• Young kid from the hood trying to make good? Check.
• Prerequisite positive rap song that feels like it was pulled from Ghostwriter? Check.
• Street pressures that are easily overcome? Check.
• Mandatory plot for women, involving sexing up your image to get signed to the majors? Check.

But hey, I had just gone through three really depressing movies about the fall out of the drug war. I needed something to lift my spirits, and I will shamelessly admit that I enjoyed Brown Sugar. On the real, Filly Brown could have been a Lifetime produced version of the Somaya Reece story, and I still would have watched it!

Luckily, I was wrong.

Okay, on second thought, I wasn’t that wrong. Two and a half of the four I listed above were in the movie. But the team behind Filly Brown managed to add enough new elements to make the standard tropes feel fresh.

Maria Jose “Majo” Tonorio (Gina Rodriguez) is about her business. We meet her in the an LA studio, hungry and ready to get on the mic. Her moniker is “Filly Brown” and her onstage persona is aggressive. Her clothes are made for maximum comfort and street style, and she wasn’t taking any kind of mess. She meets a clownish (yet popular) rapper before one of her sets, and when he grabs her ass, she punches him in the face. (This film is not for pacifists–Majo is quick with her hands, and there is a lot of violence.) Raw and ready, she catches the attention of DJ Santa (Braxton Millz) who unites with her to create a new kind of sound. He believes in her talent, but Majo is under a lot of pressure. Not only is she helping to raise her boy-crazy younger sister and looking after her overworked father, her mother is in jail on drug charges. After being absent for a few years, her mother Maria (Jenn Rivera) reaches out to pressure Majo to finding the money to retry the case.

Her father and uncle will not help her with the money, wary of Maria’s past history, so Majo takes matters into her own hands, leaving the comfort of her close-knit circle and doing whatever it takes to get to the top.

The film flows in two directions–the first, more predictable track is Majo’s journey through hip-hop stardom. The second plot, however, is a bit more compelling. Majo is actually a generation removed from the streets–her father Jose (Lou Diamond Phillips) and her uncle used to live fast and hard, but gave up that life as they grew older. Now as a adults, they’ve struggled to carve out a legal existence. Her father owns a landscaping company with two of his friends from the streets, but they risk losing work when his largest contract believes that the burly, tattooed workers present an undesirable image to her clients. In addition to financial pressures, Jose doesn’t want to tell Majo the extent of her mother’s drug abuse, leading the family lawyer (Edward James Olmos) to threaten to reveal all the family secrets.

The scenes between Majo and her mother at the prison are beautifully acted and heartbreaking–as Majo begins to piece together the web of lies her mother told to further her habit in prison, she becomes angry and resentful. However, her final freestyle to her mother trapped behind the prison glass wrung tears from most of the audience.

Overall, Filly Brown was a hip hop movie with tons of heart and style. It passes the Bechdel test with flying colors, and while it may feel a bit predictable in some parts, Majo is a character worth cheering for.

By Guest Contributor Michael P. Jeffries

Just two weeks ago, the live audience at the Republican presidential candidate debate cheered in gleeful support of the death penalty. At the time, sensible Americans, secure in their own polite disapproval, bookmarked the incident as another harrowing YouTube amusement, and returned to normalcy the next day. The climate has changed, and there will be no such return to normalcy after Troy Davis’s death. We cannot make up for the blood spilled while the death penalty languished as mere speck on our political radar, but we can and will work to eradicate it.

Desperate for redemption in this dark hour, we have to believe that history will reveal the Davis execution as the spark that eventually incinerated the death penalty in the United States. I worry, though, that the worthy goal of eradicating capital punishment, even if achieved, will distort and erase the tormenting racial subtext of this incident. The very possibility of even characterizing the racial meaning baked into this case as “subtext,” speaks to the suppression of the truth about racism in the United States.

It is a testament to the depth of human empathy and faith that violence did not erupt between the largely black group of protestors and law enforcement, given the number of police officers who have attacked and murdered black people without being punished. The government has repeatedly confirmed that the lives of Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, and countless others are not as valuable as that of fellow innocent, Mark McPhail. If there is any reason to be prideful or thankful after Thursday, it is that that Americans burning with anger and despair embodied the civility their government was so woefully unable to reflect. Law enforcement officers at the scene should be commended for their professionalism as well.

Race also inflects the “I am Troy Davis” and “too much doubt” mantras that emerged over the past week. On one hand, the phrases are a simple display of solidarity, invoked by people of all backgrounds who view the execution as a personal affront and miscarriage of justice. For many who claim them, the words do not reflect absolute conviction that Davis is completely innocent, only that he did not deserve to die in this manner. No murder weapon was ever found. No DNA evidence exists. Police misconduct made a mockery of the suspect identification process. Seven of the nine witnesses recanted their testimonies. None of this was enough to spare Davis’s life, let alone reopen the case.

On the other hand, for black and brown people, the phrase, “I am Troy Davis” takes on a different significance. It shouts the truth that nobody is safe from a punishment system that cannot tell one working class or impoverished black or Latino person from the next. As Marc Mauer reports, “1 of every 3 African American males born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime, as can 1 of every 6 Latino males, compared to 1 in 17 White males.” The stereotypes of the inner-city “thug” and the “illegal alien” pervade popular discourse on crime and race relations. Every subject who meets the race/class criteria is presumed guilty, by definition, of cultural pathology and criminality.

The punishment complex simply formalizes the social and cultural guilt poor blacks and Latinos are already marked with, using the ‘criminal’ stain to draw the eye away from centuries of institutional racism, exploitation, and discrimination. “I am Troy Davis” is nothing if not an expression of deep fear and justified paranoia. Imprisonment is warranted for those who pose a danger to society. But too often, all it takes for a black or brown person without privilege to be locked up without recourse is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And if his execution does not come gradually, through the ills of denied civil rights, underemployment, shoddy health care, and decrepit schooling and social services, the punishment complex will intervene to hasten his social and biological death.

The coming days are for reflection, self-evaluation, and action. The pace of the journey away from capital punishment can and must be quickened. But as we stumble away from our current lot, with our eyes on a horizon free of the death penalty, we must be careful not to ignore the ground on which we walk. It is filthy, littered with racial injustice and exploitation, and the dust and grime we kick up sticks to us as we try to move on. Let us leave this place behind, and leave it clean.

Image courtesy of Friends of Justice

By Arturo R. García

It’s Sept. 16, which means it’s Mexican Independence Day – please remind any friends who might be confused about the occasion that it’s not in May – and also time for our annual peek at musical goodness from the (personal) Motherland.

Kicking it off in the clip above is Molotov, rock en español‘s longtime agent provocateurs, who are celebrating their 15th anniversary this year with a tour, and are expected to drop an album later this year.

Overall, though, this year’s spotlight is a bit different from our 2010 and 2009 installments, mostly because of the rise of a new genre, ruidosón, a successor of sorts to the Nortec movement from earlier this decade, which fuses old-school rhythms with modern tech to create a sound that, while retaining some familiarity, is exploring new territory. More beats than you can handle are under the cut.

Maria y Jose – Puerto Alegría (2011) by TJMUSICALLIANCE

The Name: María y José
The Style: Antonio Jiménez (there’s no María, for the record) is one of ruidosón’s burgeoning leaders, with two albums already under his belt.
The Buzz: ““Puerto Alegría” is an immediate contender for -2011 Song of the Summer-, and it’s undeniably, María y José’s catchiest song yet. It’s so sticky you could easily confuse him with a popstar. ” – Club Fonograma

Ritmo de Amor by Los Macuanos

The Name: Los Macuanos
The Style: Three-man Ruidosón crew rides a similar chill wave as MyJ, with music bridging the gap between traditional grupero music and club-friendly sounds.
The Buzz: “Los Macuanos take inspiration from a wealth of resources — New York City no-wave, Detroit techno, rural Mexican music; the list goes on—and I wouldn’t be surprised if San Diegans eventually get keen on their borderless sounds.” – San Diego CityBeat.

Javier Estrada – Songo Latino by djjavierestrada

The Name: DJ Javier Estrada
The Style: Hailing from Monterey, Nuevo León – the same city that gave us the mighty Kinky – Estrada is as prolific as he is prodigious; all four of his Ritmo Del Mundo mixtapes were released within one year.
The Buzz: “Whether injecting gravitational strength to The Police’s ‘Roxanne,’ outing Lalo Mora from his norteño cave in ‘Mi Casa Nueva,’ or adding some bloody spills of his own in María y José’s ‘Violentao,’ Estrada is a force of mammoth tropical bass and technological nature.” – Club Fonograma

The Name: Mexican Institute Of Sound
The Style: EMI Mexico President Camilo Lara steps out from behind his desk to create traditional/tech pastiches comparable to groups like Nortec Collective. Released the Suave Patria EP right around the time of last year’s guide.
The Buzz: “Fusing the sounds of old Mexico with different tracks and sounds that make you wanna pull a dance move or two while all the head-nodders will get their fill of bass is what this release is about. As eclectic as sounds come while retaining it’s roots it’s nice to see musical history repeated in a fresh and palatable way to the generation of now.” – When Giants Meet.

The Name: Ximena Sariñana
The Style: A bilingual, jazz-trained pop chanteuse, Sariñana is decidedly SFW but still fun, so don’t be surprised if Sariñana breaks on thru to the most rarified of airs – Adult Contemporary stations – sooner rather than later.
The Buzz: “Hers is one of the most ambitious pure-pop full-lengths of 2011 — one that puts her jazz training to good use and highlights her idiosyncrasies, but never forgets that she’s making music for mass consumption. Sariñana springs from these tracks a fully formed character: playful, giddy, occasionally difficult, worried that she can’t keep up with the angels but determined to stay sweet even in the face of disappointment.” – New Jersey Star-Ledger.

The Name: Pipe Llorens
The Style: It takes a certain amount of confidence – or arrogance – to release a self-referencing documentary when you’ve only got two albums to your credit. But Torreón punk-rapper Llorens, who’s called “Coahuila’s Bad Boy” so often it’s probably on his business cards, is wry enough to make it hold up, as the trailer to said film, Indies, demonstrates. The same attitude pervades his rhymes, as he tells stories in the relaxed style of that scenester friend you want to get annoyed by, if only he wasn’t having so much fun.
The Buzz: “Well, I’ve moved around a lot since I was very young and I still do with my music. But I like having Torreón as my home base. If I were to move anywhere, I think it would be to California. My dream is to move to Los Angeles, open a Chipotle, and just work on music all the time. And become a surfer. With a blonde chick.” – Remezcla.

The Name: Les Butcherettes
The Style: Frontwoman Teri Gender Bender made her name early on in Mexico with an in-your-face performance style that emigrated with her to Los Angeles when she assembled the Butcherettes’ current lineup. The band has gone on to open for heavyweights like Queens Of The Stone Age and Jane’s Addiction, and delivered an eye-opening set at this year’s Lollapalooza.
The Buzz: “Teri’s voice and musical style is often associated with those of Patti Smith, PJ Harvey and Karen O, and she intently stares into the gaping eyes of those who press themselves against the stage with a nearly menacing scowl, transfixing them with her commanding aura while belting out songs about love, loss and sometimes even Republican takeover of Third World countries.” – What’s Up Magazine.

Now, I don’t mean to fuel any animosity between African Americans and Mexicans, whites and anyone else. God knows there are enough attacks against one another for superficial and ridiculous reasons (and attacking anyone for their so-called race or ethnicity is silly). What we often forget is that idiots come in all colors–if I have any prejudice it’s against people who don’t know what they’re talking about, who don’t know their own history, let alone that of others.

So instead of going off myself, I’m going to make this a “teaching moment” (I know, this is dumb cliché, but you get the point). Why react in kind to Mr. Williams in an already negative environment; this issue is bigger than one bad night at the comedy club (a small message to Mr. Williams: There is always going to be bad nights at the club, get over it).

Mexicans did fight for California. In fact, the one major battle they had with Anglo forces invading California they won, with horses and lances, just outside of Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the decision to turn the state over to the United States was made in Washington D.C. without the input of the people involved.

In fact, there was a whole war that Mexicans fought to stop the illegal invasion, which, lest Mr. Williams forget, was being pushed by the slave-owning interests in the United States. It was Southern slaveholders who ignited the war to rip Texas away from Mexico when Anglos refused to accept Mexico’s laws against slavery.

Mexico had abolished slavery in the early 1800s, way before the Emancipation Proclamation; Mexico even had at least two African-Mexicans as presidents some two hundreds years before Barack Obama was elected president in this country.

The main catalyst for the Mexican war was the refusal of Mexico to return black slaves–believed to be more than 10,000–who had taken the southern-route of the “underground railroad,” crossing the border to a free Mexico. In Mexico’s governing assembly heavy debates on the issue ended up with the majority supporting these slaves, allowing them to own land, to farm, to become part of the Mexican social fabric.

Mexicans were willing to die so blacks could be free.

–Luis J. Rodriguez, “Why We Need a Deeper Dialogue on Black-and-Brown Relations”

Image credit: VOYAJ

I’ve been on such a light blogging schedule as of late that I haven’t even written about passage of the marriage equality law in New York State last month or the legal marriages between same-sex couples that began last week. I have no doubt, though, that readers of this blog caught wind of the developments elsewhere.

But there remain some interesting angles that haven’t been covered or have gone under-reported in English language media and the following story is one of them.

Last April, as foes of marriage equality in New York ramped up efforts to convince state legislators not to bring a marriage equality bill up for a debate, news filtered out that New York State Senator and Reverend Ruben Diaz, Sr. (D-Bronx) would be headlining a rally in his home borough in opposition of the bill. The rally, which I attended on May 15th, wasn’t the first or last rally Diaz would lead on the issue, but something new emerged: A call to boycott the leading Spanish language newspaper in New York City, El Diario La Prensa, over their long-standing editorial support for marriage equality.

News of the boycott first surfaced in a Spanish-language Dominican Republic newspaper in which the Reverend promised that it would lead to a single-day newspaper stand sale drop of 20,000 copies. Here is what Diaz said about the boycott at the Bronx rally…

Diaz implied to the crowd that it was God who ordered the boycott (at the :54 second mark):

Our God has indicated to me to ask you to send a message to El Diario La Prensa. The fifty cents that you spend in buying the newspaper – with those fifty cents you are contributing to the promotion and the promulgation of marriage between a man with a man and a woman with a woman and abortion. And you are a son of God… You are a daughter of God… You are child of God. Starting tomorrow Monday, I am calling on all of you not to dare give fifty more cents to El Diario La Prensa. Kick them out! It’s out they go! Out! Out! Out!

I must be jaded and gotten used to all the other homophobic religious nuttery that took place that day because the call to censure the press in the name of God was one of the most chilling things I heard on that day. Days earlier, Diaz – true to his disregard of the separation of church and state – posted a diatribe against El Diario on his Senate website in which he directly quoted the Bible (“He who is not with us, is against us – Luke 9:50″). On May 28th, Diaz also appeared on New York 1 en Español’s weekly political show “Pura Política” defending his attack on freedom of expression to the show’s host Juan Manuel Benitez ( at the 4:23 minute mark):

JUAN MANUEL BENITEZ: This freedom of expression, to say what you want to say, you don’t extend it to El Diario La Prensa? You’ve been organizing a boycott based on the editorial content of El Diario La Prensa because they back same-sex marriage…
SEN. RUBEN DIAZ, SR.: And abortion, and abortion, because…
JMB: So you want to silence El Diario La Prensa’s freedom of expression.
DIAZ: No, I want to be granted equality. I want to be granted equality.
JMB: And what is equality. Which is the equality.
DIAZ.: Equality means that El Diario La Prensa doesn’t cover any of our activities. They don’t cover our children’s parades…
JMB: They did cover your rally from a couple of weeks back…
DIAZ: Nooooo, oh, man, it was just miniscule coverage. They don’t cover the Day of the Pastor, they don’t cover religious activities, they don’t cover a thing. They only cover…
JMB: Perhaps they only cover what they consider to be newsworthy…
DIAZ: So us… the Evangelical people don’t have the right… We don’t have to spend fifty cents to buy it. That doesn’t… that doesn’t… we are in America!
JMB: You are taking away their freedom of expression.
DIAZ: Ah! So is it an attack… for… for… for us to inhibit our right to express our position. Give me equality, and let’s say we’ll be on even keel. I’m not saying ‘Do not write about that’. What I’m saying is: Why is it that you write only about that side… and don’t write about this side. Journalism should be impartial. Which is what I just told you about Blabbeando.

Yes, Diaz plugged this blog as an example of the ‘fair and balanced’ coverage he should get at El Diario. Sigh.

Diaz, of course, lost big time when it came to blocking the recognition of marriage equality in New York State. Question is, having pulled out all his forces to hurt the sales of El Diario La Prensa, did his supposedly God-mandated boycott work?

For an answer let’s go back to Friday’s edition of “Pura Politica” in which El Diario La Prensa’s long-time Chief Operating Officer and Editor Rossana Rosado sat down to publicly address the issue for the first time. I have a feeling you might be surprised…

In the clip Rosado discusses the Diaz boycott somewhat reluctantly and seemingly hesitant to give it more publicity than it’s worth. She explains why they chose not to address it directly initially and also reveals, for the first time in a public venue, why passage of the marriage equality law in New York State hit so close to home. Here is the full transcript:

JUAN MANUEL BENITEZ: An elderly couple made history on Sunday when they became New York City’s first gay marriage. Phyllis Siegel, a 77 year old retired librarian, and her wife Connie Kopelov, an 84 year old retired activist and labor leader, sealed their 23-year old relationship by getting married – legally. Hundreds of same-sex couples did the same and have continued doing so all week long. This historic event and the debate that preceded and led to it was followed closely by the oldest Spanish-language publication in the city, EL DIARIO LA PRENSA. With us, today, is their Editor and Executive Director ROSSANA ROSADO, many thanks for being with us [RS: Thank you for the invitation]. ROSSANA, why this issue and the way it was covered by EL DIARIO and, in particular – to get started – how did you experience the news at EL DIARIO LA PRENSA once it became a reality on Sunday…

RS: It’s not the first time. People seemed to take it as something unique but at EL DIARIO we have spent years backing gay marriage. It wasn’t something new. We have always been in favor of civil rights – and that aspect of the debate – and I think it became news because EL DIARIO’s stand became so widely known. But we – as Latinos and New Yorkers – have always have always backed marriage rights for gays.

JMB: But you must know that there is the perception – in this country and in this city – that the Hispanic community is very conservative, very religious, and is not in favor of homosexual marriage. How is the experience at an institution such as EL DIARIO LA PRENSA – which has existed for almost a century – that goes against the grain of what people think the Hispanic community is like.

RR: Well, nevertheless, we have always been a very inclusive community. If someone says that they are against gay marriage based on their religious beliefs they more than likely have a gay son, brother or cousin who opposes [their view]. In other words, as a community we are a little more complex than that. Conservative? Perhaps. But we always have… – for example – the gays have always marched at at the Puerto Rican Parade. We never had the issues, for example, that have existed with the St. Patrick’s Parade. And… look, we have never seen any backlash from our readers or public as a reaction to our editorial position or the support we gave it on this occasion.

JMB: And what many people have been asking: Did you sit down at the editorial room in EL DIARIO LA PRENSA and said “We’ll go along… we will choose this path… we will support homosexual marriage openly and will we do it in such and such a way”? In other words, was there such a meeting? Was it decided that this would be the editorial line?

RR: Well, as I said, our editorial line isn’t something new. We have always had it. I believe our editorial line is consistent with our support for civil rights, immigration rights, social justice, so it’s part of our trajectory of fighting for rights we believe to be civil rights. So it’s not only a religious debate. If one believes certain rights are civil rights, how can you be opposed to marriage rights… that doesn’t make sense. And for me, this is consistent with the trajectory we have set; what could be described as a progressive policy.

JMB: Sunday, June 26th, was a very special day for you professionally and personally. Two days earlier, Governor Cuomo had signed the marriage equality law for which your newspaper fought so hard and in an editorial you titled “Because in the End, It’s Love that Counts”, you finally broke your silence and wrote, in part: “This newspaper was the target of a boycott based on our support for what we consider to be an issue of civil rights, but the end result of the matter were the calls of support from our family and activists throughout the tri-state area; many of them don’t know how to speak or read Spanish and, despite this, they wanted to subscribe to EL DIARIO to insure and protect our editorial independence.”
As a business woman, separate from your role as a journalist, what was your experience with this boycott over the editorial stand in favor of gay marriage?

RR: EL DIARIO is what we call in English a ‘single-copy’ newspaper: It’s a newspaper that is sold every day – during ninety-eight years – every day, on the newspaper stand. In other words, we do not offer a subscription rate. So for me it’s like a daily survey, whether people will buy it or won’t buy it. Therefore we didn’t feel the boycott in an economic way. Nevertheless, those who called for a boycott brought a lot of attention to EL DIARIO and, as a result, we seem to have new fans who didn’t know us before – who also thought it was something new, that it was a novelty – our support for gay marriage – which it wasn’t. And it was also an overwhelming reaction, for them to call us and say ‘We don’t read in Spanish but we want to subscribe so this boycott won’t have an impact on EL DIARIO or do any damage to EL DIARIO; so we gained – through Facebook and Twitter – we gained more.

JMB: But before you received the show of support, I imagine you as a business woman, as the leader of an organization that provides employment to many families, deep inside you must have been worried. You might have said ‘Well, we might have to rethink this issue, this stand, this editorial line…’

RR: Neither I nor Erica Gonzalez who is the Editor… we never worried about an economic impact or… we understood and always felt we were on the right side and… I never worried at any moment. What could they do? Stop buying EL DIARIO? We cannot do the work we do – in terms of our causes and the support we provide – we cannot do it on the basis of public surveys. We cannot do it on the basis of threats or the fear-mongering of losing our advertisers. We wouldn’t do it on other issues and we won’t do it for this issue. So we didn’t feel fear, we just said “OK, let’s see what happens…’. The strategy was to ignore it and, if there was an impact, to address it later. And there wasn’t.

JMB: Because we haven’t yet spoken about the person who called the boycott, but he was here a few weeks ago and this is what he said…

NYS SENATOR RUBEN DIAZ, SR.: I want them to grant me equality…
JMB: And what is equality; which equality…
RD.: Equality means that EL DIARIO LA PRENSA doesn’t cover any of our activities. They don’t cover our children’s parades…
JMB: They did cover your rally from a couple of weeks back…
RD: Nooooo, oh, man, it was just miniscule coverage. They don’t cover the Day of the Pastor, they don’t cover religious activities, they don’t cover a thing. They only cover…JMB: Perhaps they only cover what they consider to be newsworthy…RD.: So us… the Evangelical people don’t have the right… We don’t have to spend fifty cents to buy it. That doesn’t… that doesn’t… we are in America!
JMB: You are taking away their freedom of expression.RD: Ah! So is it an attack… for… for… for us to inhibit our right to express our position. Give me equality, and let’s say we’ll be on even keel. I’m not saying ‘Do not write about that’. What I’m saying is: Why is it that you write only about that side… and don’t write about this side.

JMB: Your reaction…

RR: OK, look. There are people in our community who not only dress like a cowboy but also act as such. They want everybody to do whatever they want them to do. They want to impose their morals. In Puerto Rico we say they preach morality in their underwear, in other words, they want to preach morality. I’ll say that if that religious sector would like to ‘protect marriage’ why don’t they attack divorce – because many of them are divorced. I got married 21 years ago, been with the same man, I’ve been loyal, and I’m in love with him and I believe in marriage. So I’m not about to deny someone else the right to marry. If they want to use the power of their religious congregations for the public well-being why won’t they attack absent parents, those who do not pay child support; why won’t they attack domestic violence. Why won’t they use their alleged power to boycott those organizations, city and state agencies, or corporations that do so much damage to our families. Why won’t they use that energy in that way. I believe that we – both in our community and our newspaper – we should celebrate love in all its forms.

JMB: With that response, it’s obvious that you feel personally affected. As we said earlier, all these few weeks have also marked a very special moment for you…

RR: Yup. Because one of the first gay weddings will take place at my home… it will be between our friends Nelson and Juan who have spent 36 years together and who will get married – at last! – they’ll have the right to do it in this state. We – my husband and I – are very happy that it will happen at our home…. and also because this year was the year in which my daughter revealed to us that she is gay – and she is 17 years of age. And for her and her generation – her friends, her cousins, our family – everyone has given her their full support. There has not been a single negative reaction. I think that’s… that’s the world we should pass on to our children so that they won’t have to suffer, for example, through what Juan and Nelson or my uncles or my relatives went through.

[COMMERCIAL]

JMB: New York became the 6th state in the country to allow these unions. One thing is certain, these marriages do not enjoy legal recognition on the national level since they are not recognized by the federal government. Why? It’s due on a law signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 named “The Defense of Marriage Act”. It defines marriage as the exclusive union between a man and a woman and allows the states to deny the legal recognition of homosexual unions if they wish to do so. Thanks to this law many bi-national marriages are in danger since foreigners married to U.S. citizens do not enjoy immigration benefits. President Barack Obama thinks this law is unconstitutional and has asked his team to stop defending it in the courts. On his part, the general attorney of the State of New York, Eric Schneiderman filed a petition of unconstitutionality this week which might provoke a chain-reaction leading to the law’s revocation. ROSSANA, do you think this will take place soon. In other words, New York is the 6th state and not the 1st, but perhaps it has more visibility than perhaps all the other states that allow homosexual marriage in the country. Do you think there’ll be a chain-reaction and that a great majority of the states will slowly begin to recognize homosexual marriages?

RR: Well, I think New York is decisive due to its size and, of course, because we as New Yorkers continue to believe we are the center of the world [laughs]. But New York does have a large representation of all groups and all ideologies so it does have a larger impact, particularly on what happens in Washington. So, yes, the fact that it happened in New York, the fact that we have people like Schneiderman and Cuomo who have [political] aspirations beyond New York is important as well and I believe that, yes, we will see it. And I hope so because I want to stop dealing with this issue and deal with others I believe are much more important in terms of day to day life: The economy, job creation and other issues that need to be resolved.

JMB: Because, on a deeper level, do you think it will take a long time for the community in general to get used to other family models? Because defenders of traditional marriage say that they defend the institution of marriage as that of a father, a mother and their children – but when it comes to the truth that model doesn’t…

RR …it’s that it’s been a long time since that model actually existed. I believe the figure is that more than 60% of today’s families in the United States are not like that traditional family. My children – my daughter is 17 years old, my son is 20 years old – and from the time they were little, they were always in the minority as being from a family that had a father and a mother, in other words, a nuclear family. The topic of conversation during the school lunches was divorces, it was what other children did when they went to visit their [separated] parents. That [family] structure had already changed a decade ago, in other words, more than a decade ago. Sometimes when these debates come to the surface that’s the focus and the people who talk about it do it as if this was something new. But take a look at research and the statistics: The concept of “family” already changed years ago. And what about children raised by grandparents? Extended families? We are in an era in which that nucleus already changed a long time ago.

In other words, just as Reverend Diaz’ decades-long opposition to marriage equality in New York led to ultimate failure, his late-game call to boycott El Diario also seems to have failed miserably as well. Good job, Reverend Diaz! Please keep up on riling against El Diario since it worked so well for them!

And, by the way, if you’ve read this far, I also urge you to read Rossana Rosado’s full OpEd piece on this issue by clicking here.

It began when Activist X posted a link to this article about the Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival and noted with some irritation that despite the festival’s claims to inclusivity, there were no Latin@s mentioned in the article. X asked: if Latin@ people are the largest group of multiracial people in the Americas and the festival is supposed to be open to everybody, why weren’t Latin@ people included? A few people agreed with X, and some people who had been at the festival said that they thought Heidi Durrow and the festival were great, but that they could see X’s point.

Enter Activist Y: after expressing some trepidation, Y said that the festival was using the term “mixed race” or “multiracial” to refer to people who had parents of two or more different racial categorisations. Activist Y said that if your whole family shared the same ethnic identity, then you were not mixed in the way the festival intended.

Dear Racializens, I am sure you can imagine what happened next: a veritable Facebook wall brawl — albeit one that was highly intellectual and restrained. Most people sided with X (it was X’s wall to begin with) and Y, after making several long attempts to explain themselves, eventually left in a digital huff.

This exchange brought back some of the most difficult writing that I have ever done on Racialicious: where readers challenged my right to call myself, as a mixed race person with parents of two different races, mixed in a separate way from those who are mixed race but share the same identity as their whole family, for e.g. folks who are mestizo, Creole, African American, Metis, Peranakan…

(From here on in I will refer to people who come from mixed lineage as MRs, and people who have parents of two different and separate racial categorisations as MR2s.)

So here is one of the most important things I have learned from all my years of toiling in the anti-racist trenches here at Racialicious: when you are talking about race with anti-racist people of colour, you are speaking from a place of pain, to a place of pain. (Ok obviously we are about more than pain, but pain is always on the table.) Many of us come to anti-racism through struggle. We are used to having things taken away from us, and we turn to anti-racism to try and arm ourselves against the corrosion of racism. We are sensitive, and we come by it honestly.

Both of my parents are – to the best of my knowledge – the first members of generations and generations of their families to marry outside of the race. When I first started writing about mixedness on Racialicious, I had never heard of mixed race being used in any way other than to refer to people who had parents of two different races. I grew up in Canada and Singapore, and while, as a postcolonial nation, there are many MR communities in Singapore, they refer to themselves as Eurasian, Peranakan or Straits-born Chinese, not mixed race. It was never suggested to me that I might have a similar experience to these folks, and neither did the Eurasian friends I had seem interested in me as an identity buddy. More than this, in Singapore the term “mixed race” was restricted not simply to “a person with parents of two different and separate races”: it was used to specifically refer to people who had one white parent, and one parent of colour. (Obviously, this happens not just in Singapore.)

Through some big f-ups (which you may read here and here and here, though I am sorry to say the comments might be missing on some of those), I learned that many Americans of colour — often African Americans and Latin@s — have a problem with “mixed race” being used solely to refer to MR2s.

Using the term “mixed race” in this narrow way is to systematically erase ethnic histories that bear witness to slavery and colonization; or simply, to erase ethnic histories, period. To do so can be read as an act of white supremacy: it covers up the fact that many Americans, regardless of skin colour or the stories elders are willing to tell, have mixed lineages. To do this silences a whole community’s right to express their experience.

And another thing: it is grating to hear the term “mixed race” applied solely to MR2s, as if we invented mixedness. Cultural forces (usually — though not always — powered by white folks) that select MR2s as somehow unique, or the antidote to racism, or hybridly vigorous, or exquisitely beautiful, are just pouring salt in the wound. After generations of MR folks being ostracised or having to commit violent contortions to have a peaceful life, being mixed is all of a sudden hot – and this is the very moment that the label is being rescinded from MRs. You don’t even get invited to speak at the damn mixed race festival.

And let us note that a lot of this friction gets even hotter when we are talking about MR2s who have a white parent and a parent of colour, because we are talking about people of colour who also have white privilege and/or light-skin privilege.

There are other reasons why MRs get angry when MR2s say that being MR2 mixed is different from being MR mixed – and you are welcome to chime in in the comments, if you are so inclined – but these are the ones I have come across, time and again.

After my Racialicious education, I tried to be sensitive to the fact that “mixed race” can mean MRs or MR2s. To acknowledge this widening of the category, in a post I was writing about Alicia Keys and her warped presentation of historic racial relations, I referred to Alicia Keys as a first generation mixed race person. To my dismay, this language was deemed just as offensive as my original ignorance. Because, a commenter said, the language of generations is offensive and recalls such awful categories as quadroon and octoroon, and because, why, after everything, did I have to keep on insisting that there was a difference between mixed race people from long lines of mixedness, and mixed race people who were racial anomalies in their families?

It wasn’t, I started to realize, that MRs were solely mad that MR2s and the dominant culture didn’t recognize them as mixed. They were mad that a distinction was even being made between themselves, and MR2s. (Perhaps my very decision to say “MRs” and “MR2s” is aggravating this tension right now.)

When you are dealing with sensitive people who are reeling from cultural rejection, distinctions feel like rejections. Why do MR2s think they are so special that they can’t possibly be in the same club with MRs?

So I will dig deep into my horrible well of childhood pain to explain what this distinction business is about.

I come from a nation of two. There’s me, and there is my sibling. When I was growing up, I had no language to explain my experience. I did not know people who were mixed. And these problems were exacerbated by the fact that I was a TCK in a postcolonial nation that was still dealing with a lot of (justifiable) anger towards Westerners, and I was read as white, and I was given a hard time because of that. This was all without a real knowledge of race or racism, but simply a sinking feeling that I was hopelessly and sometimes offensively different from everyone around me, and that those gaps could never be bridged. Until I was in my mid-20s, this was what being mixed was for me. In my family of origin I  did not know a single person — not my grandparents, cousins, my mother and father, or even my sibling (who, thanks to the genetic lottery, came out looking a different race from me and so had their own experience altogether) — who could understand my ethnocultural identity.

Note: I am not saying that only MR2s understand true isolation. Pulllease. I am just saying that this was my experience, and I am sure, sadly enough, that there are many other roads to that kind of loneliness.

So when I meet MRs who come from long and often proud lines of family members who share the same ethnocultural experience as them, I can’t imagine that they could have shared my particular brand of racial isolation. It is not about thinking myself better or even, as some people have alleged, more authentically and mixedly mixed than folks who share a more complete heritage with their family. It is simply that I can’t imagine they could have had the same experience.

Part of this has to be the emo-as-heck tragic mixie inside of me who is too terrified to hope that, after all this time, my nation of two is a nation of millions. I swear, that stupid Blind Melon video where the weird little bee finally finds all the other little bees gets me every time.

I know I could be wrong that there is a yawning distance between MRs and MR2s; but we can never get past the front door of fighting over what I should call myself and what I should call them, to find out. Like I said at the beginning, I’m a sensitive brotherpucker.

Like so many other things, some of this is about the amount of space the dominant culture is willing to allot the people it has marginalized: we are fighting for table scraps because we know the right to tell our own stories is in slight supply. It both frustrates and saddens me that my attempt to assert my identity causes pain to other people who are just trying to do the same thing.

We become possessive over our suffering. There is something that MRs and MR2s definitely have in common: we are fighting over the right to this label and the right to make distinctions, because any concession feels like giving up the history that we fought so hard to survive. I can only wonder at the experience of mixed race people who are both MRs and MR2s. Again, chime in from the comments if you’d like to weigh in.

I guess what I am giving you here is my thought process so far. I have no conclusions when it comes to this fight. Do I think that folks who come from a mixed lineage are mixed? Of course I do. Do I think that they should have the right to call themselves mixed, without qualification? Definitely. Do I believe that we are mixed in the same way? This is something I still struggle with. Do I want to be allies? Do I want to search for kinship where I never thought to look before? Do I want to have a mixed race festival and invite everyone?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

I had a great Twitter conversation yesterday with @AndreaPlaid, @AnnaHolmes and @Amaditalks. We were talking about Julie Klausner’s recent post on Jezebel, “Don’t fear the dowager: a valentine to maturity.” Klausner’s post, lamenting the trend of grown women adopting childish personas, is sort of a companion to all the similar pieces about modern men living in a state of perpetual boyhood. She writes:

There’s so much ukulele playing now, it’s deafening. So much cotton candy, so many bunny rabbits and whoopie pies and craft fairs and kitten emphera, and grown women wearing converse sneakers with mini skirts. So many fucking birds.

Girls get tattoos that they will never be able to grow into. Women with master’s degrees who are searching for life partners, list “rainbows, Girl Scout cookies, and laughing a lot” under “interests, on their Match.com profiles. Read more…

The Klausner article generated a ton of push back on Jezebel. I suspect because the manic pixie dream girl persona is “in” right now and everyone wants to feel like they choose their own choices. In this case, that means that some women want to believe that their predilection for rompers and kittens and baby voices reflects their individual personalities and not some trend toward retro, non-threatening femaleness. But no one chooses their choices in a vacuum and certainly it means something that so many women seem to be finding this super-girlish, childish part of their personalities at the same time, while Katy Perry’s sex and candy persona is tearing up the charts and actual little girls are being bombarded with pink, purple, princesses, tulle and sparkles.

Zooey Deschanel is the poster girl for this sort of womanhood. Frankly, I find a 30-something woman with a website called Hello Giggles and a penchant for tweets about kittens a little off-putting, as I would a grown man with a website called Girls Have Cooties and a Twitter feed about Matchbox cars. But then we find creepy in a man the kind of childishness we fetishize in women.

I also find it worth noting that the persona that Klausner writes about is bound by class and race. The cult of domesticity defined idealized womanhood centuries ago–and that definition included both perpetual childhood and whiteness. The wide-eyed, girlish, take-care-of-me characters that Deschanel inhabits on film are not open to many women of color, particularly black women. We can be strong women, aggressive women, promiscuous women…we can do Bonet bohemian and Earth Mother (as Andrea pointed out), but never carefree and childish. Even black girls are too often viewed as worldly women and not innocents.

Also, the affectations of the manic pixie are read differently on black women. A streak of pink in the hair goes from quirky and youthful to “ghetto” on a black body. Thrift store clothing leads to a host of class assumptions.

Am I wrong about this? Is there a black Zooey? A manic pixie Latina? Is this a persona that women of color can inhabit?

Photo and image credits: What Tami Said

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

Full disclosure: I met Loretta Ross at a Women’s Media Center’s media workshop for progressive women last summer, and we’re connected through the New York City chapter of SisterSong, which reshaped the reproductive-rights fight to reproductive justice. And I just think she is an incredible activist and living historian.

I saw this clip of her explaining to another generation of feminists where the term “women of color” came from and wanted to share.

Transcript after the jump.

Loretta Ross: Y’all know where the term “women of color” came from?  Who can say that?  See, we’re bad at transmitting history.

In 1977, a group of Black women from Washington, DC, went to the National Women’s Conference, that [former President] Jimmy Carter gave $5million to have as part of the World Decade for Women.  There was a conference in Houston, TX.

This group of Black women carried into that conference something called “The Black Women’s Agenda” because the organizers of the conference—Bella Abzug, Ellie Smeal, and what have you—had put together a three-page “Minority Women’s Plank” in a 200-page document that these Black women thought was somewhat inadequate.

(Giggles in background)

So they actually formed a group called Black Women’s Agenda to come [sic] to Houston with a Black women’s plan of action that they wanted the delegates to vote to substitute for the “Minority Women’s Plank that was in the proposed plan of action.

Well, a funny thing happened in Houston: when they took the Black Women’s Agenda to Houston, then all the rest of the “minority” women of color wanted to be included in the “Black Women’s Agenda.” Okay?

Well, [the Black women] agreed…but you could no longer call it the “Black Women’s Agenda.”  And it was in those negotiations in Houston [that] the term “women of color” was created.  Okay?

And they didn’t see it as a biological designation—you’re born Asian, you’re born Black, you’re born African American, whatever—but it is a solidarity definition, a commitment to work in collaboration with other oppressed women of color who have been “minoritized.”

Now, what’s happened in the 30 years since then is that people see it as biology now.

(Murmurs of understanding, agreement)

You know? Like, “Okay…” And peopleare saying they  don’t want to be defined as a woman of color: “I am Black, “I am Asian American”…and that’s fine. But why are you reducing a political designation to a biological destiny?

(Murmurs of agreement)

That’s what white supremacy wants you to do. And I think it’s a setback when we disintegrate as people of color around primitive ethnic claiming. Yes, we are Asian American, Native American, whatever, but the point is, when you choose to work with other people who are minoritized by oppression, you’ve lifted yourself out of that basic identity into another political being and another political space. And, unfortunately, so many times, people of color hear the term “people of color” from other white people that [PoCs} think white people created it instead of understanding that we self-named ourselves.  This is term that has a lot of power for us.

But we’ve done a poor-ass job of communicating that history so that people understand that power.

by Latoya Peterson

I thought I knew Oedipus Rex.

The first time I read Sophocles’ masterful Greek tragedy was in the 11th grade.  There, scribbling out an analysis as part of a 40 minute timed writing, I focused on what epitomized Oedipus for me – the struggle between fate and free will. After hearing from the Oracle that he was fated to murder his father and to sleep with his mother, Oedipus does what any rational person would do – he tries to put as much distance as he can between himself and the only family he knows. Unfortunately, prophecies are not so easily averted – Oedipus never knew he was adopted, and thus did not know the man he slew on the road to Thebes was his father; nor did he know the beautiful widow he would eventually marry was his birth mother.

Back then, I wrote about the icy hand of irony in Oedipus’ journey -  how he closed himself to what would have revealed the truth because of his hubris, but once he finds out he literally blinds himself.  But what really stuck with me was the idea of fate.  If your life is predestined – and all roads will lead to your eventual path – what is the point of having free will? Life never promised to be fair, but the fates are needlessly cruel, especially in Greek mythology.  And so, when I heard about a retelling of Oedipus Rex, set in the barrios of LA with a Chicano protagonist, I could immediately see the connection.

Indeed, the idea of being trapped by larger, unseen forces makes a lot of sense when thrust into a modern context. Oedipus El Rey bases its narrative in California’s penal system, with the title character Oedipus (also nicknamed patas malas due to the torture inflicted by his father at his birth) growing up in juvenile detention.  At one point, Oedipus confesses that after he was released at the age of seventeen, he robbed a Costco without a gun, just so he could be returned to jail.  It was a powerful admission – that so many boys who go into the criminal justice system at an early age come out without any sense of what it means to function in society, that there are people who come to prefer the steady monotony of incarceration than be forced to cope with the unstructured chaos of real life. The idea that regardless of your own intentions, one might still end up ensnared in forces beyond your control resonated with me. I could understand that.

So, playwright Luis Alfaro threw me for a loop when he replied to one of my questions, saying the play, at its core, was “about love.”

I stumbled over my next question, mind reeling. Love? Oedipus isn’t about love! It’s about the cruelty of the Gods! Man vs. spiteful assholes who would happily smite you to punish your father! It’s about hubris! Incest! Patricide! Defilement! What the fuck is love in the time of oracles?

But there is a reason why Luis Alfaro won the MacArthur Genius Grant. Having delved deeply into the works of Sophocles before, producing the Electra send up Electricidad, he knew the source material – and saw more than the obvious message.  Alfaro explained to me that the whispers of longing, of need, of separation and pain in the text were all about love.  From what I remember, Oedipus married Jocasta as a sort of thank you – “We, the people of Thebes, appreciate you killing the Sphinx, and hey, here’s our king’s widow! She’s a total MILF!” But Alfaro’s take was informed by the time he spent learning about the toll that California’s penal system had on people.  In an interview on the Woolly Mammoth blog, he explains:

Recidivism, it seems to me, is a symptom of a larger issue. Why is it that more than half of all Americans who end up in jail, when released, go back? A lot of times this happens within hours. My state, California, has the highest recidivism rates in the nation. As a playwright, interesting facts like this sort of lodge in my brain when I hear them. When they are coupled with some fascinating images or one’s own history—I have worked in the Juvenile Detention System as a poet and writer since I was young—they start to form the thread of an interesting story. When I think about recidivism among prisoners, I wonder not about what’s ahead, but what one leaves behind when they get out. The comfort of a family one never had, a structure where one might not have lived with rules, the need for protection in a world that seems unsafe. What fascinates me most about prisoner recidivism is that there might be an alternate society out there—actually in there—that functions differently from the one we live in, and for some this is a better place. [...]

I studied with Maria Irene Fornes, who in my first day of workshop asked me what kind of plays I wanted to write. I had already been arrested for civil disobedience a number of times, and I said that I wanted to write political plays. She laughed and said that she hated political plays! I was ignorant and didn’t know her work, so I didn’t realize she was lying. She said I should stop writing and go live these political ideas and then come back and write a play about nothing, a rock, and she promised me it would be political. So, I did just that. I spent over ten years protesting, working with at-risk youth in the California Youth Authority. At one point, I even worked for the ACLU teaching protesters how to get properly arrested! But sure enough, I came back to writing and wrote from my heart, and politics and humanity were simply part of a larger organic mix. People who have made really big mistakes in their lives are very complicated people. They represent the complexity we are looking for in our work. Incarcerated children are missing elements that many of us take for granted—a notion of family, security, love, or even intelligence about the world. The first gig I had in a youth prison was a poetry workshop with teen felons, 12-17 years old. Five minutes into it I realized that none of them could read and few could write—which didn’t seem to matter because I couldn’t use pencils or pens anyway. No one told me this beforehand. Out of sheer terror and desperation, we stood in a circle, created a rhythm with our hands and bodies, and each student had to tell their life story through rap. I set some parameters about language and violence, and they were able to adapt. I could not ask them to write down their lives and crimes, but there was no law saying that they could not say out loud their histories. And they did, and the stories were extraordinary and sad and full of regret and fear and lack of hope. And that is when I realized that everyone is a playwright. Some of us just have training.

Alfaro infuses this complexity with wit, heart, and inside jokes – definitely intended for the Chicanos in the audience. Oedipus El Rey has been produced before in other cities – here is a clip from an earlier production:

Still, the beauty of live theater is that you never truly see the same performance twice. The clip above is not familiar to me – the Oedipus El Rey I watched was a bit slower in pace and delivery. Michael John Garcés, directing this version chose a more contemplative mood, shot through with music and sound director Ryan Rumery’s selections of eerie, single voice a capella renditions of classics like “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” providing the background for Oedipus and Jocasta’s ill-fated tryst. Andres Munar’s Oedipus flows through yoga poses, holding plank while other men do chin-ups, balancing in shoulder stand until his body gives out, conscious of, but not defined by his disability, which Jocasta likens to “a cholo walk.” (Side note: I would love to see a PWD analysis of Oedipus El Rey.) And this interpretation marks the only tragedy where I’ve seen the chorus break to deliver a physical beat down to match the verbal one they normally spout from the sidelines.

Still, Oedipus El Rey isn’t quite perfect.  I never felt as if I connected with Jocasta, in all of her grief and sorrow.  Her character has the potential to be rich – and yet, Sophocles’ original also left her as a question mark, a tragic, devoted figure, but with little else underneath.  This may be due to Sophocles’ to the societal norms in his age.  In Aristole’s treatise on writing, Poetics, he refers to Oedipus, as well as other classic works. Being a fan of Sophocles, it is interesting that Aristotle makes a point to note (emphasis mine):

In respect of Character, there are four things to be aimed at. First, and most important, it must be good. Now any speech or action that manifests moral purpose of any kind will be expressive of character: the character will be good if the purpose is good. This rule is relative to each class. Even a woman may be good, and also a slave; though the woman may be said to be an inferior being, and the slave quite worthless. The second type of thing to aim at is propriety. There is a type of manly valour; but valour in a woman, or unscrupulous cleverness is inappropriate.

If Aaron Sorkin is correct in his assertion that Artistotle laid out all the rules of writing in Poetics, then it kind of makes sense that representations of women on screen and stage are still stuck in the hookers-victims-doormats loop, so eloquently exposed by Shirley MacLaine.

Other than those minor gripes, the update just works, providing a beautiful retelling of the quintessential tragedy. But still, I found myself sitting in the theater and relating most to Creon – brother to Jocasta, next in line for the throne before Oedipus showed up. While Alfaro’s interpretation revolved around the love between Oedipus and Jocasta, it is Creon’s anguished cry protesting the idea of a pre-destined life that stays with me:

If it is all simply fate, then why not me?

Oedipus El Rey, written by Luis Alfaro, is currently playing at the Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington, DC. The show closes March 6th.

(Image Credit: Luis Alfaro)

“But in the terms of the power discussion, what if, in fact, you are power? What if in fact you are powerful, in that you feel like you make the decisions about the man that you’re going to sleep with, and whether you’re going to use a condom with him or not? What if you’ve got the power in deciding? But we know this is not the case for so many of our young women, and yet we’ve grown up with prevention that presumes and assumes, and that incorporates the idea of giving women power. We’re asking — we’re needing — power over primarily an organ that we don’t even have attached to our body.

“The other piece of the discussion, of course, that’s always been missing, long been missing, is: AIDS, Inc., does not know what to do with heterosexually identified men….AIDS, Inc., does not know what to do with sexually active men who are not exclusively gay — let me put it like that. Unless you are exclusively gay, out, or even a little bit kind of halfway what society labels as “down low,” AIDS, Inc. doesn’t know what to do with black men’s sexuality. It just doesn’t. We don’t have the right studies for it. We don’t have the right access for it. We don’t have any idea, except prison — which is my whole other issue — of where you can have an opportunity to engage men around health literacy, right? Sexuality addiction that plays into factors; sex that happens with men that does not mean, or does not reflect, an orientation. We don’t have the places to have those discussions. The good thing about what we’re doing with the girls is that we’re able to have those venues to have that discussion.

“But as long as we’re able to access health care, mostly around our reproductive organs, and men don’t have a similar place where they even ever have to come into care, unless they’re coming into care for prostate cancer — and that’s a sure sign that they’ve come too late — we’ve been doing one-hand clapping for a long time. So it’s not even about what works, or what doesn’t work; we’re still trying to figure it out.”

~~Tracie Gardner, Founder and Coordinator of the Women’s Initiative to Stop HIV/AIDS NY at the Legal Action Center

Read the rest of the interview here.

Image Credit: News One

A “Latina spin on Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility,” Pantelion Films (a collaboration between U.S. distributor Lionsgate and Mexico’s Televisa) is hoping that From Prada to Nada will inspire a Latino demonstration of box office force. According to an article in Fast Company:

Released at the end of January, Pantelion’s first film, From Prada to Nada, focuses on two formerly rich sisters — one of whom proudly quips “no hablo español” with an Anglo accent — who are forced to move in with relatives in a scrappy, Latino part of East Los Angeles. While the movie is in English, many of the punch lines are in Spanish.

Hollywood’s previous attempts to market Spanish-language and Latino-centric films have largely failed. Even though movies in Spanish like IFC’s Y Tu Mamá También and Focus Features’ The Motorcycle Diaries found success in the art-house market, they did not broadly appeal to the Latino population. Those teenagers McNamara chats up in movie-theater lobbies generally opt to see commercial blockbusters in English. Language is not the company’s key strategy — only about half of Pantelion’s releases will be in Spanish.

“When a movie is in Spanish, if a Puerto Rican is speaking Spanish, or a Mexican is speaking Spanish, it identifies them,” Pantelion’s chief executive, Paul Presburger, says of the language’s countless dialects and geographically diverse slang. “Whereas when we do a film with Latino stars in English, it unifies.”

From the looks of the trailer could either upend stereotypes or confirm them. The story backdrop is one of class, family, and culture – but there are also more than a few border and immigration jokes that could either play into stereotypes or work as intimate commentary on current events. Still, there is cause for alarm – Lionsgate wants to apply the Tyler Perry model to Latino films, which could stoke more controversy:

Pantelion will let the target audience decide if something is offensive, executives say. “African-Americans are going to see Perry’s films; they’re the ones enjoying them,” Presburger says. Nonetheless, the Pantelion staff reads scripts with a careful eye for hackneyed images of Latino life and culture. “We get out of the stereotypes of narco kings and drug dealers and gang members,” Presburger adds.

From Prada to Nada opens January 28th.

From the “some good news for once” files, here’s a piece from the Washington Post on how Towson University is one of eleven schools nationwide where graduation rates for minority students “meet or exceed those of whites.”

In 10 years, according to school data, Towson has raised black graduation rates by 30 points and closed a 14-point gap between blacks and whites. University leaders credit a few simple strategies: admitting students with good grades from strong public high schools, then tracking each student’s progress with a network of mentors, counselors and welcome-to-college classes.

“Regardless of your background, there’s people here for you who understand what you’re going through,” said Kenan Herbert, 23, an African American Towson senior from Brooklyn, N.Y.

The data used by The Washington Post was provided by The Education Trust, an educational think tank and watch dog group that is taking an honest look at how our institutions of higher learning measure up.

The Education Trust published a brief on this subject, and has some strong words for educational professionals who seem far too willing to just accept gaps between black and white students:

[W]hen we see data suggesting that the average graduation rate for black students in four-year colleges and universities is about 20 points below that of their white peers, we are hardly surprised. The average black student, we know, leaves high school with a weaker academic record than the average white graduate, so where’s the mystery? Until somebody fixes the
high school problem, there’s not much colleges and universities can do.

Or is there?

For the past several months, we’ve been digging beneath the averages and looking at data from individual institutions in our College Results Online database. We’ve found that some institutions have horrendous graduation-rate gaps between white and black students—well above the national average. And it turns out that other institutions have no gaps at all. Indeed, in dozens of colleges, black students graduate at rates equal to or higher than their white counterparts.

In other words, it’s not entirely about preparation, and wide gaps in the graduation rates of white and black students are not inevitable. Our analysis strongly suggests that what colleges do with and for the students they admit matters a great deal.

The data set in the report explains the horrifying statistics:

The graduation rate for African-American students in the private colleges and universities in our analysis is 54.7 percent, compared with 73.4 percent for whites—an 18.7 percentage-point gap.

Similarly, at public institutions, only 43.3 percent of African American students graduate within six years, compared with 59.5 percent of whites—a 16.2 percentage-point gap.

However the researchers over at Education Trust point out that some of the data patterns reveal disturbing trends:

[I]nstitutions on our “big gap” lists—the 25 public and 25 private
colleges and universities with the largest white-black gaps(see Tables 5 and 6). These institutions all have gaps larger than average, and some have gaps upwards of 30 percentage points.

Some institutions—such as the University of Akron in Ohio and Wayne State University in Michigan— are not serving white students particularly well, but black students fare even worse.Only about four in ten white students at these universities graduate within six years, and only about one in ten black students do.

Other institutions—Michigan State University and
Indiana University-Bloomington, to name two—graduate
white students at high rates but have large gaps for African-
American students. At Indiana University, 73 percent
of white students graduate within six years—well above
the national average—yet only half of its black students
do.

The full brief is well worth the read. The Trust takes pains to note that the most successful colleges on the list acknowledged there was an issue and took responsibility to close that gap.

My name is Chris, and I live with HIV.

I know some were here last year [on my Twitter timeline], so I’ll try not to bore you. I just want to remind us that we are here among you, living, thriving, sometimes barely surviving w HIV/AIDS. I’d like to tell my story: why I made choices I did and what I’ve learned–because I have learned a great deal about myself from this disease.

To start: I have been positive for 15 years. March 10, 2010 was  my anniversary. I am 41 yrs old. In fact, I was born exactly 1 week before Stonewall rebellion in NYC. I was born and raised in Boston in a working-class neighborhood. I grew up in uber-dysfunctional family: brother diagnosed as sociopath in teens, dad an alcoholic, mom mentally ill. It was hell in that family, I was a little “sissy” who knew at early age he was gay. I was OK with it but knew others wouldn’t be. I was terrorized as kid–ass kicked a lot. My city didn’t like femme boys. Also, I am mixed: dad was white, mom Latina….looong before mixed folks were cool.  :) We just were odd. So I grew up alone…and lonely. Went to college and  didn’t just come out of closet..

I blew the doors off hinges! I became popular…and, most importantly, saw that men were attracted to me. So I became BHOC–Big Homo On Campus–who also partied hard at clubs. I felt what I thought was acceptance for the first time. I was an activist, a feminist, just thinking I had to it together…but I was promiscuous. It filled a need. Men wanted me; I was desirable. Because of my background I mistook it for love. At 22 I was in my first relationship with an AIDS activist [and] always used condoms. Broke up after 3 years and saw a man I had dated briefly in college.

I still remember the night we met. His smile shut off every thinking part of my brain. I know you know those fine types–your brain disappears. He asked me home. I accepted after he asked my friends (we had a rule–we come together, we leave together.) They agreed–he was that fine. We went to my place & began to have sex. I noticed he wasn’t going to use condom. I thought about it but was afraid he would leave me. Yes, I was more afraid a man would leave than protecting myself.  We never talked about status until 3 months in…he said he was too scared. That made me pause…

I moved to Detroit and was in meeting where someone talked about HIV testing. I thought, “Let me go find out to stop worrying.” Got tested and went back three weeks later. I was working at a Catholic university & went to the center with friend who was a nun. (Yes, a nun.) A man walked in, sat down, and said “Results say you’re living with HIV”.

I said, “What?”

He repeated himself. He asked if I need hug. I said, “Hugging strange men is what got me this disease, so no thank you.”

He laughed and said: “I can tell you’ll be OK. You can tell in the first moment..”

I went downstairs, put my head in Sr. Beth’s lap, and cried. I said “What am I going to do?”

She said “Live, that’s what you’ll do.”

I got retested because the test was 99% accurate. It came back. The woman picked up wrong sheet and said I was negative…then said, “Oops.”

I was devastated.

I went home and called all my friends. Because of my past, I never believed people loved me. I found out they did. One friend called after I told her and said, “I am at airport to take care of you.” People reached out. But I was scared. I remember the first time I brushed teeth and bled. I said, “People will be scared of me.” I told all except my mom–my brother had died in jail and my dad died already—so it was just us two.  I couldn’t do that to her.

I moved to New Hampshire because I was convinced I would die. I worked at a very rural college—I had to reflect, think about my future. Dating there was hell: guys would fall for me and then say, “But I can’t deal with that.” I considered ending my life one night. I couldn’t stand the thought of being alone forever. I thought of my nan–she was just like Sophia Petrillo, a straight shooter. I pictured her saying, “No! Look at you. You will make some man the luckiest man in the world. You are too cute to go.” I went to bed and said, “No more pity.”

I went to get a doctorate and intensive therapy, which helped me to learn to love myself. It was hard–years of self-hate. Not about being gay though I felt so abnormal because of my past. Life was good, but I was lonely.

In 1999, I attended conference in Atlanta and sat next this guy. We started to talk, and I asked him if he was going to dance conference going that night. He said yes. I took disco nap.

I was talking to friends on the hotel veranda. I looked up, saw him, and my breath was taken away. He wasn’t like the “pretty boys” I had been with: here was an African American gay man who was shy, very Southern, and vulnerable. We danced that night and talked all night. I told him about my status, and he said “I’m a gay man, I knew this could happen. I don’t want best thing to end because of fear.” We hung out at the conference. At end, he asked where we’d go from this point. I said “I can’t imagine getting on a plane and never seeing you again.” I fell in love in 2 weeks and in a month knew we’d be together.

I finally went home and told my mom about my HIV status. She fell in my arms and said, “Don’t die, baby.” I said I wouldn’t.   We haven’t talked about it since. I love her, but she can’t be there for me. I have come to accept that.

HIV has been greatest gift for me. I’ve learned to face fear, conquer my doubts, and stand with my head high. I know I’m privileged when we look at people with HIV across globe. I have access to health care, good doctors, support. Many, many don’t have that. I have only been sick once–when my immune system destroyed its red blood cells in my fight with HIV. I take one medication twice a day.

But it impacts me today: many of you know I got great job offer in Canada. I went to psychiatric hospital because of depression and declined offer. My fear? I would die in Canada because I wouldn’t know how to access healthcare. I know that wasn’t rational, but I grew up in family that only went to hospitals to die. I’ve had to overcome deep fear to take care of myself. But I don’t know the other system.

I also found spirituality because of HIV. My birth dad is Jewish, but I never knew him. After finding out, I walked into synagogue, and my heart found a home. I have now been a Jew for 12 years….

People ask why I am open. I’m open because I want folks know: you know someone living with the disease. I am Dean of Intercultural Affairs at Bryn Mawr College, outside of Philadelphia. I talk to my students about this. If I can help one person remember: if zie walks out door, zie wasn’t worth it. That you are worthy of protection.

by Special Correspondent Arturo R. García

A recently-released study by the American Sociological Association reveals something a bit disturbing: 79 percent of Latinos who took part in a specially-designed survey identified themselves as “white,” no matter their skin color.

Of course, the key words there are “specially-designed.” The New Immigrant Survey, as the study was called, specifically denied participants the chance to identify themselves as “Some Other Race,” as they can on the U.S. Census. According to the study’s co-author, Reanne Frank, this demonstrates a willingness by Latinos to recognize white privilege.

“Most are attempting to push the boundaries of whiteness to include them, even if their skin color is darker,” said Frank, an assistant professor of sociology at Ohio State University.

Frank also said the ASA has received feedback saying the race question “doesn’t fit” many Latino respondents: 50 percent of Latinos who took the 2000 Census identified themselves as “Some Other Race.”

Full disclosure: I have done this in both the 2000 and 2010 Census. But it wasn’t because I wanted to attempt to assert “an alternative Latino racial identity,” as Frank suggests; “Race,” as defined in both the Census and the NIS, is more closely related to phenotype, whereas I always interpret it as something more closely related to nationality.

Of course, that aspect is also covered specifically in Question 8 of the Census: Is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin? Among the answers:

• Yes, Mexican, Mexican Am., Chicano
• Yes, Puerto Rican
• Yes, Cuban
• Yes, another Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish Origin

However, it’s interesting to note that Question 9, while covering phenotype (White, Black/African American/Negro), also addresses nationality for other ethnic groups: American Indian and Alaskan Native, while grouped together, are listed apart from other groups, and various Asian nationalities (Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc.) are listed as racial options. The ASA study doesn’t ask why Latinos don’t get that same treatment.

[For a summary of the film, see here.]

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to see a screening of Peter Bratt’s La Mission. The screening, which was part of a limited release, was at San Francisco’s Metreon Theaters. My compañero and I, joined by two of our queer sisters of color, were lucky enough to find seats in relative proximity to each other in the sold-out space.

It was a late night screening and the vast majority of folks in the theater were people of color. In fact, I’d say most of the people there were Latina/o, with a nice mix of generations representing. The experience was unforgettable as all four of us, none of which were born and raised in San Francisco, were sitting in what seemed to be an intimate living room screening of La Mission.

We all smiled and were occasionally misty-eyed as people in the crowd, youth and adults, loudly expressed their pride in the various shots of San Francisco portrayed in the film. During the movie, I realized that this was the first time I had ever witnessed the screening of a film that embodied the geographic and cultural identities of the audience. People not only saw themselves on the big screen, they also saw the places that have shaped and witnessed them.

All in all, I found La Mission to be a beautiful film. I’m not a film critic and will leave that to those who know better. Instead, I’ll limit my thoughts on what moved me most about the movie, and those areas I wish it had gone deeper.

The relationship of Benjamin Bratt’s character, Che Rivera, and his son Jesse, played by Jeremy Ray Valdez, was sweet, raw and in many ways reflective of my own experience with my father. I was further moved by the depiction of comunidad and the ways in which we, as a village, honor our shared responsibility and opportunity to support each other and our children. Even as the father struggled with the realization of his son’s sexuality, their community intervened, loved and supported both of them in a way that rings true to my experiences of community engagement in times of family crisis. This particularly resonated with memories of how my family responded to the teenage pregnancies of cousins and to my own coming out. This isn’t to say my family, or our communities are romantic portraits reminiscent of Norman Rockwell. Rather, it is necessary to honor the fact that even in our messiness and pain, we managed to love each other in the only ways we knew how.

A question I had throughout the film was the extent to which audience members knew what the film was actually about. This was somewhat answered by the collective surprise when Jesse first kissed his boyfriend, Jordan. However, after the initial shock, people seemed to settle with the idea, though I wouldn’t suggest this was a celebration or affirmation of queerness; yet another reflection on my coming out experience.

In addition to the possibility that some in the audience were unaware of the gay theme in the story, people were very surprised when Benjamin and Peter Bratt entered the theater. The Q&A with the actor and the director was a bit all over the place. Nonetheless, I was excited to hear Peter Bratt, who was both the writer and director, talk about his process.

Something that resonated with me was Bratt’s reasoning for the gay theme in the film. To paraphrase, the writer wanted to portray Latino masculinity in its most vulnerable state. According to Bratt, the best way to expose ultimate vulnerability in a Latino who is deeply rooted in what some would argue is a stereotypical depiction of Latino maleness (dare I say machismo), would be in the realization of his son being gay. Hearing this evoked the memory of hearing my father crying inconsolably on the phone while he asked if his suspicions of my sexuality were true. The call, which ended with my father saying I was a dried-up branch of his family, exposed the darkest and scariest of both his and my vulnerability as Latino men.

I appreciate Bratt’s analysis and his courage to quite literally breakdown Latino masculinity on the big screen. However, I am saddened by the fact that he only focused on exposing the vulnerability of the father’s masculinity, and in doing so, left a gaping whole in exploring the vulnerability and possibility of the gay Latino son. Instead, the story seemed to use the son and his sexuality as a conduit, rather than truly honoring the experience of gay Latino men and our relationship with our fathers.

I was also concerned with Bratt’s reinforcement of the notion that gayness is white construct and something that only exists openly in white-defined spaces such as San Francisco’s Castro District. This is not to say that the Castro is not an important space in queer culture and one that many queer men of color, myself included, have traveled through in the formation of our identities and experience. Yet, to continue leaving gayness within the realm of whiteness speaks to our ongoing inability to claim the many facets of Latina/o sexualities and the many ways we express and manifest gender.

Furthermore, leaving gayness to be embodied by the Castro and a white boyfriend also overlooked the rich history of queer Latinidad that has long been an integral part to San Francisco’s Mission District. As a queer brown man, the LGBT Latina/o community of the Mission, including such spaces as Esta Noche, heavily shaped my identity. Horacio Roque Ramírez, a professor at UC Santa Barbara, has done extensive work on the LGBT Latina/o community of La Misión and has done an excellent job in honoring the legacies of organizing and community building that has taken place over several decades.

To be clear, I am not arguing against depictions of the Castro or against mixed-race relationships. Rather, I ask that we think about what continues to stand in our way of fully acknowledging that LGBT Latinidad can and has long existed outside of the confines and direct influence of white LGBTness. Perhaps acknowledging that queerness can be just as inherently Latina/o as it is to white communities is a vulnerability we are not prepared to experience.

—

Related: For local showings of “La Mission” try an online movie ticket sale site such as Fandango.

What does an illegal immigrant look like?

From the Young Conservatives of Texas’ “Capture an Illegal Immigrant Day” in 2005

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, who just signed SB 1070 into law last Friday–which allows law enforcement to stop and demand ID of anyone they have “reasonable suspicion” is illegal–has no idea.

And yet, isn’t that the premise of this law? That you have to know what “illegal” looks like? Provision 1 of SB 1070 requires:

…a reasonable attempt to be made to determine the immigration status of a person during any legitimate contact made by an official or agency of the state or a county, city, town or political subdivision (political subdivision) if reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the U.S.

Now, “reasonable suspicion” is a legal standard that’s been around for over 40 years. In 1968, the Supreme Court ruled that a stop by law enforcement on the grounds of reasonable suspicion was legal if it met the following criteria:

…when a person possesses many unusual items which would be useful in a crime like a wire hanger and is looking into car windows at 2am, when a person matches a description of a suspect given by another police officer over department radio, or when a person runs away at the sight of police officers who are at common law right of inquiry (founded suspicion). However, reasonable suspicion may not apply merely because a person refuses to answer questions, declines to allow a voluntary search, or is of a suspected race or ethnicity. (Wikipedia)

But unless Arizona law enforcement actually catches someone in the act of crossing the border illegally, there’s no way to really establish reasonable suspicion except by race or ethnicity, which is why SB 1070 is being referred to by some as the “Breathing While Brown” law.

What I find myself wondering though is: How Brown? SB 1070 is racism, to be sure, but is it colorism, too? I can’t help thinking that the browner you are in Arizona, the more “suspicious” you’ll seem. Already, lighter-skinned Latinos in the U.S. make $5,000 more on average than darker-skinned Latinos. And it’s well-documented that dark-skinned African-Americans receive longer prison sentences than their light-skinned peers (not to mention whites). There are examples the world over–in Asia, the Middle East, Brazil–of color prejudice, where light skin is preferred, both interracially and intraracially, and where it equates to improved social standing, economic status, and marriage prospects.

Does this mean that more Hispanics and Latinos in the U.S. will be reaching for the Sammy Sosa-lightening cream in SB 1070’s wake? It appears it’s already happening. From the NY Times op-ed piece, “Shades of Prejudice,” published in January after Harry Reid’s comments surfaced about Obama being an ideal political candidate because he was “light-skinned”:

The Harvard neuroscientist Allen Counter has found that in Arizona, California and Texas, hundreds of Mexican-American women have suffered mercury poisoning as a result of the use of skin-whitening creams.

(Note that Dr. Counter’s findings were clustered in Arizona, California, and Texas, all border states.)

And in a 2003 story for the Boston Globe, “Whitening skin can be deadly,” Dr. Counter wrote of these same women:

Apparently, the patients reporting to clinics with mercury-induced disease believe that the health risks associated with bleaching their skins are outweighed by the rewarding sociocultural return.

With “brown” now equating to “illegal,” this may be truer than we’d like to think.

[Fact Sheet for SB 1070]
[NY Times: Shades of Prejudice]

The signing of SB1070 in Arizona has sparked a wave of negative reaction across the United States and across the political spectrum, from Barack Obama on down. There are numerous calls for a boycott of the state, a pledge against the law for people of faith, and a statement from the Major League Baseball players association condemning SB1070.

Some high school seniors are now deciding against going to college in Arizona. One comment on the New York Times blog post on the topic struck me as particularly intelligent, and hinting at the root of African American disdain for SB1070.

Barbara, a Duke alumnus, writes:

When I was a student at Duke there were many male African-American students who felt like they were being profiled because of the relatively high rate of crime on campus, and the fact that a disproportionate amount of it was attributable to young black men in the community. In some cases students were held even after they proved they were students. It made their college experience a lot worse than if they gone elsewhere. It’s a legitimate consideration.

It’s not that I don’t understand that border states face special challenges and find the lack of progress frustrating, or that I don’t agree that Mexico has long shown lack of inclination to face its social problems because it has a safety valve next door — I share those concerns. But there is simply no way to enforce this law without targeting Hispanics. I don’t care if that was the intent or not, it is almost certainly going to be its practical effect.

Indeed, history runs in cycles, and the U.S. has seen far too many discriminatory and hateful laws or practices that have targeted and abused African Americans for generations. Yes, we know that African American anxiety about Latino immigration to the U.S. exists, and exists widely. But Arizona’s new law burns at the boundaries of our notions of justice and fair treatment under the law, which assaults any reasonable person’s sense of decency — regardless of color.

This is why so many prominent black Americans and black organizations are standing up against SB1070. At the top of the pack, for pure inspiration, is Chuck D, the former frontman of Public Enemy, who released a special track against the bill called “Tear Down That Wall.” (Public Enemy, of course, has a track that has gone after politics in Arizona before.)

I called up a fellow young black professional friend of mine and told her about the findings of the study.  “Is it messed up that I’m kind of glad in a way?” she asked, “I mean, all this time I’ve been wondering why I can’t get my shit together, but it turns out I’m normal.” We both laughed at her small attempt at gallows humor around a situation many of us know a little too intimately – when it comes to our white counterparts, women of color are light years behind in wealth.

The study is a new report from The Insight Center for Community Economic Development, titled “Lifting as We Climb: Women of Color, Wealth, and America’s Future.”  The report is an in-depth look at the issues in wealth accumulation particular to black women, Latinas, Asian and Native American women.  However, even as this report is one of the most comprehensive I have seen on the subject, the limited data for Asian American and Native American women means that their statistics are limited from entire sections of the report, and discussed in a subsequent section about the need for better stats.  The report’s title is should be a familiar refrain to many black women, but the author of the report, Mariko Chang, kindly includes an explanation of the origin of the phrase:

More than a century ago, the National Association for Colored Women was founded by African American women leaders in response to a vicious attack on the character of African-American women. A few decades distant from the abolition of slavery, the intensification of poverty, discrimination, and segregation impelled these women to action in defense of their race. Their motto was “Lifting as We Climb,” signaling their understanding that no individual woman of color could rise, nor did they want to rise, without the improvement of the whole race. At the top of their agenda were job training, wage equity, and child care: issues that, if addressed, would lift all women, and all people of color.

The lift as we climb refrain was implanted into some of us from birth and a lot of my earliest lessons about black empowerment focused on financial empowerment.  Yet, these adages about saving money, investing in the community, and being a conscious consumer was like propping a footstool against a fifty foot high sheer rock wall.  Insight’s report focuses on the wealth gap, not the well documented income gap, for a good reason:

The current economic crisis has revealed why wealth is so important to the stability of households. Wealth, or net worth, refers to the total value of one’s assets minus debts. Without savings or wealth of some form, economic stability is built on a house of cards that quickly crumbles when income is cut or disrupted through job loss, reduced hours or pay, or if the family suffers an unexpected health emergency.

As the current crisis continues to unfold, it has become all too clear that it is not just “poor” people who are losing their homes to foreclosure in record numbers; even households with some wealth found that they did not have enough to ride out the still unfolding economic downturn. Wealth impacts not just current economic security, but retirement security as well. With concerns over the solvency of Social Security and the shrinking number of jobs that provide pensions, it is of increasing importance that people have the means to save for their own retirement. Wealth is also tied to the well-being of the next generation, as it provides parents with the ability to help pay for their children’s college education, and can also be passed down from generation to generation. In fact, the intergenerational transfer of wealth is one of the reasons why racial wealth gaps from policies long ago have become entrenched. [...]

Wealth and income are related, but they are not the same. Income refers to the amount of money received by an individual or household during a specific period of time, such as a month or year. It usually comes in the form of earnings or wages from a job, but can take other forms as well such as interest on savings or investment accounts, Social Security, transitional assistance (welfare payments), pension benefits, or child support. Wealth, or net worth, refers to the total value of one’s assets minus debts. Typical types of assets include money in checking accounts, stocks or bonds, real estate, and businesses owned. Typical types of debts include home mortgages, credit card debt, and student loans.

So how did we get to the five dollar figure? Page seven of the report explains “While white women in the prime working years of ages 36-49 have a median wealth of $42,600 (still only 61% of their white male counterparts), the median wealth for women of color is only $5.” A more complete answer is revealed in Insight’s wealth of charts discussing the gaps:

Since there is so much data (the full report is well worth a read, but clocks in at 28 pages) we will discuss small sections of the report and related issues over the next week.

The topics covered will include: the wealth gap (with and without vehicles); how marriage* impacts wealth building (and how stereotypes and fear mongering about single black women ignore the larger issues at play); parenthood and wealth building; differences in financial starting points and class mobility; a discussion of types of assets acquired by women of color; the rising levels of debt; Asian American and Native American women’s wealth, and barriers to understanding the full scope of the problem; issues of data collection and minority participation in the census; prior institutional factors contributing to the wealth gap for women of color; the “wealth escalator”; government assistance and its impact on wealth building; retirement; subprime home loans and the mortgage crisis, particularly as it relates to Latinas; citizenship and immigration status and how that impacts wealth building; cultural expectations of women; policy recommendations to end the wealth gap; and non governmental/community based solutions.

Tomorrow: Looking at The Wealth Gap

*There is no data included about queer POC. We will discuss this a bit more when we discuss the limitations of data, but the discussions of marriage and wealth building for POC provides an interesting element to the discussions surrounding same sex marriage rights.

This article is part of a series appearing on RH Reality Check, written by reproductive justice advocates responding to recent efforts by the anti-choice movement to use racial and ethnic myths to limit women’s rights and health. Recent articles on this topic include those by Pamela Merrit, Gloria Feldt, Kelley Robinson, and Maame-Mensima Horne.

At first glance, it’s nice to see the anti-choice community pretending to care about communities of color. But within a few minutes, the skepticism sets in. What’s really behind these tactics, coming from a group that is majority white, middle-class and Christian? In the end, we know this isn’t actually about women of color and their well-being. It’s a sensationalist attempt to pit women of color against the reproductive rights movement. Classic divide and conquer.

Women of color within the reproductive rights and justice movement have brought light to the policies (often perpetuated by our own government, medical providers and researchers) that serve the mission of population control within our communities. We’ve fought back against the connections and alliances with those in the environmental rights movement who blame the challenges of resource scarcity on women of color and their family size.

We’ve fought back against governmental policies like welfare family caps and limits on access to certain types of contraception over others. We’ve fought with the reproductive rights community to get them to care about these issues and how they affect our communities—and we’ve won.

We’re fighting for access to contraception, to abortion, to options for childbirth and parenting. And now we’ll fight the racist and paternalistic logic behind the eugenics arguments being made by anti-choicers.

In the Latina community, we’ve dealt with all sorts of attempts at controlling our families. In addition to welfare family caps and abusive immigration policies, we’ve also got a long history of sterilization abuse. The height of this was in the 1970s, when Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias and others discovered that doctors and residents at a Los Angeles hospital had sterilized hundreds of Mexican women, without their knowledge or full consent. We’re talking women being asked to sign consent forms in languages they did not speak, being lied to and told that the procedure was reversible, or being offered sterilization in the midst of labor.

The result of this was a major organizing push by CESA—Committee to End Sterilization Abuse–to enact federal informed consent laws for sterilization. They won, and in 1976 these laws were enacted, mandating processes for informed consent, waiting periods for sterilization consent, and forms that had to be in the patient’s language, among other things.

But the fight did not end there. We’ve also dealt with a campaign to bring the population growth in Puerto Rico to zero—which actually worked in some cities, according to the documentary La Operación. Sterilization promotion was the primary tool here as well.

These days, the abuses are less obvious and more insidious. When I worked with pregnant Latina immigrants in Pennsylvania, I saw their options limited by the technicalities of their emergency Medicaid coverage. They could get sterilized, for free, right after their deliveries. But if they wanted the pill, the shot, or some other short term birth control? They were out of luck.

But what we know is that reproductive justice isn’t just about freedom from coercive sterilization. It’s also about access to a full range of reproductive technologies, whether that’s birth control, sterilization, abortion or even childbirth. Rodriguez-Trias understood this, which is why she formed CARASA a decade after CESA. CARASA, the Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse, understood that women needed options across the spectrum of reproductive technologies in order to truly achieve reproductive freedom. It’s clinics like Planned Parenthood that provide vital services to low-income Latinas, many of whom are uninsured.

Latinas and other women of color don’t need to be protected by paternalistic ideologues motivated by a political agenda that disregards the needs of women of color and their families. So thanks for your concern, anti-choicers, but I think the women of color advocates working within the reproductive justice movement have got it covered. We’re working in those clinics you attack, we’re helping to shape policies and provide services in our communities, services that allow us to decide what our needs are.

We know whom we can trust to make decisions about family creation: women themselves. We don’t need limits on what services we can access.  And we don’t need your ideological bullying.

The next time one of your crisis pregnancy centers, one of your dramatic billboards, or one of your bogus pieces of “sex and race selection” legislation actually works to support women through whatever choice they make for their families—we’ll talk.

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Photo of Helen Rodriguez-Trias from mississippi appendectomy