there’s plenty of comedy to go around in this field, alright – if you’re into gallows humor. It’s gonna be a long race, folks.

Top video courtesy of Crooks and Liars
Other videos courtesy of ThinkProgress

The framing of cases is so important, as it shifts judgements in the court of public opinion. Since Diallo has chosen to step forward as the accuser (perhaps in response to the media backlash around her life and reputation), news outlets have clamored to get the scoop. Newsweek published an exclusive interview a few days ago, with some telling language:

“Nafi” Diallo is not glamorous. Her light-brown skin is pitted with what look like faint acne scars, and her dark hair is hennaed, straightened, and worn flat to her head, but she has a womanly, statuesque figure. When her face is in repose, there is an opaque melancholy to it. Working at the Sofitel for the last three years, with its security and stability, was clearly the best job she’d ever hoped to have, after years braiding hair and working in a friend’s store in the Bronx as a newcomer from Guinea in 2003.

Only in cases involving rape or assault is how the victim appears a subject for commentary. This is part of rape culture, the idea that we have to evaluate the attractiveness of a person alleging assault along with the other facts in the case. Melissa McEwan so succinctly put it, rape is not a compliment. Neither is sexual assault. Yet time and time again, we see people accused of sexual assault, abuse, or rape try to weasel out of it by saying that they weren’t attracted to the person in the first place. (We see you, Albert Haynesworth.) It’s disturbing to see reporters play into the same idea. This is why feminists continually stress that rape is a crime of power, not desire. Rape is not related to the attractiveness of the victim. Rape occurs because one party does not consent to a sexual encounter, but they are forced into it anyway.

Also, that first discussion of “clearly the best job she’d ever hoped to have?” It sets the stage for more prejudical plays on class, race, and immigration status later in the piece.

Diallo is about 5 feet 10, considerably taller than Strauss-Kahn, and she has a sturdy build.

This inclusion is also somewhat perplexing. The idea that she’s sturdy and tall again introduces the idea of doubt to her story, which falls into another common trope about rape and sexual assault cases – why didn’t the woman just fight him off? Interestingly, the authors do not bring up the fact that generally, most jobs don’t allow workers to assault guests, even if the guests are violent. And, in the moment, there are many different ways people will react to being assaulted, particularly if the first act of violation has already begun. This portrayal of Diallo also subtly plays on the idea of fragile, thin, small victims as the only real victims – and goes hand in hand with the idea that black women are “unrapeable.”

DNA evidence in suite 2806—the result of all that spitting that mingled the maid’s saliva and Strauss-Kahn’s sperm—makes it virtually impossible to deny there was a sexual encounter between DSK and Diallo. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers raised the possibility early on that it was consensual and have left it to others to speculate about the circumstances under which that might have been the case: that Diallo expected money that she did not receive, or that the sex got rougher and more aggressive than she would accept. The New York Post published stories attributed to an anonymous source that claimed Diallo was at least a part-time prostitute. Her lawyers, Kenneth Thompson and Douglas Wigdor, are now suing the Post, saying the story is false. The newspaper stands by its story.

When crime, power, and scandal combine, there is always the idea that the more powerful person is being set up by the person with the least amount of power. And, commonly, the victim in sexual assault and rape trails finds themselves subjected to invasive probes about their own sexual background, mental health history, and any other improprieties. For Diallo, her background as a new immigrant to America increases the amount of scrutiny she is subject to:

In her interview with NEWSWEEK, Diallo didn’t disguise her anger at Strauss-Kahn. “Because of him they call me a prostitute,” she said. “I want him to go to jail. I want him to know there are some places you cannot use your power, you cannot use your money.” She said she hoped God punishes him. “We are poor, but we are good,” she said. “I don’t think about money.”

Perhaps. But on the day of the incident, by Diallo’s own account, she made two telephone calls. One was to her daughter. The other call was to Blake Diallo, a Senegalese who is from the same ethnic group but no relation. He manages a restaurant, the Cafe 2115 in Harlem, where West Africans gather to eat, talk, politic, and sometimes listen to concerts. Nafissatou describes Blake as “a friend,” and one of the first things he did for her after the incident was to find her a personal-injury lawyer on the Internet.

All of her associates are heavily interrogated, as were her tax statements…and her application for asylum:

In late 2003 Diallo applied for asylum. Because she had suffered genital mutilation as a child, and doctors confirmed that fact in a medical report, she probably would have qualified for asylum in any case, given current law and practices. And she insists she was raped after curfew by two soldiers. (This is not unheard of in Guinea. In 2009 soldiers conducted mass rapes and killed as many as 160 people in a Conakry sports stadium, according to human-rights organizations.) But bad as the realities were in Diallo’s homeland, she admits the account that she gave the U.S. government on her asylum application was heavily embellished. Her fictionalized narrative worked to get her a green card and allow her to bring her child to America. But her past misstatements may make it impossible to win a criminal case against DSK based on her testimony.

The only saving grace in this situation is that DSK has also had a long public life, punctuated with “situations,” improprieties, one inappropriate (and mostly, but not fully, consensual) relationship with a subordinate that put Strauss Kahn on trial as well. Normally, only the accuser is interrogated, with past indiscretions held up to light – but Strauss Kahn is receiving an equal grilling in the press.

It is always difficult to fairly represent all sides of painful matters like assault or rape. It is especially fraught since no one can truly know what happened except for the people involved, and juries and arbitrators are trying to weight highly subject evidence. But it is disturbing that the deck is stacked so hard against victims of sex crimes – particularly when those victims are women of color. Jamie Leigh Jones, who just was dealt a crushing decision in her lawsuit against KBR and the contractors she accused of rape, was initially believed and had powerful support from many corners, including the media. The Latina girl in Texas who was gang-raped did not have that same support. The article written was heavy on victim blaming, prompting the NYT to apologize for the “lack of balance”. And here again, Newsweek has subtly framed Diallo as guilty by employing the usual tactics of rape culture and the usual stereotypes about class, immigration, and women of color.

By Arturo R. García

Like many college basketball players, Emily Tay’s quest to keep her career going led her to Europe. But her journey on the court is just a part of her story, and No Look Pass, which premiered this past weekend at Outfest in Los Angeles, captures the remarkable pressures Tay faces in her life, and not just as a basketball player.

The film chronicles Tay’s transition from starring at Harvard, where she was named the Ivy League’s Player of the Week three times as a senior and singed rival Yale with 34 points in her final game, to starting her professional career in Germany, a decision which puts her at odds with her parents, who expect Emily to enter an arranged marriage. What her parents don’t know, though, is that Emily is gay. Her romantic life faces another challenge in Germany, where she begins a relationship with a U.S. servicewoman.

Because the film’s July 9 premiere sold out, a second showing has been added:

When: July 17
Where: Directors Guild of America
7920 Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood
Tickets available here

My mom and I went to ICE last Tuesday, and as ordered we reported to be taken into custody. For a fleeting moment, I thought I might never see my friends again. But we were there less than two hours before ICE changed their minds and let us go.

And so I’m here. We’ve been granted a stay for one year. But that doesn’t change the fact that last week I was just hours away from being deported from my home.

As a student, I work hard. I’m in the honors program at one of the country’s top public universities, and I’m on track to go to medical school. I plan to spend my life working for the public good in the United States of America.

If it took this, for me, to stay in my country, then something is wrong. It shouldn’t be this hard.

President Obama has made it clear that he fully supports the DREAM Act. He has even said that its failure to pass has been one his biggest disappointments as President.

And yet, he hasn’t acted. He has the power to stop the deportations of people like me. He can bring relief so that no family has to go through what mine has. He can end our pain, but he is still deporting DREAMers.

Full transcript available at America’s Voice

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 Ay-leen The Peacemaker, cross-posted from Beyond Victoriana

In California at the turn of the 20th century, a community grew in southern California with an interesting history: Punjabi-Mexican families of the Imperial Valley. This unique community stemmed from the effects of British colonialism, transnational labor immigration & American economic opportunity (and American anti-Asian discrimination laws). Many multi-generational families in the area today can trace their multicultural and multiethnic histories back over a hundred years, and refer to themselves as “Mexican Hindus”, “Hindu” or “East Indian” today.

During the 19th century, many Punjabi families sent their sons abroad to earn a living outside the British Raj; most of these sons had served as part of the British army and police force in China. Eventually, these men saved enough for passage to America to work in manufacturing, lumber, or agriculture, with a majority of this immigration happening between 1900 and 1917. These bands of travelling workers were known in America as “Hindu crews.” Others from the middle to upper-middle classes sough educational opportunities in American universities. These Punjabi immigrants typically entered America through Angel Island, the entry point for overseas immigration on the US West Coast. According to Professor Karen Leonard, “Some 85 percent of the men who came during those years were Sikhs, 13 percent were Muslims, and only 2 percent were really Hindus.”

At the time of immigration, these men hoped to bring over their families once they’ve settled in America. But because of changes in American immigration laws, they were unable to send for their families. Many Punjabi immigrants, however, soon formed their own communities with the other ethnic group that shared the farming work with them: Mexican laborers. In 1910, refugees fled the violence of the Mexican Revolution and sought out a new life across the border.

Despite cultural and religious differences, both groups shared similar working lives and their communities became integrated with each other. Additionally in California, miscegenation laws preventing racial intermarriage existed until 1948, but that applied to only white and non-white unions; thus marriage between other non-white groups wasn’t prevented.

Many of these marriages were arranged by Mexican families to Punjabi bachelors; the brides were mostly considerably younger than their husbands. Not only were there marriages out of love, but Punjabi men were seen as more financially stable, since by the time of Mexican immigration, most Punjabi men have become successful businessmen. Mexican-American women were allowed to own land, while Punjabi men were denied US citizenship and could not, and a compromise was constructed that allowed Punjabi-Mexican families to own land for themselves. Women who married lost their land rights, but legal loopholes were worked out with white landowners who would hold their property in trust until American children were born and the land agreements could be placed under their names.

Unlike expectations of assimilation, Mexican-Punjabi families had difficulty being accepted by Mexican-Americans and formed a distinct community of their own. Because of different religions, these marriages were civil unions, and most wives kept their Catholic heritage and passed it onto their children. Spanish was predominantly spoken in the home and most Punjabi men added Spanish nicknames. They passed on little of their Punjabi heritage to their families with exception to funeral customs and food. Another aspect that impacted the evolution of Punjabi-Mexican culture is the fact that many Punjabi fathers were denied US citizenship and legal rights, despite being successful businessmen and firmly established in America. As a result, many Punjabi fathers chose not to pass on their cultural heritage on which they had been discriminated against:

The original Punjabi immigrants refused to transmit elements of Punjabi culture that they judged inappropriate in the United States, according to their children. Many fathers felt that the immigration laws and other discriminatory policies against Asians had made it useless to teach the children Punjabi, or even to tell them about Punjabi society. Social practices from the Punjab, life cycle ceremonies, and caste and religious distinctions and observances, were consciously discarded; when interviewed, several children remarked on their father’s refusal to talk to them about the Punjab, refusals justified by the uselessness of such knowledge and by the need to become American. (Source)

Nevertheless, many Punjabi-Mexican families found ways to express their background in ways that celebrate the hardship and determination of their immigrant ancestors, and this community still thrives in California today, especially as later generations have come to call themselves the “Sikh pioneers of North America.”

More information:

Punjabi-Mexican Americans on Wikipedia

Half and Halves: The Punjabi-Mexican-Americans of California

Roots in the Sand: a PBS documentary

Excerpt from California’s Punjabi Mexican Americans by Karen Leonard

More info on Karen Leonard’s book California’s Punjabi Mexican Americans

Photo courtesy of Steven Williamson

By Arturo R. García

Before it even took place, the irony of the Atlanta Braves hosting a civil rights celebration Sunday had been pointed out, not just because of the team’s name, but because of Georgia’s recent enactment of House Bill 87.

The bill, modeled after Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, targets undocumented immigrants and their employers, and had set off a controversy even before Carlos Santana, being honored by Major League Baseball at the game, took the opportunity to speak out against both laws. But as it turns out, the Mexican-born singer wasn’t the first pop-culture figure to do so.

Santana’s declaration that Arizona, Georgia and the people of Atlanta “should be ashamed of [themselves]” was met with boos, according to The Nation’s Dave Zirin, who also reported that MLB Commissioner Bud Selig left the game in the fifth inning without comment.

“If Selig really gave a damn about Civil Rights, he would heed the words of Carlos Santana,” Zirin wrote. “He would move the 2011 All-Star Game out of Arizona. He would recognize that the sport of Jackie Robinson, Roberto Clemente and Curt Flood has an obligation to stand for something more than just using their memory to cover up the injustices of the present.”

Santana didn’t back down from his commentary after the ceremony, either, as he was quoted by various outlets as saying:

“This law is not correct. It’s a cruel law, actually. This is about fear. Stop shucking and jiving. People are afraid we’re going to steal your job. No, we aren’t. You’re not going to change sheets and clean toilets. …This is the United States. This is the land of the free. If people want the immigration laws to keep passing, then everybody should get out and leave the American Indians here. This is about civil rights.”

Like SB 1070 – currently being examined in the courts – Georgia’s new law empowers law-enforcement officials to arrest anyone if they fail to produce proof of citizenship upon request. But days before Santana embarrassed MLB by living up to his award, someone a bit closer to the action spoke up against the new law: Atlanta Hawks forward Etan Thomas, who told Zirin:

I can’t believe that anyone would be in favor of racial profiling. This bill is very similar to the Arizona bill and authorizes law enforcement officers to verify the immigration status of “certain criminal suspects.” So this means they can pull anyone over at anytime and their only crime could be minding their business. That goes against everything this country should stand for.

Thomas is no stranger to public discourse: he’s written columns for The Huffington Post and CNN, and released a poetry collection six years ago. He’s also, as of Wednesday morning, the only pro basketball player to speak up against the new law.

The league has courted the Spanish-speaking market – and make no mistake, Spanish-speakers are always in the crosshairs of laws like HB 87 – in recent years, most visibly by its’ “Noches Latinas” games, where selected teams wear special jerseys. One longshot possibility, if HB 87 ends up staying on the books, is that Thomas’ Hawks would get the opportunity to protest the law much like the Phoenix Suns did after Arizona’s law was signed. It’s a longshot, though, because the team’s owners are reportedly trying to sell the team.

Carlos Santana photo courtesy of The Associated Press
Etan Thomas photo courtesy of Getty Images

By Guest Contributor Simba Russeau

Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi’s use of African mercenaries to quell the uprising against his autocratic regime has revived a deep-rooted racism between Arabs and black Africans.

Though most will deny its existence, in Libya discrimination is common not only against migrant black Africans, but also against darker-skinned Libyans, especially from the south of the country.

“Against this background, one needs to be a little wary of the accusations of ‘African mercenaries’ or even ‘black African mercenaries’ that have been bandied around. Certainly, Gaddafi has used, in the past, mercenaries from other parts of Africa, and our information is that some of these are likely involved in the current situation on Gaddafi’s side,” Na’eem Jeenah, executive director of the Afro-Middle East Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa told IPS.

“Mercenaries, of course, are extremely useful because the regular army forces include conscripts — who can easily leave their posts and join the uprising. Mercenaries work for money and have no compunction about whom they kill.”

About one and a half million sub-Saharan African migrants and refugees, out of a population of nearly two to two and a half million migrants, work as cheap labour in Libya’s oil industry, agriculture, construction and other service sectors.

However, this is not the first time Libya’s most vulnerable immigrant population has fallen victim to racist attacks. In 2000, dozens of migrant workers from Ghana, Cameroon, Sudan, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Nigeria were targeted during street killings in the wake of government officials blaming them for rising crime, disease and drug trafficking.

In response, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) expressed concern over Libya’s practices of racial discrimination against dark-skinned migrants and refugees. In 2004 it accused the country of violating Article 6 of the 1969 International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), and for failing to implement proper mechanisms safeguarding individuals from any racial acts that circumvent human rights.

“However, it is also possible that many of those identified as ‘African mercenaries’ could be darker-skinned Libyans. It is easier for people to project their problems onto outsiders than on their own people,” adds Jeenah.

A case in point is Karim, an African-Lebanese. After a day of visiting relatives, he was traveling with his African mother on the bus back down to Beirut when the vehicle was stopped at a military checkpoint. Soldiers entered the bus and asked for everyone to show their identity papers. While he was searching the bag for his wallet to find his military standby card and identity papers, one of the officers in charge ordered his arrest.

During several hours in custody, Karim was subjected to continuous physical and verbal abuse; not a single soldier even bothered to check his identification.

“It wasn’t until my mother shouted that they call a relative who is known in the military that the soldiers stopped mistreating me and checked my papers,” says Karim in an interview with IPS. “Even then they tried to save face by claiming that my military card was new though in fact it has been standard for over ten years.”

Experts argue that though a taboo subject, racism is not confined to Libya; it is found throughout the Arab world, and stems from historical linkages of the Arab slave trade to the way blacks were used during European colonisation in the region.

In his study titled, ‘Perceptions of Race in the Arab world’, Mark Perry says: “The past and present trade in African slaves to the Arab world has left a long and bitter memory in African society to this day. Black Africa was the earliest source for slaves and the last great reservoir to dry up; already in the 640s slaves were part of the ‘non-aggression pact’ between Arab conquerors and Nubian rulers, while as late as 1910 slave caravans were still arriving in Benghazi from Wadai (in Chad).”

Scholar Elizabeth Thompson adds that French colonisation of Syria and Lebanon was charged with racial overtones due to the use of West African soldiers. “The Senegalese would become a regular target of nationalist propaganda in sexualised and racialised imagery that fused men’s gender anxieties with outrage at French domination.”

As the world marks the 2011 International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which has been dubbed the ‘International Year for People of African descent’, uprisings sweeping the Arab region should include a social transformation to shift perceptions of dark-skinned Arabs and non-Arabs to put an end to racial discrimination and xenophobia, experts say.

Otherwise, they warn, a violent backlash by anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya who link black skin with the regime could lead to a massive genocide once the long-time leader is ousted.

Image courtesy of شبكة برق | B.R.Q

The thought of writing about my faith terrifies me.

This terror is (mostly) irrational.

Convinced that most secular progressives would launch into a tirade about the evils of the church, (or worse respond with a measured, “Really?” maintain conversation but narrow their eyes and draw their wine glasses closer to their bodies, warding against my offensive Jesus vibes) I tend to keep my religion under wraps.

It’s kind of absurd, really, given the fact that my encounters with these militant secular progressives are entirely imaginary.

Yet, for reasons I shall soon elucidate (reasons both founded and unfounded), I’ve always felt the need to store up an arsenal of defenses, to have in place a series of ‘BUTS’ to interject in case the words  “Yes I’m a Christian” accidentally (always accidentally) slip out of my mouth. It’s really a great exercise in compound sentence formation:

“Yes, I’m a Christian…BUT I support gay marriage,” or

“Yes, I’m a Christian… BUT I’m pro-choice.”

I’ve never had to use these arguments, but when I’m putting off writing a paper or doing an especially mundane activity, I imagine confronting these incendiary secular progressives, and showing them calmly, rationally how I can be both an evangelical Christian and progressive.

But I’ve gotten tired of (hypothetically) defending myself.

I guess these insecurities/weird, imaginary conversations with WASP-y secular progressives began when I moved to America for good in middle school. (Brief background history: my parents are Nigerian, my twin sister and I were born in England, we moved to Gambia when I was four, had a brief stint in Ohio, went back to Gambia, hit up England again, and then moved to Rhode Island to settle in the US for good).

Those were challenging times, man.

Here we were, tall, skinny, dark-skinned black girls with buck teeth and English accents. Armed only with a superficial Babysitters’ Club based knowledge of American preteenager-dom, I was at a loss for quite some time, trying to navigate the confusing world of adolescence.

But soon, both my sister and I came up with a solution. We stuck out like a sour thumb already so why not run with our difference?

So we became that strange, ludicrous, paradoxical human being also known as the black conservative.

I’m not quite sure how it started. I was certainly influenced by my parents who, like a lot of African immigrants, are socially conservative. But somehow I took it to a whole other level. To make matters worse, I married my religious beliefs with my political ones and the results were (as you would imagine) bizarre and comical. I’d slip in references to ‘the Creator’ in my Science papers.  I’d quote Psalms 139 as I’d write about the evils of abortion for my Social Studies class. I watched The O’Reilly Factor every night. Did I mention I lived in Rhode Island—one of the most liberal states in the union?

Gradually, however, my political orientation began to shift. There are a host of reasons why this happened, many of which are too personal and cumbersome to delve into right now, but suffice it to say, by the time I was a senior in high school, my reputation had changed. Granted, moving to another state helped facilitate that transformation, but my sister and I were no longer known as ‘the Bible thumpers.’ We were now the race provocateurs– the ones that couldn’t go a day without bringing up some race-related issue or railing against our sexist, patriarchal society. But even though my political alignments changed drastically, my religious beliefs remained, largely, in tact.

Now a junior in college, I’m at a weird place. I’ve gone from Focus on the Family to Feministing.  And both (albeit one a lot more than the other) have made some valid points over the years; yet the one-dimensionality with which each views the ‘other side’ is appalling. And, frankly, expected on one website, but not so much on the other.

Bloggers on Feministing regularly refer to fundamental Christians as ‘fundies.’ They once posted a (clearly) satirical rap song and cited a (clearly tongue-in-cheek) blog post on Stuff Christians Like about the “Christian side hug,’ presenting it in a very ‘look-at-what-those-crazy-prudish-homophobic-Christians-are-listening-to-these-days’ kind of way.

For Focus on the Family to have a movie review website dedicated to reducing films to their positive or negative ‘moral’ elements is to be expected. For a progressive, feminist site like Feministing to stereotype so crudely is not.

So often I feel like a minority within a minority within a minority. I so desperately want to participate in these conversations about race and sexuality and pop culture. Slut-shaming on the college campus! Let’s talk about it! Modern Family’s increasingly problematic racial jokes? Check! But so often, I stop myself from joining in, because at some point I fear my religion will come up and I’ll have to apologize or answer for any and all of the Church’s flaws.

I know that a lot of Racialicious readers have been burned by the Church. I’ve read your comments. I’ve seen the grateful, positively giddy exclamations of “Thank goodness I’m not the only one who (fill in the blank) by the church” or of “Thank goodness I’m not the only black agnostic!” or whatever it is.

I understand. I really do. My sister is currently working through her own religious issues and Nigerian parents can make that ish especially hard.

But.

Here’s my ‘but.’

I have a story to share too. As a Christian. An evangelical Christian. One who has really felt the transformative power of Jesus Christ in my life (I know; you’re cringing.) And I suspect that there might be more of us in the progressive blogosphere than we let on. And by us I mean, those progressive Christians who read Racialicous or WhatTamiSaid or TransGriot or AngryAsianMan and agree with a lot of the posts and might want delve in, have their toes touch the proverbial water, so to speak, but are too afraid to do it because they feel like they’ll just have to keep apologizing and qualifying over and over again. And, man, I’m tired of all the guilt. I became a Christian to escape all that guilt.

Sometimes the progressive blogosphere can be strangely homogenous—so diverse in so many ways, and yet when it comes to its views on Christianity—so disappointingly unvarying.

But I’m not writing this to whine. Just to give myself some courage. To free myself from (mostly) imagined fears of rejection. Let everybody know where my privilege comes in, what my background is, before I dive headfirst into the crevasse (remember that 30 Rock episode?) and become more engaged in this progressive blogosphere that I call my home.

Amy Chua — author of the controversial parenting memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which gained notoriety recently when an excerpt from it, about the superiority of strict Chinese mothers, appeared in the Wall Street Journal — would agree that assimilation into the American system doesn’t make much sense. In many ways, her experience as Tiger Mother represents both the disease of and cure for modern parenting.

Many have inferred from her much discussed new memoir that disproportionate Asian academic success can be attributed to a regimen of no sleepovers, no playdates, no quitting, no coddling, no praising mediocrity and lots of drills. The ancient Chinese secret is, in short, demand perfection and accept nothing less. Children are not so fragile that they will break under these expectations.

This is the same immigrant work ethic that catapulted my parents from poverty in Guyana to the country-club class of North America. Ditto for my husband’s parents in Jamaica, and Allison’s husband’s parents in the Caribbean. Ditto, it should be said, for Allison’s grandparents, who, as Isabel Wilkerson’s brilliant book on the Great Migration showed, had their own immigrant experience moving from the South to Northern cities, where their achievements in culture and society forever changed America. 

But Chua is also part of the disease, because she has essentially written a manual for how to create superior sheep. But I still share many of her philosophies on the sturdiness of children, and in general have enormous respect for her. There she is, a Yale Law School professor, married to a white professor at the same school — technocratic royalty in the land where privilege was invented — and yet she has not allowed that success to be a reason to lose her identity, melting away into the American pot.

–Natalie Hopkinson, How to Raise a Model Minority

Since people are dabbling in gross generalizations about motherhood, children, parenting and ethnicity, I thought I’d compare the ‘Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother‘ to that of black mamas… or at least my mama.

Chua defines her children’s success as their ability to get good grades and play musical instruments. My mother defined her children’s success by their behavior. . . and securing their eternal salvation through regular church attendance, but that’s another post.

I’m not alone in noting the similarity. Culture writer Danielle Deadwyler did her own comparison between Chua’s Tiger Mother and “Southern Black Mothers,” showing they have a great deal in common:

No wuss nurturers are allowed below the Mason Dixon line; Southern black women have been hardcore disciplinarians for generations. Results have been varied… However, there seems to be a ‘get it done’ through line in black parenting that echoes Malcolm’s ‘by any means necessary’. (Danielle Deadwyler)

Danielle goes on to tell a familiar tale about the time her classmate’s mother came to school and whipped him “in front of the whole school” — something we have all seen, heard about, or worse, experienced. Her friend wasn’t alone. We all know many black parents tend to favor corporal punishment, also known as spanking, as a preferred form of behavior modification. In addition, many people of other groups are horrified by this. Yet just as Chua bragged to her peers over dinner about her harsh mothering methods, the black mother is not ashamed to administer punishment in broad daylight.

Having the correct answer wasn’t nearly as important as knowing how to navigate yourself in a world where your “backtalk” would result in death. So frequent beatings were not only the lesser of two evils; a beating was also a lesson that could save your life. Much higher stakes than what Chua is dealing with. But the intensity of her methods is something that black mothers can understand.

Alexis Stodghill, Tiger Mother vs. Black Mamas: Is an Iron Hand the Key to Prosperous Children?

Chua has the kind of theory of life that many black people just cannot stand. There is no mention in the book of a larger purpose, God, community or interest in anything other than herself, her kids, and their grades and accolades — preferably from famous people like the jurists she invited to her home to listen to her children perform.

While she does pause to care for two very ill family members and has potlucks for her students, you really get the sense that she is oblivious to the lives of everybody else in the world who does not touch her life directly; that, say, a drunk driver could mow down somebody else’s kid on her street and she would be too busy drilling her kids with flash cards to take the bereaved parents a casserole. Perhaps most aggravating is that Chua has no patience with those who challenge the status quo, implying that people who challenge the power structure — no matter how stacked or rigged it may be — are just too lazy and selfish to master it.

And that’s all too bad, but black people should still buy this book and study it for its underlying message, which is this: There are no shortcuts to achievement — and no racial secrets — only strategies.

..[W]e need to keep talking about the habits of success, especially the habit of persistence in the face of failure. Ironically, those are the kinds of habits for which our top black athletes, such as Donovan McNabb and LeBron James, are best known, even in the face of the ongoing stereotype that they are all about luck and raw talent. And it is all the more crucial for black parents, who, unlike Asians, are burdened with the stereotype of being considered lazy, unintellectual and all about the party.

Every day, I see kids who will practice jump shots and blocking and tackling for hours a day, with their parents’ support, because they know that the harder they work, the more talented they get. Yet they shut down when it comes to applying that same effort to their academic work.

Similarly, I’ve personally seen white and Asian kids apply time and time again for coveted fellowships and internships, despite rejection, while black kids react to rejection by withdrawing altogether from contention. I know heads of schools who have to fight with black parents to get them to fight to turn off the Playstations and the televisions until the grades go up — and fight they must, because that is what the job of being a parent entails. 

We all know this, and it’s time to name it and fight it.

But we also know that even as we try to teach our kids the habits of success for a tough, new world, there is a time for everything: for joy, for laughter, to lift as we climb and to speak truth to power. Without the sacrifices that African-American parents made and continue to make to advance the cause of equal opportunity in education, I very much doubt that women and other minorities like Chua would have the opportunities they have today.

And this is something that Chua can stand to learn from us.

Michel Martin, Parenting to Win

Image Credit: Chua/You Offend Me, You Offend MyFamily; Black Family/mymajicdc.com

By Arturo R. García

Not to be outdone by the Council of Conservative Citizens, right-wing bloggers have found a new cause for umbrage: DC Comics’ newest member of the nascent “Batman Corps” is French, an Algerian immigrant, and – cue the melodrama – a Muslim.

The character in question, Bilal Asselah, recently debuted in Detective Comics Annual #12 and Batman Annual #28. Bilal, a resident of Clichy-sous-Bois – the Paris neighborhood that saw widespread rioting in 2005 – takes to parkour as a way to escape his troubles and ends up becoming an urban legend, dubbed The Nightrunner.

“For the first time in years, the Baniliue had something to talk about other than the violence,” Bilal says in an internal monologue. And pretty soon, he attracts the attention of the original Batman, Bruce Wayne, who’s visiting Paris as part of the “Batman, Incorporated” storyline; Wayne’s plan is to appoint and train an array of Bat-affiliates around the globe, and he offers Bilal the chance to help him put a stop to a series of assassinations. Bilal’s response is refreshingly endearing:

But, as noted by Kevin Melrose at Comic Book Resources, it hasn’t taken long for the ethnocentrism to start rolling in. From the rather ironically-named “Astute Blogger”:

How about that, Bruce Wayne goes to France where he hires not a genuine French boy or girl with a real sense of justice, but rather, an “oppressed” minority who adheres to the Religion of Peace. And this is a guy whose very parents were murdered at the hands of a common street thug!

Because, of course, immigrants aren’t “really” from their countries. And from Warner Todd Huston, who Melrose credits with getting the ball rolling on the Captain America Tea Party debacle earlier this year:

In this age when Muslim youths are terrorizing the entire country, heck in this age of international Muslim terrorism assaulting the whole world, Batman’s readers will be confused by what is really going on in the world. Through it all DC makes a Muslim in France a hero when French Muslims are at the center of some of the worst violence in the country’s recent memory.

Left unsaid by both, of course, is the fact that the riots in Clichy-sous-Bois didn’t just materialize out of thin air; the deaths of Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré were the tipping point in the neighborhood’s existing struggles with chronic unemployment and governmental neglect, neither of which, as France24 reported in October, had improved in the five years since the riots.

At the Chene Pointu estate, near where Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré died, residents are still living in an environment that would best be described as a high-rise slum.

Top-floor residents have to climb ten flights of stairs. The lifts have been out of action for years.

The stairwells are a picture of misery and degradation, as are many of the apartments – rife with damp and peeling paintwork because of leaks. Often there is no hot water.

Many of these flats are owned by slum landlords who ruthlessly exploit vulnerable tenants, often “sans-papiers” (unregistered, literally without documents) and poor families.

Some 6,000 people live in the two tower blocks that comprise the Chene Pointu estate, almost a quarter of the population of Clichy-sous-Bois.

“We are not living any better than we were five years ago – in some cases the situation is much worse,” says François Taconet, who heads an association campaigning for the rehabilitation of the estate.

It’s anybody’s guess how long Bilal is allowed to operate, in or out of canon. He and the other characters introduced in the Batman Incorporated story and comic might fall into obscurity, or be stripped of their rank (or worse) upon editorial whim. In the meantime, far be it from us here at Racialicious to completely dismiss the views of people like Mr. Huston or the “Astute Blogger.” In fact, here’s a hot tip for them to pursue: as it happens, DC has been guilty of exploiting an undocumented immigrant superhero for decades on end. We’ll even provide a picture for reference:

Sic ‘em, boys!

Top image courtesy of Trevor McCarthy

By Arturo R. García

After narrowly making it through the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday, the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act will now be up for vote in the Senate, where it’s likely to run headlong into a Republican party filibuster. As Rep. Lamar Smith, R-TX, told CNN:

Mass amnesty is not the only problem with the DREAM Act … The bill allows illegal immigrants to receive in-state tuition at public universities, placing them ahead of U.S. citizens. The bill also is a magnet for fraud.

Of course, Mr. Smith’s definition of “ahead of” is in question: the act specifies that to even be eligible for said tuition – and not in the form of grants, but in college loans and work-study credits – not only would each student eligible under DREAM have to apply for a six-year conditional residency program, but would have to either complete two years’ worth of college courses or military service, and would not be able to apply for conditional residency until 5.5 years into the program, provided he or she maintains “good moral character.”

As this deals with immigration, much of the reporting and rhetoric concerning DREAM has, as is now customary, focused on immigrants from Latin American countries. But as this video Angry Asian Man posted reminds us, there are other communities involved.

As AAM notes, you can call your Senators at 866-996-5161 to express your feelings about the DREAM act.

By Arturo R. García

After our post on Friday regarding first post regarding Maclean’s Magazine’s “Too Asian?” article, we got an e-mail from Victor Wong, president of the Chinese Canadian National Council:

“Too Asian = Not Canadian”
We need to reject this concept.
There are also issues with using essentially a racist argument to justify
(white) entitlement ie. I don’t want to go to U of T because it’s too Asian
- a killjoy.
It bothers me that a national weekly of Maclean’s reputation would publish
such a headline and poorly written/researched article.
Most parents – of all backgrounds – enjoy a white-knuckle anxiety moment as
their child opens up an admissions letter from U of T. They’d never think to
bypass an excellent school because it’s “too Asian.” Many students of all
backgrounds have criticized the article – check out the comments under the
Maclean’s article online – there’s more than 700 comments.

As of late Sunday night, the number of comments had grown to exceed 1,500. And the story has led not only to responses like the Asians Not Studying tumblr, but it’s been picked up by other sites. From Wild Unicorn Herd:

… Like, “we” realized that racism is wrong so we abandoned the policies that kept out the Jews…which meant we were forced to let in the Asians! God damn you, political correctness! Because we have nothing to fear from a lot of Jews (who are all white Europeans, of course), but a majority of Asians (who may not even be born in Canada! who may *clutches pearls* speak Mandarin!) is a problem that needs to be fixed.

I also love how Asian students associating mainly with other Asian students is a HUGE PROBLEM HOW CAN WE STOP THIS but White students who go to Western because there’s too many icky Chinese at U of T is understandable, y’know?

And by “love” I mean SMASH WITH RAGE.

For its’ part, Jezebel took exception to the reporting choices by Nicholas Kholler and Stephanie Findlay, who wrote the article: