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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

By Guest Contributor Rob Fields, cross-posted from Bold As Love

There’s still things black people don’t talk about in 2011 and, to our collective detriment, mental illness is one of them.  I mean, for a people who have survived colonialism, the Middle Passage, slavery, Jim Crow and institutional racism, it would be surprising if we perfectly fine mentally and emotionally after all of that.  And many of us are alright.  But there are just as many who aren’t.

I’ll say upfront that I don’t know Bassey Ipki (above) personally.  What I know about her is that she’s a respected poet, writer, performer (multiple Def Poetry Jam appearances, to say the least) and a fierce mental health advocate who’s been bracingly honest about her own struggles with depression. We’ve had a few short Twitter conversations, and that’s about it.  Just knowing this about her, I thought the launch of this effort made perfect sense.  But I found out the impetus was something beyond her.  It was the suicide of a friend’s 15-year-old daughter.  Here’s what Bassey wrote about it:

Over the summer, I wrote about Siwe Monsanto, the amazing, beautiful, talented 15-year old daughter of my friend, Dionne. I wrote about what a wonderful human being she was. I wrote about how funny she was. I wrote about what a wonderful mother Dionne was. I wrote about how sad Siwe was at times. I wrote about how she took her own life. Since Siwe’s death, I’ve been struggling with ways I could do more as a human being and someone who loved her. I’ve thought about ways that I could use what few talents I had to do something more to honor Siwe’s memory and to prevent deaths like hers. In August, just 2 months shy of Siwe’s death, I came up with the idea of The Siwe Project, a global non-profit whose aim was to spread mental wealth awareness and education in the global black community. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it. I’m only a writer. I have no admin experience but I knew it needed to be done so I began talking to some people.

The project had a kickoff event this past Wednesday in DC. Bassey goes on to say this:

This is just a soft launch, we will be sharing our mission and plans for the future. We will announce our slogan and photo campaign. We are starting small in order to stay focused and on task but we hope to do big things. We need to erase the stigma of mental illness from our communities. We must learn to love and cherish our mental health as much as our physical health. We must encourage and support those with mental illness so that they may manage and seek treatment without fear or shame. These are imperatives. Too many of us our dying or the walking dead. This isn’t about pushing medication or specific forms of treatment on anyone. What works for me, may not work for you. But find something that works. Face it. Treat it. Then live.

The promo video is a version of her poem “Choices,” which chronicles her struggles with mental illness. It was directed by the very talented Pierre Bennu:

A great closing thought from Bassey: “Mental illness is not who you are. It’s what you have.”

**TRIGGER WARNING**

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

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

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

Transcript after the jump.

Dark Girls: Preview from Bradinn French on Vimeo.

Voiceover: Rise, dark girls.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Child: Because she’s white.

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

Child: Because she’s black.

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

Child: Because she’s black.

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

Child: Because she’s light-skinned.

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

(Chokes back tears)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Man #2: You like what?

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

Man #2: You’re a moron.

Man #1: I can’t help it.

Man #2: What? Being a moron?

Man #1: Yeah, that too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interviewee #9: Rise, dark girls. Rise.

(Music)

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

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

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

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

Photo credits: Courtesy of Andrea (AJ) Plaid

By Guest Contributor Alea Adigweme

When we first meet her on the show Fringe, Junior FBI Agent Astrid Farnsworth is a glorified babysitter encumbered with the task of minding her team’s resident, freshly-released-from-a-mental-hospital mad scientist, Walter Bishop. As the series begins, her functions seem to be 1) asking questions that provide convenient opportunities for exposition and 2) sighing in exasperation.

Over the past three seasons, however, Astrid has developed — albeit at an almost glacial pace — into more than the stereotypical super genius’ assistant. She is not only a genius in her own right, but she also acts as the empathic center of the Fringe Division. Compare Exhibit A with Exhibit B with Exhibit C.

Astrid is a lifelong computer geek with a B.A. in Music who speaks five languages and bakes up a storm when she’s stressed out. She is also, seemingly — we know very little about her background — the most emotionally intact character on the show. In a contrast to the lead characters, Walter, Peter, and Olivia, whose relationships were, until relatively recently in Season 3, always on the edge of implosion, Astrid’s genius doesn’t get in the way of her ability to interact empathetically with the world. Her sparkling emotional intelligence is a welcome change from Magical Negresses who solve white people’s problems with folksy wisdom and a hug to the bosom. It is rare for the Math/Science Nerd trope to be deployed subtly and it is almost never embodied by a women of color. Astrid is essentially a unicorn. A really, really good-looking unicorn.

I was late to the party, so I didn’t start watching Fringe until a good friend talked me into it last autumn. While I trust his taste in media and am genetically programmed to be a complete nerd for speculative fiction, something about the idea of a sci-fi show on Fox was a little too close to the network attempting to replace The X-Files [“Too soon!,” shouted my brain]. And it has Pacey in it, for which I mocked my familiar mercilessly. Nevertheless, with some coaxing, I watched the fourth episode of Season Three and was grudgingly hooked by the knotty storyline, Lance Reddick (he’s so great in everything!), and, most powerfully, by Jasika Nicole’s portrayal of Astrid. A black woman with curly hair who has serious scientific and technological skill, real hobbies, and the ability to be assertive without being “sassy” or “angry?” Sign me up.

But first, allow me a brief digression. Excluding “reality,” documentary, and news programming, there are 84 television shows on the 2010-2011 primetime network schedule. In those 84 shows, there are twenty-nine women who publicly identify as having African ancestry. That’s twenty-nine (29!) black or multiracial actors in eighty-four television shows that, combined, employ hundreds of actors. If I were only to consider women who had non-recurring or non-supporting roles, we wouldn’t have anyone at all to talk about, but let’s go ahead and subtract actors on canceled shows [I'm looking at you, Undercovers]. That leaves us with Twenty-seven.

The number is small, but perhaps these roles are substantial, realistic portrayals of the manifold varieties of black womanhood that exist in the United States. Eh, yes, but mostly no. The characters that these twenty-seven women play include everything from brassy, plus-sized, head-swerving best friends to hard-charging attorneys/doctors/medical examiners to socially-awkward, Ph.D.-holding geek wranglers. In this sample group, the only [imperfect] analogue for Astrid that I can find is Tamara Taylor’s Camille Saroyan on Bones, but, as a viewer, I feel like I don’t have a complete picture of who Saroyan actually is. She fulfills the role of schoolmarm without being able to develop into something more three-dimensional. So, what makes Astrid stand out for me, despite her being kind of hamstrung in the first couple of seasons, is the complexity with which the character is constructed and how much of her subjectivity we’ve been able to see. She’s not only a novel character, but she’s also fully formed, a trick that most shows cannot seem to pull off.

Despite all this goodness, Astrid is still a bit of a sidekick. She’s not a doormat, though evidence gained by superficial analysis would say otherwise. For instance, Walter Bishop rarely calls her by her real name. Aspirin, Asterisk(s), Astra, Asteroid, Astro, Astringent, and Ostrich, but rarely Astrid. He regularly orders her around, condescends to her, and makes her do menial tasks. In Season One, he even stabs her in the neck with a syringe(!).

Over the course of the series, however, the relationship between Astrid and Walter has developed not only into that of mentor/mentee, but, I would argue, almost parent/child, with both characters playing each role. She introduces him to SpongeBob SquarePants and regularly chastens him as though he were a naughty, too-smart-for-his-own-good man-child. He often treats her like a serf, but when he finds her in their lab after she’s been attacked — one of the most moving scenes in the series — he calls her by her real name, and the words, the tears, the non-verbal communication that they share are all overflowing with emotions that surpass those typically felt by people who are merely acquainted by virtue of working in the same place.

There is, as much as Walter is capable of it, a real and imperfect love there. It’s not predatory or lecherous; it’s borne of a mutual respect for one another’s strengths and weaknesses (but, yes, Walter/Astrid shippers do exist, and the fan fiction’s out there to prove it).

Thanks to the show’s dynamics, Nicole actually gets to play two Astrid Farnsworths — “Our” Astrid and “Alter Astrid,” or Altrid, also known as Agent Farnsworth. This is common within the Fringe universe, as most of the main characters in “our” universe have doubles in the parallel world. For example, Our Walter is a scientist who was locked in a mental hospital for seventeen years; Alternate Walter is a scientist who is the Secretary of Defense. Doubles are usually genetically identical, so most changes in characteristics are due to the differences between the two universes. In the parallel universe, the Twin Towers are still standing; people get around using zeppelins because the Hindenburg disaster never happened; and JFK, MLK, and John Lennon are still alive. That is the world in which Altrid, who was introduced earlier this season, exists.

Here, Nicole portrays a very different, though no less overlooked, aspect of black femininity. The public sphere is almost completely devoid of portrayals of people on the autism spectrum. It is even more rare for these portrayals to depict valued, functional members of contemporary U.S. society. In view of the fact that whenever we do see people with autism, they’re almost always men and they’re almost always white, Nicole’s portrayal of Altrid not only highlights the very existence of women of color with autism, but it also challenges the way that dominant U.S. culture sees this group. Grounding her performance in her experiences with her own sister, who has autism, Nicole plays Altrid with a compassion and subtlety that are often lacking in portrayals of both women of color and people with autism. Of this, the actress has said:

There are certainly autistic people in this universe, but they’re treated one way here and they’re heralded in that universe. What they do with autistic kids who happen to be really, really good with numbers and data and mathematics, is they educate them and they teach them how to use their skills so that they can be contributing members to this division [...] it’s a really cool idea to take kind of a disenfranchised group in one area and then say, “These are the same group of people, look at how differently they can be treated. Look at how we can appreciate them in a different way here.

As a queer woman of color, Nicole tackles the intersections between marginalized identities off-screen as well. Her webcomic, High Yella Magic, found at the “Artwork” section of her website, often touches upon the sticky spaces that manifest when one identifies as black, queer, and female and is in an interracial relationship. My personal favorite story of hers is “808 at 212,” in which Nicole invites Kanye West over to her apartment for movie night because “[she] thought [he] might need a friend.” “A friend?,” West asks, shoulders slumped and surrounded by gyrating women. “Or two,” Nicole replies in the next panel, “I have a blond dyke you can hang with, so don’t bring yours.” (I lol’d.) He comes over, drinks riesling out of a coffee cup, borrows a set of “comfy clothes,” and the trio settle in to watch Freaks and Geeks on a laptop. The sense of humor, the intellectual awareness, and the sportively critical intentionality that Nicole brings to her performances in Fringe are echoed in this graphic essay, which playfully straddles the border between verifiable fact and fantasy.

In her characterizations of Astrid and Altrid Farnsworth — though neither have self-identified as queer — Nicole can be said to be queering the representations of black womanhood that one usually gets from mass media in the United States. An emotionally grounded liberal arts grad who has an affinity for disparate academic disciplines, has Erykah Badu albums laying around her apartment, and possesses the ability to handle her maddening boss with aplomb and compassion — this is a human being to whom I can relate. I was entirely skeptical about Fringe until a few months ago, but Farnsworth, among other things, has made me a believer.

…[Loughner's] acts cannot be fully divorced from the current political moment either, and specifically that part of said moment dominated by reactionary and right-wing voices, among which are included many whose speakers adhere to Tea Party thinking. It is not that Loughner is, literally, a devotee of the right or its organizational edifices. In all likelihood he is not. Rather, it is pertinent — and should not be ignored by those in the media who are trying to de-politicize his crimes — that his paranoid lunacy, the contours of which one can explore thanks to the wonders of the internet, transpired in a nation where paranoia and its peddling have become common fare. In such a place, the Jared Loughners of the world become ever-more dangerous. And it is this about which we should be rightly concerned.That said, his acts cannot be fully divorced from the current political moment either, and specifically that part of said moment dominated by reactionary and right-wing voices, among which are included many whose speakers adhere to Tea Party thinking. It is not that Loughner is, literally, a devotee of the right or its organizational edifices. In all likelihood he is not. Rather, it is pertinent — and should not be ignored by those in the media who are trying to de-politicize his crimes — that his paranoid lunacy, the contours of which one can explore thanks to the wonders of the internet, transpired in a nation where paranoia and its peddling have become common fare. In such a place, the Jared Loughners of the world become ever-more dangerous. And it is this about which we should be rightly concerned…

After all, there are many people in any society who suffer from mental illness. Many, indeed, who battle the kinds of demons that appear, from all evidence, to afflict Jared Loughner. Yet hardly any of them act upon their delusions by lashing out at political figures. Most often, when mentally ill individuals become violent, their rage is either focused on persons close by in their lives whom they feel have hurt them (family, colleagues, fellow students, a therapist, a former boss), or it is entirely random and without any seeming pattern or purpose (think Charles Whitman at the University of Texas in 1966, or Mark David Chapman shooting John Lennon). That Loughner’s derangement led him to kill a judge and attempt the same with a lawmaker is unlikely a mere coincidence. Events such as this happen at particular times for a reason. There is a reason that Tim McVeigh’s bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building happened in 1995, amid the last national bout with reactionary paranoia: a time in which the right was bubbling with theories about black UN helicopters planning midnight raids on patriotic Americans, gun grabs and a supposedly liberal president who was gearing up for the mass persecution of tax protesters and Bible-believing Christians, among others.

It is not necessary to show that Loughner is a follower of Glenn Beck, or Michael Savage, or any of a hundred or more local variants of the same. It is not, in the end, all that important whether he spent time on right-wing websites, or is (as a Department of Homeland Security memo seems to suggest) a follower of the white nationalist group, American Renaissance, or whether he believes (as some of his otherwise hard-to-decipher internet postings hint) that the Constitution is being usurped by the current government because of its reliance on paper money: a prominent meme among the far-right. What matters is that Loughner, like all of us, has been exposed day in and day out, for several years, to the unhinged and paranoiac ravings of persons who believe America is in its “end days,” and that the sky is falling, at least metaphorically — and not because of global warming, which is just one more piece of the left-wing conspiratorial plot to confiscate all wealth in the name of nature-worship — but because of the communist/socialist/fascist/Marxist/Nazi/Muslim/Kenyan/terrorist/anti-Christ who occupies the White House.

It is that daily stream of poisonous vitriol from which it is nearly impossible to escape.

Read the rest here.

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.

If someone asked me what is it about Wise that makes me so swoony, I’d say—besides his sleepy, brooks-no-bullshit blue eyes, his Southern-gentleman smile, his Baptist-preacher rumbly voice, and his precise facial hair—that he does quite a bit of the heavy lifting on handling whiteness, especially white privilege and racism, so I don’t have to.  To have someone like him on my side in this nastily trippy Mobius strip called Race in America is, frankly, quite endearing to me.

His latest book, Colorblind: The Rise of Post-racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity, is full of win because he succinctly takes apart the Obama Age meme of “post-racial” as well as its progenitor, the ableist term “colorblind(ness),” as the fallback retorts when race—and particularly racism—is discussed and/or called out.

In fact, as I will argue, colorblindness not only fails to remedy discrimination and racial inequity, it can actually make both prob­lems worse. To begin, if the rhetoric of racial transcendence gives the impression—as it does, almost by definition—that the racial injustices of the past are no longer instrumental in determining life chances and outcomes, it will become increasingly likely that per­sons seeing significant racial stratification in society will rational­ize those disparities as owing to some cultural or biological flaw on the part of those at the bottom of the hierarchy. In other words, ra­cial bias would become almost rational once observers of inequity were deprived of the critical social context needed to understand the conditions they observe. Whereas a color-conscious approach allows for a more nuanced understanding of racial inequities and how they’ve been generated, colorblindness encourages placing blame for the conditions of inequity on those who have been the targets of systemic injustice. Ironically, this means that colorblind­ness, often encouraged as the ultimate non-racist mentality, might have the consequence of giving new life to racist thinking.

–From Colorblind: The Rise of Post-racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity

Andrea Plaid: In your book, Colorblind, you explain what it is.  What is the difference between that and “race neutrality” (if there is a difference) and why doesn’t either work, specifically in the POTUS Obama’s case?

Tim Wise: I use them pretty interchangeably here. Basically, my argument is that post-racial colorblindness  fails on two levels: 1) it fails to solve problems that are race-specific and caused by racism and discrimination, and 2) it fails to help build support for broader progressive social policy (contrary to the claim made by its proponents), because even when you put forth “colorblind” policy (like universal health care, more money for schools, a jobs bill, etc), it is perceived by whites as a racial transfer, because of the way social policy has been racialized for 40 years. So whites hear “black people” when you talk about any policy to help the have-nots or have-lessers. Which means that the right is going to use race as a weapon anyway, to push those buttons with whites, and when the president refuses to punch back, even against the most blatant and absurd examples of that racism and race baiting, it emboldens the bullies and makes him appear weak. Obviously, he has to be careful how he engages race, but the evidence I present in the book (which is based mostly on research from the field of social psychology) has found that allowing race to remain sublimated and below the surface actually makes it easier for people to act on subtle biases, because they can do so without ever having to confront the contradictions between who they claim to be (open-minded, non-racist, etc) and who they really are.

AP: If “colorblindness” doesn’t work, then why use it?

TW: Well, I think post racial liberals really believe in it. Post racial liberals acknowledge racial disparities, unlike lots of conservatives, and unlike most white folks, period. And they want to eliminate those disparities. But they really believe that the best way to solve them is with race-neutral, universal programs of economic uplift for all, which they say will disproportionately help folks of color, since folks of color are disproportionately on the bottom of the class ladder. But this misses the fact that folks of color who aren’t poor still face substantial race-based barriers too. It also ignores that one of the reasons we can’t seem to pass big universal programs (like real universal health care or massive investment in the areas that need it most) is precisely because of the racial resentment that leads whites in the public to believe any such effort is just thinly veiled racial redistribution. That’s what Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and others have said, for instance, about health care reform or the stimulus: that it was just reparations. And they said this as a way to discredit those things in the eyes of people who would have benefitted from those efforts, but who won’t support them if they can be convinced that it’s some racial redistribution scheme. So unless we tackle the white racial resentment issue, we won’t be able to get the big programs that the post racial liberals believe we need (and which I too think are important, albeit not in a vacuum). But I think they really believe in these efforts: Obama believes the colorblind model works. William Julius Wilson believes it. Jim Sleeper and Richard Kahlenberg believe it. Daniel Patrick Moynihan believed in it. They can’t provide any evidence to demonstrate that it works, but they believe in it.

AP: It seems to me that some on the Left attempt to code “colorblindness” as “class” and are quick to say that “race is a construct.”  Yes, class has a definite place in some conversations about race and racism, but why does the Left employ this so quickly in many of the discussions?

TW: Well, the left tradition is a class based tradition, historically. So Marxists, for reasons of their own, or those whose understanding is informed by Marxism, obviously prioritize class (especially white Marxists). And liberalism, though it is different from Marxism, in huge ways, still has grown out of a tradition that has always looked at society as being divided between haves and have nots, and liberals are on the side of the have nots, in theory. But that tradition developed, remember, in the U.S., in a society of white supremacy. So even as FDR was pushing liberal social and economic policy, we were an apartheid state. Which means American liberalism, early on, was forged around class analysis, while still being subservient to white domination. I think that tradition lives on. We remember the New Deal as this great moment of progressivism, and in some ways it was. But it also excluded blacks from many of the key programs, from Social Security at first, to the FHA loan program, to certain of the jobs programs, and the labor law protections for workers that were part of the New Deal, allowed unions to remain segregated if they wanted to be. All of this was how FDR got it passed: by capitulating to racism and white supremacy. So to try and tackle class injustice without directly addressing race too is to almost always marginalize people of color.

Just because something isn’t real doesn’t mean it won’t cause harm.  It impacts.  Class is also a construct, but it plays out in real ways.  Class politics is seen as ‘more pure’ but we’re always dealing with constructs.  It has to be both class and race, in order to build successful coalitions.

AP: Another way some liberal/Left people scuttle conversations about race and racism is by calling it a form of irrationality, if not downright a form of mental illness, as Alternet did in a post a while back. It’s dismissiveness through ableism.  Why is that?

TW: Racism is irrational from a scientific perspective, but makes perfect sense from a narrow, short-term self-interest perspective. Marxists and Libertarians don’t’ understand that because they think of it in material terms only. So even though I insist white supremacy and privilege are detrimental for all, including whites, in the long run, in the short run, it elevates us over POC considerably. Which means, adhering to racist thinking or cleaving to racist structures that allow for the maintenance of a system that elevates us, makes sense. It pays. In order to trump that short term thinking, we have to redirect the notion of self interest, first to a broader more collective understanding of the concept, but secondly, to an understanding that privilege itself can be detrimental: it can set the privileged up with a mentality of entitlement and expectation, and when that mentality goes unfulfilled, or privileged folks bump up against obstacles, we often lack the coping skills to deal with them. Privilege can keep us from seeing the interconnectedness of the society, economically. So, for instance, when the sub-prime mortgage mess was starting off, 15 years ago in communities of color — and lenders were taking advantage of black and brown poor folks — most Americans and politicians paid no attention. It wasn’t affecting “Main Street” (meaning where white people live), and so it was ignored. So the lenders realized, what the hell, if they’re not going to to regulate our actions (in fact they were being deregulated at that time), we’ll just spread out to the ‘burbs too, and small towns, and rural areas, and make even more money. So now we see the cost: the problem spread and has engulfed the whole economy. Privilege and lack of racial empathy contributed to that mess. So in the long run it is irrational to stick with that system, but in the short run (which is how we’ve been trained to think in this culture) it is frighteningly logical.

Thea: Another sort of lackluster episode, though better than last week’s. Though I have to say this eppy sure had lots of good oneliners:

I used to drink hot sauce straight out of the bottle…that was a good time.

Dagnabit Shit Fuck!

So you turn into a panther! What the hell! That ain’t so bad.

Tami: What no love for Pam calling Bill an “infatuated tween”? That was the quote of the night. It perfectly captured the essence of the Bill and Sookie romance.

Andrea: Oh! My! Gawd! Pam aced the ep with that line. I so heart that vamp (pun intended).

Thea: Well, I didn’t want to steal all the good lines…I wanted to give y’all a chance to list your own fave oneliners Also I just read on the internet that Mama Hoyt actually said Dagnabit Shit Fire! I truly hope not, Shit Fuck is just so wonderful.

Thea: But to get down to the really really important business: poll – do we prefer LaLa as a pet name for our favourite, or Laffy? I can’t decide.

Joe: I love it when Ruby calls him Lala, but not when anyone else does. My vote goes for Laffy.

Tami: Co-sign, Joe. I love “Lala,” but it feels like one of those special names within friends or family that only one person is allowed to use. I’m going for Laffy.

Latoya: Team Lala. It makes me squee to think of 6 year old Lafayette. But Laffy works too.

Andrea: Honestly, I like Laffy or even Lafette, which is my fam’s nickname for my uncle, who shares the same name. I’m with Joe: let “Lala” be his mom’s nickname for him. Though, to be honest, I don’t like it coming from her mouth because there’s a homophobic bite to it.

Thea: Hm…that’s an interesting point about Lala having a homophobic bite…especially since every episode since its intro, Laffy has been addressed as such. This week, it was by the religious icons during a bad trip. Aiyeee..but more on that later, of course.

A Black Panther?

Thea: So here, for once, I would like those of you Charlaine Harris fans who’ve been sitting on your hands in the corner for fear of spoiling anything for the rest of us, to step up: is Crystal a black panther in the books, or is that just a choice they made for the visual medium of TV? Actually, wait a sec, are all panthers black? Since this is True Blood, master of dabbling foolishly in serious historical shit, I can’t help but wonder why they would choose a black panther, an animal which is, as professorjawn put it in the comments last week, “a uniquely racialized animal in the US psyche.”

Joe: Other than the Pink Panther, panthers are all black, otherwise they’re called something else, like jaguars, leopards, cheetahs, and cougars (another loaded word, this day in age.) While reading the book I definitely assumed the (spoiler alert!) Hotshot people were all panthers, and that those panthers were of this variety: and not of the beret-ed variety. Also, to my (cursory, at best) knowledge, a panther is not actually a type of cat like a lion, but it refers to the color. For instance: a black jaguar is a panther, and a black cougar is a panther. There is a such thing as a white panther, but its rare, like a white tiger. Confusing enough? Yes, yes it is.

Interestingly enough, the reason that panther cats of any variety turn out black is because of- take a guess- an abundance of melanin. The writers, and Charlaine for that matter, probably didn’t think too hard about which species of cat to go with. Willful ignorance strikes again, I guess.

Tami: The folks in Hot Shot were panthers in Charlaine’s Harris’ books, though I don’t recall her specifying black panthers. II always assumed they were the sort of panther found in America–the cougar. I think the choice of using a black panther for Crystal was stylistic–they certainly look cool lurking in the shadows. It’s just that given True Blood’s sketchy racial imagery this season, even the most benign choices seem to mean something more sinister.

Sookie & Bill Are Boring; Pam Breaks Our Heart with her Anti-Immigrant Sentiment

Thea: So Latoya totally called it last week when she said, “But again, it’s Sookie who gets the creepy chain basement to herself, and she’ll probably be saved in a day or so, so whatever, I can’t drum up any concern.” OMG, try saved in like, fifteen minutes. More and more I am just writing the word “BOOOORING” in my notebook during all the Bill-Sookie scenes.’

Latoya: I hate being right. There isn’t even time to fake concern anymore.

Andrea: LOLOLOL I think we’re supposed to either 1) conveniently ignore that she was rescued or that 2) we’re supposed to get all “yeah girl-power!” that another human–especially a woman–rescued her. I think Ball and Co. wanted us to focus on the fact that she “whupped Pam’s ass” (with said woman’s help) to save her man. What peeved me is Pam’s xenophobic plea regarding Sookie’s sex-worker rescuer, “Don’t leave me here with this idiot immigrant!” The woman response, “I’m a cardiologist!” missed the humor mark because it turns back on her: the stereotyping questions become, “Why is a cardiologist hanging with vampires? Don’t they get good pay in that line of work?” Which can play either way: 1) thoughts about why people go into sex work (basic answer: the reasons are myriad) and 2) the stereotypes of female immigrants as victims of sex trades. Too much hung on that joke, which is why it fell flat for me.

Joe: I think with the cardiologist joke as well, we were supposed to draw from it a sense of surprise, the impetus for that surprise being that she was just another attractive foreigner. Immigrants do in fact find trouble sometimes getting the same type of work here that they had at home, yes, but it just seemed like a tired old convention tossed in there for the joke.

And while Sookie did get captured, yet again, by Russell and Eric during the drive away (I have to say I loved that car effect,) It looks like she’s going to be out of the woods, yet again, during the finale. First Tara’s horrific ordeal, then Sookie’s caper. I think we’re supposed to see these as similar instances, and I suspect the writers are trying to get us to think “The women on this show can’t get a break, can they?” Frankly, the problems are far unequal in severity. For one, Bill and Yvetta (The Estonian Cardiologist Stripper) saved Sookie in this episode, and Tara repeatedly saves herself.

Tami: I thought they were attempting to smash the assumption that Yvetta is a poor, uneducated immigrant with news that, like many immigrants, she is indeed educated and held a professional job in her home country. Eric and Pam have been playing her for a foolish, sex toy, and they clearly underestimated her. Still–the point fell flat.

Latoya: They undercut their own gag by showing Yvetta’s power in the context of a woman scorned.

I am so inured to Sookie’s ineffectual faux girl power moments and spunkiness that I can’t be arsed to cheer for her in these situations. The show has made its hero and heroine so unlikeable that in battles against supposedly villainous characters, you feel the urge to root for the villains. If Russell could have taken Sookie and Bill with him into that good night, I would have been ever so gratetful.

Tara and Sam Go to Humpington

Thea: What did we think of the (rather graphic, oh my!) Sam and Tara hook up? I sort of sighed a little. I would like to see Tara progressing to new and more interesting places, not simply reanimating scenes from Season 1. The hot sex with sad sack ex boyfriend just seemed to come too soon after her convo with Andy Bellefleur, which I thought was an unusually subtle and thoughtful piece of TV.

Also I am sad to say that my positive interpretation of Sam’s storyline (i.e. my hope that his violent freakout and subsequent downwards spiral were a comment on how the expectations of masculinity harm men) was all too positive…clearly Tami and Andrea, you were more correct when you predicted that the storyline was actually just further entrenching the idea that Being a Man means being violent and brutal. Well, shit.

Andrea: Hate it when I’m right about the wrong things, Thea…but yeah. I guess the new cue about Sam is not only is he re-establshed his hetero manhood by viciousness (albeit drunken, which Tommy called him out on) but now he’s a-(drunk)-fuckin’ that (reforming) hellion Tara. I think we’re supposed to bump chests about this or something. But again, Sam’s display of nasty manliness is coming at a price–Tommy’s about to clean him out, as much as out of vengence as about his being able to survive as a homeless person.

Tara fucking Sam….ya know, I wasn’t too bothered by her wanting to fuck him only because, after the circles of vampire hell she’s gone through, I got the impression that she sexed with him because Sam’s a “safe” sexual partner, which can be quite healing for some rape/abuse survivors. And to do it right after her confrontation with Andy is, I think, supposed to show how far she’s coming along with healing from not only her rape/abuse but also her mourning Eggs. The sequence of events felt quick, but I can understand it.

Latoya: Word. I was yelling at the screen when Tara and Sam headed toward the inevitable, but I can see that as well. All things considered, asshole Sam is a pretty safe bet.

Andrea: My hat’s off to Andy: that had to be one of the top 10 best apologies ever witnessed in a public space. No defensiveness, no “my intentions” double-talk, no bullshit–racial or otherwise. He knew he did wrong–and got his new position due to that wrong–and he was contrite to Tara. All the lawmakers apologizing for slavery and atrocities some white people heaped on Indigenous peoples should take notes on that scene.

Tami: Agreed, Andrea. The scene between Tara and Andy Bellefleur was well-played and incredibly nuanced for True Blood. And I thought we were going to get a similarly nuanced scene between Tara and Sam. I liked them drinking and commiserating. I have always said that these characters are a lot alike and seem to understand each other. In season one, I felt like it made much more sense for Sam to be interested in Tara than Sookie, who barely gave two shits about him. But Tara was second choice then and I’m not sure much has changed.

I am not saying that all sex has to be romantic and that aggression doesn’t have its place, but it is worth noting that Tara always gets the dirty hookup, while Sookie gets the love connection. Even at that moment, when Sam and Tara are both hurting, they offer each other more brutality than tenderness. I have a hard time believing that Alan Ball would ever have Sookie Stackhouse respond positively to “Would you like to come over to my nasty ass trailer?”

The A Word (“Abortion,” not “Arlene”), Biology and Bad Logic

Thea: Can we talk about the weird-ass abortion storyline? Three thoughts: 1. It’s funny that even on a show that is as sexually transgressive as True Blood, they still can’t bring themselves to use the “A” word. 2. I actually don’t really see the point of this storyline. Arlene is a fairly minor character and apart from the fact that I like that Terry gets more screentime because of it, I don’t care too much what happens. 3. It’s all well and good that True Blood is bigging up women doing it for themselves and finding herbal remedies to lady issues, but it really annoys me that the reason why Arlene wants the abortion – when she thinks abortion is evil and bad and she would never do it – is because she thinks that Rene’s evil genes will be passed on to the baby.

The fact that no one is questioning Arlene’s line of logic suggests that the show thinks the line of logic is well, logical. WHICH IT ISN’T! And I’ll tell you why such a line of logic annoys me: I just hate it when people suggest that bad behaviour is caused solely by biology. For example, that study that tried to prove (I’m sure with good intentions) that racism is a mental illness — no way, I say! Racism is not an illness because racism is a choice. You can’t choose not to be sick. You can choose not to be racist. So when people say “Hitler was crazy” – that’s essentially saying that what he did was not his fault.

There is also something distantly ableist in said line of logic — that someone did such and such a thing because they were crazy, or because “evil runs in the family” — because it suggests that people who struggle with mental health conditions cannot ever control or manage their behaviour, that they have no agency, or that something as abominable as the Nazi Holocaust happened solely because of a mental health issue. It’s just such a ludicrous way to speak about both why people do terrible things, and how mental health impacts behaviour.

All of this is to say: I do not like that such redonculous logic is being conflated with an abortion storyline and a (sort of) pro-choice one at that. Ok. Now I’m done.

Joe: I tend to agree with you, Thea. I want to shake Arlene. What she tried to do this episode is just, well, a Wiccan abortion, and not a spell that will “cast out the evil.” Frankly, if she were really as anti-abortion as she purports herself to be, she would have the sense to have the baby and make sure that all of her kids end up virtuous. Nurture, not nature. ALSO. Rene had a sister (his first victim,) and she definitely wasn’t a murderer, so Arlene’s logic is flawed in so many ways it makes your head spin.

Latoya: Agreed. I’m surprised they didn’t say shmashmortion. Also, it’s interesting how these plots tend to decenter the woman’s own choice – despite her best intentions, she’s still pregnant.

Andrea: Arlene’s cast as the town’s bigot, who tend to be stereotyped as uneducated, which is read as “ignorant” and “stupid.” So, by this characterization, her logic is supposed to be twisted: she can justify a herbal abortion whereas she draws her anti-choice as a surgical abortion due to her “poor reasoning skills.” The more “informed” viewers would say, “She’s so ignorant that she can’t see an abortion is an abortion or how genes and biology are supposed to work. Ha ha stupid Arlene.” The fact that the herbal abortion didn’t work is a joke on her and her desperation-driven, ableist-infused logic. To me, there’s almost a weird anti-choice message with Arlene’s attempt to end her pregnancy, that women are only allowed to pursue the “right” kinds of abortion.

At the same time, I found her statement when she talked with her moms was interesting (and I’m paraphrasing): that even though she was against abortion, she did what she felt needed to be done. Even with the fucked-up ableist reasoning, Arlene voiced a sentiment that quite a few people who hold anti-choice stances share. For them, getting an abortion doesn’t move them to a progressive political consciousness–they would flatly refuse to donate to Planned Parenthood after using their services, let alone organize a reproductive-justice march–but is a means to a practical end. I’ve met women like Arlene in the abortion clinics I’ve worked. And I also met a white woman at one of the abortion clinics who held a bachelor’s degree and considered herself politically progressive and attempted an herbal abortion. (She was very much into “natural” health and against “Western medicine.”) When it didn’t work, the woman came to the clinic for a first-trimester procedure. Just saying: verities in gestation-ending choices.

Tami: I don’t understand the need for the clunky “my baby might inherit evilness” storyline. Would we really judge a woman for not wanting to carry the child of a serial killer? Does her reason have to be more sinister and mysterious than not wanting to have Rene’s baby?

Okay, I know some people would judge Arlene,. But still, this is a show where favored characters sell and take drugs and the town nice guy was just revealed to have murdered two people in cold blood. And yet we can’t see a woman exercise her right to choose?

I think the whole herbal abortion thing is a cheat–a contrivance designed to avoid showing a pregnant woman deciding that she does not want to have a baby and going to the clinic to end the pregnancy. We are, inexplicably, at a place where a perfectly legal medical procedure is whispered about on television. Even “edgy” shows and movies can’t bring themselves to talk openly about abortion. Instead we get cutesy euphemisms like “smashmortion” and creative uses of tea and Wiccan prayer. We’ve lost a lot of ground since Bea Arthur considered abortion on “Maude” some 40 years ago.

Jesus and Laffy’s Excellent Adventure: Laffy’s Solo

Thea: And now it’s time for our weekly, “are you worried about where they are taking this Jesus and Lafayette plus black and brown religions storyline?” The answer for me this week is of course, yes, yes I am. I also wanted to draw mention to the fact that, because Lafayette is killed off in the books very early on (I am correct in that yes, resident Charlaine Harris experts?), any current Lafayette storyline is totally the invention of Alan Ball. Le sigh.

In other news, wow, V is some serious gateway drug, or something. Jesus has gone from “drugs are bad! baad!” to “gimmegimme more” in like three hours. Eh, I’m just not that hot on Kevin Alejandro, sorry to say. Not feeling his acting chops.

Tami: Yes and yes. Whatever this developing story is, it is all Ball. And, yeah, I’m worried about where they’re going for all the reasons I’ve outlined before. Plus, those talking dolls/fetishes were silly.

Andrea: My gripe is why did Wicca get this really respectful treatment by the writers (though I’m going to defer to our readers who practice Wicca in regards to how respectful the ritual scene was) in comparison to Laffy getting greeted by monkey screeches, jungle drums, fright-voiced voodoo dolls to signify his ancestral indigenous religions? I half-expected Dr. Facilier to sing and dance his way into the menagerie.

Latoya: Right? Also, the explanations are far different. For example, they vocally identify what the Wiccans are using, but there is no explanation to many of the other objects being used. Like the mask that Lala spots/imagines on Jesus – is it a lucha libre mask? Or something else? I feel like I’ve seen that mask before but out of context (don’t ask) so I don’t know what it means. And Ball & Co. are not going to tell me.

Tami: Andrea, I’m going to guess because the Wiccan elements of the story came from the books, while the elements of African and Latin indigenous religions were pulled from Alan Ball’s ass.

Andrea: ::spittake:: Gurl, you owe me a new netbook.

Joe: Arlene and the baby, Jessica and Hoyt, Sam’s issues, and Jesus and Lafayette are all story lines that all are concoctions of Mr. Ball. There’s more, but that’s like most of the hour, at this point. But, to focus in on Jesus, as I mentioned last week, something about how his opinion of drugs (or one, at least so far) changed so rapidly it makes you wonder if he even was against them in the first place.

And Some Scattered Thoughts

Thea: Did anyone notice how casually Bill kicked Pam in the face in the opening scene? And he’s supposed to be our romantic hero?? Why can’t Pam be our romantic hero. Hmph.

Andrea: But Theeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaahhhhh, he was a-fightin’ for his woman. You ain’t all rooting for that white hetero cis ish–I mean, lurve? That’s just plain…right on, sister! ::fist pump::

Joe: Why can’t anyone else be the romantic hero. I’d even take Andy at this point.

Thea: How awful was the characterisation of Kitch’s girlfriend? Talk about caricature. Also, WHY DOESN’T SOOKIE USE HER BALL OF FIRE?? And by ball of fire, I mean her actual ball of fire, not her, uh, irresistible lady parts.

Andrea: ‘Cause I’ve just about had it with Sookie and her “irresistible” lady parts.

Joe: That actually made me wheeze with laughter, Thea. Now, this is pure conjecture, but Sookie has said that she doesn’t know where the bursts come from, so maybe next season we’ll see her learn to control it. Very X-Men. I want to fast forward through her life some to get to the interesting stuff.

Thea: In any case, I’m not sure what I’m going to do when the show ends next episode. I mean, I’ll find other things to watch, but what am I going to do without my True Blood Roundtable buddies plus commenters?? Can we just get together once a week anyway, and just roundtable about our mothers or something?

Andrea: Awww, see. ::tear up:: I’m sure, pop culture being what it is, there’ll be some TV show ready to be sliced, diced, and julienned by us. We’ll reconvene very soon.

Joe: We should start a coffee talk. Thea as Linda Richman?

Tara: Trauma and Healing

Thea: Ok, so after all the hating on this show’s treatment of Tara – or, as has been argued, heterosexual women in general – there were definitely things that True Blood did this week which I actually liked. For one, I appreciate the way the show is allowing Tara continuous episodes to show grief and trauma over what happened to her. I also like the way Rutina Wesley has been able to (finally! and consistently!) show other sides of Tara. There were multiple quiet and delicate moments this episode and last, where Wesley did an amazing job of communicating, through that quiet, the anguish that Tara was/is feeling. To me those sorts of scenes required much greater acting chops than any of the shrill, yelling stuff that Wesley was given for the first two seasons. So nice to see Wesley finally given the chance to show how great she is.

What did y’all think of the rape survivor group scene? What did you think of Holly’s speech? I was slightly taken aback to see Tara visit a rape survivor group — just because it disturbed me (and we discussed this in detail) how much Franklin’s abduction and rape of Tara was treated as comedy…I questioned at times whether or not the writers even knew they were writing rape scenes. So to see the writers flip that upside down, and validate that this is what the character went through, was surprising to me.

And then, after both Holly’s speech at the rape survivor group and her reproductive choice moment with Arlene, could it be that Holly’s supernatural power is that she’s a…feminist? What’s this week’s verdict on Holly?

Tami: Agreed. I think the aftermath of Tara’s kidnapping, bondage and rape is being handled well by both TB’s writers and actors. In fact, this treatment brings the early poorly-drawn relationship between Tara and Franklin in stark relief. I think the problem lies in what TB did to the character of Franklin. His first interaction with Tara was laden with menace. He was sullen, dark, attracted to violence and clearly a bad man to know. Once the pair arrived in Mississippi, Franklin was drawn as comic relief–a lovesick loon who happens to also be a predator–even as Rutina Wesley continued to portray Tara as a woman in fear for her life. Sunday, menacing Franklin returned. I think this is why, on True Blood threads not located on sites that analyze race and gender, some folks are mourning the death of Franklin, despite his role as the abuser of a main character. True Blood’s portrait of Franklin allowed viewers to be ambivalent about Tara’s abuse.

Andrea: I think that Tara’s kidnapping, bondage, and rape all falls under the umbrella of “abuse,” which is the term we’ve been discussing ever since we saw Franklin go that route in his interactions with Tara after he glamored her into getting into Sookie’s house and getting the information that Sookie was in Mississippi. To that end, we’ve had hearty discussions about Franklin’s abusive behavior and how we weren’t cool with that.

Which brings me to Tara going to the rape survivors’ meeting: I. Loved. This. Scene. It rang true for several reasons: 1) as a Black woman who survived rape and felt a bit goosy about seeing a therapist for a while, I know that I received a lot of support attending such “lay” meetings, where I learned a way to form a vocabulary for what happened to me; 2) yes, I learned that vocabulary from white women because, like Tara, I grew up in a town where the people who were having such discussions and support were white. That doesn’t mean, ergo, that white women are “better” at it than black people or other PoCs. It simply acknowledges a reality that people will seek their healing in imperfect spaces that may not “make sense” racially speaking but makes perfect sense to them…as well as speaking to the simple fact of demographics; 3) it reminds me of the connections I’ve made on- and offline with women, especially women of color, who are surviving abuse and simply seek a voice that resonates with their own. Also, Tara was finally given space to tearfully lay her burden down and not be chastised for not being a Strong Negress, which sometimes happens at these meetings, too. Spot on, TB creatives…whether y’all realize it or not.

Thea: I was reading the round up over at Jezebel and was surprised – just because it’s a feminist blog – to read that they found that scene boring and flat.  Someone asked why Tara couldn’t get more scenes that were campy and funny, like Russell’s. Here’s hoping that’s up next. I do remember her getting to do a bit more comedy in Season 1.

Joe: I keep going back to the theory that True Blood is treating the Tara/Franklin storyline like the archetypal abusive relationship. Anyone who’s had personal experiences with abusers like Franklin will always tell you that their personal perception of the relationship is extraordinarily fickle. A lot of the time it’s horrible, but sometimes its great. Hate, lust, and comedy can make short or lengthy appearances- even, maybe, at the same time. I think the way that they handled the character of Franklin fits that description, at least a little. To me their scenes (and his character) were so circuitous, so shifty and such a rollercoaster, I had trouble seeing where it was going. This I’m sure of: I’m so glad Jason had wooden bullets. Especially, since Tara doesn’t seem to know Vampire Homicide 101.

Franklin Meets a Wooden Bullet

Thea: What did we think of Franklin and Tara’s final confrontation?

It was pretty amazing to see Tara stand up to Franklin after having to literally grin and bear his barrage of abuse. But I felt very conflicted about how that scene ended. On the one hand, because it came directly after Jason carrying on about Crystal, I felt horrified that there was no one to help Tara. On the other hand, when help finally did come in the form of Jason’s wood shotgun rounds (I have to say Jason was really breaking out that dumb blonde mold that Latoya assigned him a few weeks back), I felt disappointed that we didn’t get to see Tara herself kick Franklin’s ass.

Tami: I too wish Tara could have saved herself, especially since I think we’re supposed to see Jason’s saving Tara as a make good for shooting Eggs in the head.

Andrea: Yeah, I also needed the catharsis of Tara’s annihilating Franklin–perhaps a revenge-against-the-abuser fantasy I apparently harbor in my heart’s recesses. At the same time, I’m going to give this one to Tara: she’s just starting her healing journey and she’s straddling that head- and heart-space between victim and survivor, which is a pretty vulnerable place. Tara’s just learning to harness the energy from exploding outward to weaving inner protection–and both are necessary for her to defend herself. To Tara, telling Franklin that hes a “psychopath” who “violated” her–which is what abuse does–and daring him to kill her is her way of speaking from that sense of inner protection, as strange as that sounds.

English Accents & Exotification

Thea: I would like to say — perhaps controversially, considering the James Frain Fan Club muscle in the room — that I am not into the way the entire Franklin storyline pivoted around Frain’s English accent. Not that I think Frain should’ve developed an American accent for his True Blood stint, but that I don’t like the way that the English accent is used to make his character sexy. What is it, other than his accent, that makes Franklin dishy? I think…nothing. Note I said “Franklin,” not James Frain.

Assigning value to accents is xenophobic, (for example, saying that a French or English accent is sexy, while an Indian accent sounds hilarious – you cannot separate ideas about accents from ideas about their countries of origin) and it is off-putting to me when television shows do that, and encourage their fan base to exoticise and sexualise an accent in that way. (Did you ever think I would use the word “exoticise” to apply to something English? Well there you go.)

And in the context of True Blood, I believe that a lot of Franklin’s behaviour would’ve been more clearly coded as abusive, if he had simply done it all in an American accent. I feel like I hear fans going, oh wow, yeah he’s kind of creepy…but oooo, that accent! Who cares?

Tami: You have a point, Thea–as much as I would argue James Frain’s non-dishiness. Having the actor use his own accent was a specific choice by Ball. In fact, in an interview, Frain said he came to the set prepared to use an American accent (which he does often), but was asked to keep his English accent. I wonder why this is so.

Thea: Aha!

Tami: On a note related to our earlier discussion, the interviewer in that same Frain interview says “It almost feels like Franklin and Tara are a good match.” (Remind me not to have this woman match making for me.) This does highlight the problem that I mentioned before–an ambivalence toward the relationship and a lack of willingness to see it as abusive, driven by the shaping of Franklin and his hot accent.

Also, this is probably not the time to mention that I was glad to see Rene and his faux-Cajun drawl back…I was really gutted to learn that Rene was the villain in season one.

Thea: Interruption sustained. I loved Rene. Dreamy!

Andrea: ::Muscles in with the James Frain Fan Club lurve:: I feel where you’re coming from with the accent critique with Fraanklin, and I think you’re right on that tip. I think USians think British voices in particular sound “classy,” which is also coded as “sexy.” It’s that love/hate thing we have for ye olde former colonizers–sort of like some of us think we’re cooler/more cosmopolitan on the strength that we prefer British TV shows than US ones. With that said, I’m sorry, but I’m a sucker for voice timbre–the deeper, the better. And my future husband has that pitch I wanna listen to waking up and going to sleep and especially–especially!–while fucking, British or not.

Brown and Black Religions: Homage or Insult?

Thea: More and more I am not sure what to think of the regular appearance (reappearance?) of references to religions that are culturally marginalised. This week, Jesus uses the Olmecs and Mayans to make his dorky high school tattoo seem cooler than it is. He’s caught in his untruth and the moment is played for laughs, and to show how he is a bit of a fool (well, a hunk of burning burning fool) – but is True Blood guilty of Jesus’ sin, i.e. using these religions to make itself look cooler than it is? Have we had enough of this spiritual name dropping, or is it positive mainstream inclusion of black and brown religions?

Tami: The incessant referencing to brown people’s religions is getting me worried. I heard two women discussing Jesus and they were certain the character was shady based on his knowledge of “strange idols” and “voodoo stuff.” I fear this is exactly the reaction True Blood wants to provoke: Either the “woo woo, evil, non-Christian, jungle magic” reaction or, possibly, the “Aren’t brown people all deep and mystical and shit (with their crazy pagan religions)?” reaction.

At this point, they’ve dropped so many bits of religion in the mix–from Inuit prayers to Yoruban Gods–I’m not sure how whatever they are going for can turn out well.

Joe: I don’t know… to me it seems like this around-the-world view of religion is something that is very typical of the freethinker aesthetic. Whether or not you feel off put by it may correlate to how religious you are in general. I’m not particularly religious person (being a C&E Catholic – Christmas and Easter), so I just take it with a grain of incredulity, kind of like “Oh, those hippies. Aren’t they silly.”

But… you know what hippies seem to have in common a lot of the time, though? Wicca. I’m holding on to the “Jesus/Laffy/Ruby Jean/Tara as witch” theory like a dog with a bone.

Sam & Masculine Violence

Thea: What did y’all think of Sam’s storyline this week? It was clear that his brutal (and confusing – why didn’t anyone separate them sooner?) attack on Crystal’s dad was some serious misplaced rage. It seems like Sam is constantly mocked for being caring – e.g., trying to take care of his little bro, trying to be chivalrous to the bevy of hapless blonde beauties who cross his doorstep, and unpredictably, he is the only one Tara feels able to spill her guts to – at the end he finally explodes under the pressure of being punished for doing the right thing. Since the entire final exchange hinges around the insult “pussy,” it seemed pretty clear to me that this is about masculinity, and the disparity between how masculinity defines a Good Man, and what it actually means to really be a good man.

This was particularly engaging to me because in the first season I felt like Sam was only interested in being a Good Man in the mainstream masculinity sense of the word, i.e. a gross, Edward-style, paternalist. As a character I found him pretty boring, a bit of a wet lettuce, as my mother would say. But the revelation of his own painful past, and now this conflict between what it means to be manly and what it means to be good, is making me root for him much more than I thought I would. (Of course that’s not to say I was all for the violent beating. That was a little much.)

Tami: I think Sam’s violent outburst sent a maddening message re: masculinity. Sam has always been positioned as a “nice guy.” He is shown being easygoing and caring to family, friends and co-workers. He is one of a very few people, save Lafayette, who truly engaged with Tara and offered her solace. This, it seems, makes him a “pussy”–a label he can escape only by dispensing a righteous beat down to Calvin Norris, sending him to the hospital. Yeah, I know violence and masculinity are often intertwined in public consciousness, but Sam’s storyline Sunday gave that harmful idea credence.

Andrea: All I could think of was a paraphrase from the X-Men movies: that was a helluva reactionary show of testosterone on Sam’s part. And I mean that in the worst way possible, for the exact reasons Tami stated.

Thea: I agree with this, except that I don’t think that we are meant to see Sam’s beatdown as “righteous.”It becomes clear by the end of the scene that he is taking out his anger over Tommy – as well as other things that have happened – on Calvin, and that the beating is unacceptably brutal. This is what makes me think that the whole scene is a comment on masculinity — to the point of saying that the demands masculinity places on men are cruel, and drive them to violence.

Tami: True, but I think the fact that he kicked the ass of a meth dealer from a squalid side of town, I think, made the violence more acceptable.

Joe: He did push Crystal, though. And hard. That took it from acceptableness into something he might need to see a shrink about.

Thea: It is interesting to contrast Sam’s masculinity with Eric’s whole “why should I have burdened you as well?” thing to Pam. Serious heartstrings there (and I have a cold and shrivelled heart). Eric is the best vampire daddy ever. And also very sexy, which confuses me.

Russell’s Moment + Vampires as Analogy for…?

Thea: And…open mic. I LOLed at Russell carrying around Talbot’s, uh, remains in a crystal jar, though maybe that part was not supposed to be funny…And his final scene with the spine and the eat-your-children stuff was just fantastic TV.

You know, this is the one thing I have thought about this show’s murky vampires as analogy for gay people (or people of colour) from the very first episode: it is not such a good analogy. Because, unlike same sex couples who want to get married or black people, vampires actually will brutally eat and murder you and your children. Meanwhile gay people and black people are just trying to get by. So that analogy actually kind of sucks.

Joe: I’ll try saying this in the most diplomatic way possible: maybe True Blood is showing what the sheltered public thinks will happen if full equality is reached. Alan Ball has said that True Blood is not an analogy for any group but you have to think that he might put something in here and there just to keep us thinking.

Andrea: I’m calling bullshit on Alan Ball’s declaration that this isn’t an analogy of any group. Though I’m not sure which group he’s symbolizing with vampires–that goal post keeps moving almost every damn week–he’s most definitely making an analogy about marginalized groups. Russell’s bloody, murderous bogarting of the national airwaves plays on the fear that some privileged folks have of marginalized people, given equal rights and equal oppotunities, will use it for bloody, murderous payback.

Tami: Long live King Russell! I know this character is gonna have to go down by the end of the season, but I’m gonna miss Denis O’Hare’s brilliant, equal parts menace and campiness portrayal.

Watching King Russell go rogue on national TV made me think of the dread many POC feel when the media spotlights a member of our race doing something bad, dysfunctional or stereotypical–that sense that the bad behavior of another will stick to you in a society that lumps every brown person together. I just pictured vamps across the States watching Russell and shaking their heads. Aw, shit! This motherfucker…My neighbor is going to be giving me all kinds of side-eye tomorrow!

Joe: All I can think of is how much I wanted him to put that spine down. I think I was covering part of my screen with a coaster for most of the end!

Andrea: And I just wanna cuddle with Hoyt’s ever-loving self. He devastates me with his confessing to Jessica that he’s dating Biscuit Lady because “it beats sitting around thinking of you.” Dammit, he’s just full of win, even without the bassy voice.

Thea: Everything is dolls and showtunes!

The End of Bilkie set to music

Andrea: So….Sookie’s newly found fairy identity leads her to 1) her screaming her ass off (per usual) with the realization that her man’s been using her for her fairy juice and 2) her doing the first mature thing (in my estimation) since this show started: breaking up with the vampire. My question is: Bill is a couple of centuries old. Did he *really* think Sookie wouldn’t get hip to the fact that he’s just no good for her? And that weepy I-nearly-killed-you-but-I-lurve-your-ass-Sookeh speech just gave me bitchlips because of Bill’s (willful) naivete.

Latoya: Seriously. I was so ready for this cycle of dysfunction to end that I had prepared some theme music for the final farewell in the hospital, 1TYM’s “It’s Over”:

(For those of y’all looking for the translation, click here)

I suppose its kind of apropos most of the concert videos push together It’s Over and Put Em Up, following the sad song with the “I will not be defeated” joint.

Thea: I will say that I liked the symbolism of the blood line being broken between them. It looked nice. Yes, I can occasionally be mollified by a nicely shot bit of poetry.

Tami: I would have been more impressed by the breakup if it had lasted more than 24 hours. Yeah, Sookie and Bill’s parting was well acted, but I still cry foul on the reasoning for the split being “Well, we’ll never have picket fences and sunny days together” and not “You nearly killed me. I hear you have some creepy file on my family. My best friend says you left her in a life-threatening situation.” It all came down to Sookie not being able to have her romantic fantasy relationship. Harumph!

Joe: I don’t care what anyone else thinks, I found their break up really well acted and rather touching. The one thing that Oscar winners know how to do best is weep uncontrollably, and boy did Anna Paquin get to show why she has that thing.

Thea: Agreed. Sheepishly.

Andrea: But, Joe, what pushes mere weeping to Oscar-nabbing is what my moms calls The Snot Factor. Anna Paquin and Stephen Mowry didn’t snot; ergo, no awards. When they go home at the end of a day’s shooting they should rent Gladiator. Russell Crowe got that Academy Award on the strength on his nasal stream. Just saying.

Joe: Ha! Halle, anyone?

Andrea: Dude, that’s after she won the award. Though I would’ve given her the Oscar for that acceptance speech than for her actual performance in Monster’s Ball. Better yet, I would’ve given it to her for her composure after Adrien Brody sneak-attack kissed her when he won his Oscar.

Back to True Blood…What nearly made me nearly stake Bill was when he tries to kick out Jessica because of his failed relationship with Sookie. I was like, “Just because you and your younger lover didn’t work out, you’re going to be a deadbeat maker to Jessica? You need to learn the difference between the young woman you’re fucking and the young woman you essentially fathered. Don’t get it twisted.” But Jessica is full of win in this ep: her tantrum at Bill wanting to go neglectful fits the situation. (Sookie, take notes.) My heart went out to Jessica feeling abandoned because she really was. And Bill gets over himself enough to be a proper maker. Thank you, Jessica, for setting Bill’s mind right.

Tami: Bill is totally that ineffectual and irresponsible emo guy that just lets life (or afterlife) happen to him and never admits his role in his problems. Lorena called him on his shit when she pointed out that he enjoyed the ugly things they did as a couple. Here he has made this baby vamp and abandoned her for weeks on end, allowing her to mistakenly kill someone, and he just wants to cut her loose in a fit of faux concern for her. The truth is Bill can’t be bothered to live up to his responsibility, because he needs to go sulk over Sookie. The man has no fight in him. Compare that to Eric, who was working some crazy complicated revenge plot, while trying to save his progeny and staying out of the nefarious clutches of two monarchs. If situations were reversed, Bill would have taken to his bed weeping.

Andrea: …and writing bad poetry while sweeping his hair out of his face.

Thea: I wrote “oh for crying out loud” in my notebook during when Bill and Sookie got back together (they lasted a whole day! wow!)…I really thought that their energy-sucking love affair was finally coming to an end. I’m so naive. When is it going to end already?

Joe: Thea, I think I may have shouted “Oy gevalt” when they got back together (as steamy as that reunion was, at least for my eyes) From being dumped by cell phone, to saving your ex-boyfriend anyway, to getting back together for an escape, to being almost murdered by him, to dumping him, to crying some with a buddy, to canoodling with a hot ass werewolf, to getting back together with your vamp all in 48 hours. This girl sure enjoys an active schedule. I think the audience could of used a little more time between break-up and make-up.

Tami: See, I find Sookie/Bill sex scenes so not hot. I’m sure it’s partly because I loathe both characters, but also because knowing that Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer are a real-life couple kind of makes me feel like a peeping Tami.

Talbot and Death by Sex

Andrea: Talbot gave me all sorts of life in this episode. From his hollering at Russell about how he leaves Talbot to clean up after his mess (“Franklin’s brain won’t wash off the guest linen, I’ve had to bury werewolves under the gazebo, and that Sookie bitch staked Lorena. I’ve had enough excitement, thank you!!”) to his two-sentence seduction of Eric (“I’m bored. Take off your clothes.”), Talbot finally–finally–grew on me. Too bad–actually, it’s really fucked up–that he’s murdered in a same-gender encounter. That hit a little too true for me, considering how many men who have sex with men die at the hands of self-identified straight men out of “gay panic.” I’m still unnerved by that scene.

Latoya: Same here. I knew the scene was going to end that way, but it still sucked to watch it happen. Eric is definitely portrayed as awash in heterosexual virility (if you can excuse the smedium v-necks which got him coded as gay back in season one), so the whole temptation/seduction took on played some strange, but depressingly familiar notes. Farewell fabulous. *pours one out for Talbot*

Thea: Hm. I wasn’t sure what to think about that gay love scene. It is difficult to write off as coincidence that the first really open gay love scene in this show (I am not counting the rather chaste kiss between Jesus and Laffy) ends with the death of one of the partners.

But I have to disagree that Eric is coded as heterosexual. I actually find him to be one of the most interesting characters on the show because he is the most difficult to read. I don’t feel as if he is strongly coded hetero or queer. He seems just generally Dionysian. I like that about him and it seems unusual for a TV character, especially since it’s not like he’s weeping in a corner over whether he likes boys or girls (not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s just so rare on TV that you see someone who is totally comfortable with sexing whoever), he’s just Eric.

Joe: Is it just me or are Lafayette and Jesus always kissing in the dark? What’s up with that?

I think, though, all vampires of extended age have a sort of fluid sexuality–The Queen, The King and Pam immediately come to mind. Eric is pretty doggone old, but even more than old (or pansexual) he’s an opportunist. I think in this instance at least he wanted to catch Talbot off guard, and what better way to do that than to use his roguish charm.

Tami: I agree that Eric, to me, has always felt pansexual, which is not uncommon in modern vampire lore. ITA about Jesus and Lafayette always shrouded in shadow doing this chaste dance. On the one hand, it makes for very tender and sensual scenes. On the other, it sets their interactions apart from those of heterosexual characters who generally get it on quickly, aggressively and with all the lights on. It could be that the show is hedging–teasing a homosexual sexual relationship, but avoiding graphic displays that might turn off some viewers. Or, it could be that given stereotypes and biases toward gay relationships, Alan Ball wants to make sure the audience gets that the bond between Jesus and Laffy is more than sex.

Tara’s Grief

Andrea: Let me address my gurl Tara. I’m glad that some of the other characters are finally taking Tara’s trauma seriously, from Lafayette’s giving her a foot massage and giving her space to talk about it to Sam hugging her and allowing her to cry in his arms and telling everyone to chill out with her because “she’s gone through some things.” Of course, Sookie has to be, well, her, and is still not clueing into what her bestie has been trying to say about Bill and the shit she’s gone through with Franklin. Again, it seems to me that Sookie asking all faux-therapist-y about Tara’s “hurting” again came about in a “safe” situation. I swear I’m thiiiiiiis close to auditioning for the show just so I can be cast as Tara’s homie.

Latoya: Seriously. When Tara stormed off saying that she didn’t want to talk about what happened “Cause you don’t want to hear what I’ve gotta say,” she was so painfully right. Sookie wouldn’t even hear her out. And that line about acting like “a dumb bitch in a country song” was fucking priceless. (And as we saw later, sadly true.)

Also, as an aside, I was blown away by Rutina Wesley in this episode. Her acting was on point, down to her shivering trauma lip. The writers are clearly exploring cycles of abuse through Tara and Tommy, and I appreciate the emotional depth. I’m also amazed at the bond between Tara and Lafayette, and how that quietly grows through shared, unnamed pain. Perhaps I am coloring too much of my True Blood viewing experience with personal experience, but I can’t count how many times I’ve been in a room with someone, both of us holding secrets about something that happened, neither of us actually saying it. I think our own judgement of ourselves is something we project on other people, the way we beat ourselves up for not having done something sooner/earlier, internalizing things…Tara and Laffy are holding back from each other when they could be finding solace in each other, yet that scene just felt real to me. I wonder when (or if) they will eventually confide in each other and how that scene will go. For me, it always feels like a dam breaking, the second after you/your friend blurts something out and that scary pause when the other person is processing and you/them await the reaction. I would love to see something like that happen, but I’m not sure where the writers are trying to take this.

Tami: It is good to see that the show really does take the rape and kidnapping and emotional abuse that Tara endured seriously. We spoke in earlier episodes about how by making Franklin a witty (mentally-imbalanced) charmer, True Blood made it easy to read the situation for laughs. Rutina Wesley’s playing of Tara’s PTSD is so impactful. You feel it. When Franklin returns–which we know he will based on previews–it will be interesting to see how they balance the portrayal of Tara’s pain with Franklin’s bon mots and speed texting. I gotta tell you, I’m bracing for some bullshit.

Thea: I was relieved to see Tara finally getting some screen time to express her pain…when the opening credits went straight into Alcide comforting Sookie, I was like, if they don’t give Tara a few minutes of processing before the third commercial break, I am turning this show off!

And I do understand what you are saying, Latoya, about how they chose to portray Tara’s pain and how it rang true for you – how some people grieve by crying all over their cereal (hello Sookie), while others hold it inside. On the other hand, I did feel a little bit like Tara being strong and not sharing her feelings – or being too traumatised to articulate them – was a little convenient for the writers. Does Tara refuse to share her pain because that’s true to her character, or because it’s easier to write her that way?

I was glad though, that she appeared to be continuously traumatised throughout the episode. I feel like this show often rushes its characters through grief or sorrow. Like how the day that Tommy left his parents, Sam was like, so, when you gonna apply for college? Jeez, give the kid some time.

Also, did anyone notice how Tara gives up Alcide for Sookie? Blagh!

Andrea: Thea, I was all like, “Tara, noooooooooooo!” Then, I did my usual fisting-shaking at the destiny deities.

Joe: I’m surprised no one mentioned the scrapbook with one lone, pitiful picture of Sookie and Bill in it. A framed picture of them would of been more than okay, but, for the love of God, when she broke that thing out I thought I accidentally changed the channel to a Sweet Valley High rerun. The writers can’t seem to decide if Sookie is a waif or a warrior. I like my Sookie powerful.

Thea: Ha! Yes! As me and 1000 other people on the internet said, where the hell did she find time to make a scrapbook? I would say that that was bad writing (not only because Sookie’s never had any time to scrapbook, but also because it just seems silly and out of character – she doesn’t strike me as the sentimental type), except for the fact that I enjoyed the good laugh I got out of seeing said pitiful scrapbook.

Andrea: Just for that, I’m not showing y’all my scrapbook.

Thea: ::Cries::

Tami: Andrea, if your scrapbook only has one picture in it, you can just e-mail it to us or something.

Latoya Schools Us on Improper Firearm Use

Latoya: Can we do 16 bars on this Bill/Sookie/Jessica vs. Russell/Debbie/Wolfpack ultimate cage match? First of all, if you have ever been through firearm training, the first thing they tell you is to not even pick up the weapon unless you are planning to shoot to kill. All Sookie did brandishing the shot gun around was put herself in danger, since she was clearly too squeamish to use it on another human. I’m not saying its an easy choice to take a life, but if you aren’t going to use it, the gun is more of a liability to you than an asset. She better thank her lucky stars that Debbie was so full of rage and V that she wanted to play punch out instead of speed Sook to her death. And seriously, with all that’s happened in Bon Temps, has no one learned to shoot and roll out? The only person who has done that yet is Alcide.

(I should note – portrayals of firearms in media annoys me to no end. You’re supposed to see Sook with the gun and think “badass” but really, what she did was enormously fucking stupid.)

Andrea: Latoya, thank you! I also remember a movie critic once said that most times, when the audience sees a person with a gun, it’s usually time for a speech. Feh.

Joe: I think Sookie was probably also full of rage and V too, which might have peppered her actions during that scene. I mean, she usually takes an ill advised path, but this episode was full of them.

Tami: Not only was I yelling for Sookie to bust a cap in Debbie, I was yelling for Debbie to shift for deity’s sake. I mean, if I have the ability to turn into a bloodthirsty animal with fangs and claws on a whim, you can bet I’m not going to waste my time with hand-to-hand combat. Just sayin…

Madness & Stereotype

Thea: I did not care for the way they treated Laffy’s “crazy lady!” mama this episode. So many cliches. Plus, Jesus simply manages to disarm her by saying “let’s watch TV!”? Come on. She has a mental health condition, she’s not a child.

So far the portrayal is extremely infantilising and fulfills so many TV stereotypes about mad people, even up to the idea that in all of their craziness, they are somehow more perceptive than everyone else.

Joe: This is something I bring up so often with this show. You cast Alfre Woodard, arguably one of the most well versed actresses of recent times and all you give her is “crazy old black lady”. I mean the lady has four Emmys. Now, that that line she uttered (about Lafayette having “power” and something about witches) maybe that will lead to a juicer storyline. Here’s hopin’.

Thea: Yes, and yes again. As stereotypes always are, it is just such lazy writing. Try writing a character who is mad and who also comes across as human, complex and sympathetic. That’s much more of a challenge than regurgitating One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It just makes me want to go rewatch Keane.

I am also sorry to say that Jesus’ whole interchange with Laffy’s mom made me dislike him a little bit. Stop talking down to people all the time Jesus!

Tami: As much as I love Jesus and Lafayette together, I’m going to need Jesus to tone down the sanctimoniousness. Really, dude, chill. Laffy has seen you, what, twice? It’s a little too soon for judging and po-faced advice.

Miscellaneous Sexytimes

Andrea: I’m not going to address Bill’s and Sookie’s make-up sex: that was too cliched to be sexy. The headbangy guitars to show how hard they’re fucking just made me yawn. Ooo, ah. Next. And, as Tami said earlier, the fact that Paquin and Mowry are a couple made me feel like I was watching their spliced-in sex tape than a sex scene between two fictional characters. Doubleplus not the sexay for me.

No, let’s talk about Tara dreaming about masturbating in the shower only to have Franklin come in/up to liplock/embrace her. Like you said, Latoya, Rutina nailed this–for me, she really had this scene on lock because of the verity. It was great to see a woman of color pleasuring herself–I damn near stood up and applauded for that moment alone. Then, there was that fist-bite of knowing the best lover Tara ever had was the same person who abused her. I mean, where to even put all that? Damn.

Latoya: Seriously. Tara is probably dying inside, even though she rationally knows it’s probably the V talking (or maybe that first night, pre-horror?) Our emotions/sex drives are complicated little beasts.

I am so happy that Jesus and Lafayette seem to be creeping toward something.

Andrea: They looked like they creeped to the sofa, maybe?

Latoya: I’m so damn happy, I made a soundtrack-timeline of how this relationship should play out if there’s any justice in this world.

First, Lafayette and Jesus realize they are madly in love.

Then, after many drama-less courting scenes, they have a love scene that is actually shown.

(Also, peep Hikki’s lyrics: Wish i could prove i love you/ but does that mean i have to walk on water?/ When we are older you’ll understand/ It’s enough when i say so/ And maybe somethings are that simple - damn girl, preach!)

Then, they realize that all this drama isn’t worth it, so they make plans to take Tara and leave Bon Temps.

And they ride off into the sunset in the Ferrari.

Yeah, I know, not going to happen, but I can dream damn it!

[Note from Joe: That car--It’s actually an Alfa Romeo Competizione. It has parts of a Ferrari but isn’t exactly one. Look! I know things that straight men do. ]

Latoya: My brain isn’t functioning on the higher levels with this show. Vampires bad, car pretty.

Andrea: And leave Russell with Bratty Vamp Queen and “Special Cunt” behind. Speaking of that, ahem, moniker… thoughts on that?

Thea: I will admit that I LOLed when he said “special cunt.” My feminist cred is going down the drain.

Tami: Thea, we can turn in our cards together. I laughed at that despite myself.

Latoya: Sookie’s got the magic clit…

Joe: Slightly uncomfortable… Haha. I’ll just be over here.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

The die is cast early in My Name Is Khan, when the titular lead, Rizwan Khan (Shah Rukh Khan), having already been identified as autistic, is snarkily asked by a TSA agent what he has to tell the President.

“My name is Khan,” he answers. “And I am not a terrorist.” Then the camera zooms in on the baffled agent and the score swells as if to kick him in the throat and yell PWNED!

The punchline is doubly appropriate, given the real-life Khan’s own run-ins with airport security, and a signal that, though it lacks the musical stylings of more familiar Bollywood fare, Rizwan’s story will not skimp on the melodrama on the way to making its point. But at least it does so effectively.

As he learns after moving to America, Rizwan lives with Asperger’s syndrome. Still, during the first half of the movie, Rizwan’s condition makes him a wiz at repairs, and doesn’t deter him from working as a salesman for his brother (Jimmy Shergill) – or from pursuing a relationship with Mandira (Kajol), a hair stylist he meets during his rounds. The early scenes between Rizwan and Mandira are so bubble-gummy they threaten to make Slumdog Millionaire look cynical, but there’s enough of a contrast between theirs and other rom-com couples to keep the schmaltz from completely overwhelming the viewer.

It’s possible that in another movie, the fact that Rizwan, a Muslim, is romancing a Hindu, Mandira, might have been addressed in a song or two. But here it comes into play as part of the aftermath of 9/11 (viewer advisory here: the imagery used for the WTC attack is vivid), when the couple splits up in the wake of a personal tragedy. The film’s second half traces their respective journeys: Mandira’s search for justice is identified as coming from a place of hate, while Rizwan’s – no accident here – revisits the travels of both Forrest Gump and The Hurricane, but in a sign-of-the-times fashion.

Not unlike Gump, Rizwan becomes an accidental media sensation. But first, not unlike Rubin Carter, he’s wrongly imprisoned and tortured, an ordeal which is intercut with a wider wave of anti-Muslim prejudice. And it’s interesting to note that, though the Khans befriend a white couple early on, nearly all of the prejudice directed toward Muslims in this film comes from white Americans.

There’s a schoolteacher who apparently read from Michael Savage’s History Of The Americas; a beefy dude-bro who insists on harassing a Muslim store-owner; and an ill-defined “government official” who went to the Jack Bauer school of interviewing, among others. And none of these scenes are played for “laughs,” either. Neither is a scene later in the movie when Rizwan stumbles into a mosque meeting, set up to more pointedly illustrate what separates Islamic philosophy from terrorist thoughts. These images are meant to make the viewer uncomfortable – and they succeed.

But in a world where Jeff Dunham is considered funny, it’s tough to imagine that more people don’t need to be shaken by them, or to see the characters of Khan and Mandira so unabashedly in love with San Francisco, or the POC allies they pick up along the way. So, even if the film threatens to veer completely off the rails in the third act, when we see stand-ins for both Hurricane Katrina and Barack Obama, the feel-good ending at least legitimately feels good. And judging by the film’s box-office success so far, at least people seem to be open to it.

“Weren’t you the Indian Rhodes Scholar?” she said, as I shivered in her doorway holding my pizza delivery bag, wearing my “Red Pies Over Montana” polyester shirt and ball cap. She handed me 20 dollars for driving a Sausage Lover’s Special through the snow-drifted streets of the reservation border town of Missoula—for a one-dollar tip.

A month before, I had been sitting next to a well-known British novelist at a Rhodes House dinner in Oxford, which involved multiple courses and sparkling conversation over after-dinner sherry. I had been wearing a jacket and tie, not a tux, but near. The writer asked, “Aren’t you the red-Indian Rhodes Scholar?”

They say the Rhodes is one of the few things a person can do at 20 years of age that will be mentioned at 40, that and joining the Marines—but I didn’t go to Parris Island. I went to Oxford, England.

During my fifth year at the University of Montana, a familiar-looking woman, whose face I couldn’t quite place, passed as I walked across campus. Coming closer, I recognized her as a former classmate who had trounced me in every subject in grade school, the smartest person in class, my main competition. Becky—Rebecca (some names have been changed for this story), I called out, asking her what she was doing in Missoula. She said that she had come back from Harvard for the local Rhodes Scholarship interview. I had no idea what the words “Rhodes Scholar” meant. A year later, I would be chosen.

I am from an American Indian tribe—the Crow—located in Montana. I say it this way, “located in Montana” because we predate the founding of the state. We predate the founding of the United States, though this is where we find ourselves. My parents went to college at the local university. They came of age in the 1960s during the Civil Rights movement and the Great Society. Coming from two separate Indian reservations, my parents were the first in their families to go to college, and, until I went 25 years later, the last. They went from poor to professional. They went from reservation schools and Catholic boarding schools, which sought to kill the Indian to save the student, to become active in the American Indian Civil Rights movement. My parents’ generation (though not my parents) founded the “Red Power” movement, occupied Alcatraz Island and Wounded Knee. My father was one of the earliest lawyers in the Crow Tribe, and he still works for his people. My mother was active in American Indian women’s rights, and still works in Indian health care. They made the big leap for me. I went to college only because they did.

Is there such a thing as a traditional Rhodes Scholar? Until the 1970s, a Rhodes Scholar was male. Was he also white? In December of 1992, when I called my mother from a high-rise in Seattle to tell her that I had had been chosen by the Rhodes committee, her first words were, “How many women were picked?” She identifies as a second-wave feminist. I grew up in a house where Ms. magazine and Our Bodies Ourselves sat on the coffee table—we learned that “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” We learned that a woman could do anything—Mother told my sister that she could be a senator—but I wondered what an Indian could boy be? In my Rhodes Scholar class of 1993 there were few minorities, but about an even split gender-wise. I told my mother about half were women. “Good,” she said. My peers seemed to come from two or three certain universities on the East Coast, men and women. Though not Harvard or Yale, my state university had secretly been sending Rhodes, too. The University of Montana was then rated 4th in the country for public schools for sending Rhodes Scholars, a surprise to me, being so close to the poverty and limited opportunity of Indian Country.

My former grade school classmate mentioned the Rhodes, but I found out what it was when a teaching assistant, Betsy, showed up to class one day dressed up. She usually favored the ripped jeans and Guatemalan sweater look of the early 1990s, so I asked her why she was so dressed up. She said she had an interview for the Rhodes. When she was chosen it was just as another Rhodes, Bill Clinton, was running for president. I finally figured out what the Rhodes was—a prestigious ladder to the world of success. Betsy had come from Chicago to Montana for graduate school; Clinton had come from a little town in Arkansas named Hope. Both went to England. Just before she was snatched up by the world of success, Betsy suggested that I apply. In one sense, my preparation for the Rhodes was thorough. The Rhodes advisor at my school, Margaret, a sixty-something Philosophy professor, from the East Coast, had a track record of grooming successful applicants. We talked in her book-lined office as she tried to envision me as Rhodes material. She asked if I kept up with the news. She grilled me about current events in her verbally aggressive style: the trade deficit with Japan, human rights in China, Hamas. We discussed Clinton’s performance in the latest presidential debates. I don’t believe I had ever met someone so upfront, almost brusque, but sure of herself, or sure-seeming—pushy. I had a little idea of what I was talking about, these things of the world, and the rest, I bluffed. As I was leaving her office after our first conversation, Margaret said, “I hope you want the Rhodes, because you’re going get it.” Even as she said it something didn’t register—I had never been chosen for anything. Unremarkable in grades, athletics, student activities, I applied simply because I was told I had a chance.

Margaret began grooming me. I visited her office weekly. It was like the build-up scene in Rocky crossed with My Fair Lady. She told me what to wear—blue blazer, pinpoint Oxford shirt, fancy shoes—how to look the part. She helped me say what I wanted to say in my essay. Margaret had a reputation as a Rhodes-maker. Without Margaret, I would have never made it. In the 16 years since she retired, there have been no more from my school.

We prepared for the vetting, but we didn’t prepare for life at Oxford. Could I go? Did I want to? It was assumed that if I could, I would. Oxford was a great place: everyone just knew that. Key information about what it was like was left to a few pictures in the catalogue. Margaret had sent many to Oxford, but hadn’t been there herself. She assumed I would be glad to escape the rural poverty of a cultural backwater, finding refuge first in Oxford, then in the big city. We both assumed that greatness did not, could not, involve Missoula, Montana. I read The New York Times, The New Yorker, and I desired worldly opportunity, but I also wanted to put Native America on the world’s map.

What about the world I was leaving? My university was 15 minutes from my mother’s reservation, 20 minutes from my grandmother’s house. My father had gone to the same university for law school, and I went to the university preschool. I had never left home. I hadn’t even been out of state. My tribe is ambivalent about its people going away. Going away can make sense, economically, or to study, but in another sense, it doesn’t make any. We were nomads and we traveled, but always within a known world of connections. Our world is known through stories. Sacred ancestors, from before humans existed, had lived in and around where Missoula is presently located. At the dawn of time, the sacred trickster, Coyote, killed a monster that was devouring everything in the next valley over. Coyote cut out the heart of the monster and threw it west. The heart of the monster is known by the tribe as the original source of all the mosquitoes in the world. This is what it means to be Indian: I could stand on campus in Missoula, slap a mosquito, and know that it had come from the dawn of time, when Coyote saved everything. Many Indians still live in their holy land, they’ve never left. Sometimes I would drive over to Idaho and view the heart of the monster, now a red monolith. Other Americans don’t have this connection.

At Oxford I would lose touch with this. Other Indians had gone away before: to school, to the federal relocation program, where Indians were enticed to leave the reservation with promises of jobs and job training, so that the country might end its obligations to the tribes and the treaties. But everyone always came back. The story of going away and coming back developed from the very beginnings of the reservation era. The early American Indian novelist D’Arcy McNickle, a member of my mother’s tribe, wrote The Surrounded, about a young man who goes away to a boarding school after selling his land. He comes back—Indians always came back. Coming back was a common thread to stories of leaving: reconnecting, plugging in, finding ground, finding home. I had some idea of these things when I applied for the Rhodes, but not enough to be able articulate them. In my Rhodes application essay, I wrote about standing astride two worlds: the tribal and the global. What I didn’t realize is that if I lost my footing on one, I would fall.

Because of our great poverty and great need, my tribe pinned so much hope on me. After I got the Rhodes, local newspapers and radio and television trumpeted the story. I was a local celebrity and a hit in Indian Country. Tribal newspapers proclaimed my cultural achievement. I spoke at reservation grade schools and high schools and Native American Studies Departments throughout the West. I was the graduation speaker at my father’s former high school. On the stand, I was embraced by the tribal chairwoman and members of the tribal council who rarely got along well enough to appear anywhere together in public. I stood for the possibility of an Indian finding success in the larger world.

Many Indian people told me that they were proud of what I had done, seeing it as a cultural achievement, what Indians could do. I saw it that way too. When I was a kid I had wanted to be the first Indian on the moon, and with the Rhodes I had some idea of what it was like. At my university’s powwow on campus, an old woman dressed in the traditional style with high-top moccasins, calico dress, wide leather belt, and hair scarf, recognized me out of a crowd, put her arms around me and started crying. She said that she told her teenage grandson about me, so that he could be proud to be Indian.

At that same powwow, in a special ceremony I was given the traditional Indian name “Outstanding War Bonnet.” A war bonnet, or headdress, is worn by warriors who have amassed many great deeds, each signified by an eagle feather. My great deed was the Rhodes, and I was given a headdress covered in eagle feathers.

A local Indian health clinic made a poster; it shows a picture of me, alongside a very old picture of my great grandfather, the original Bear Don’t Walk, my family’s namesake. The poster lauds my scholarship, and says, “This is Today’s Warrior: Drug and Alcohol Free.” These posters were pasted on the doors and walls of local businesses. I would run into pictures of myself all over town.

A week before I left for England, I was on the reservation helping friends smoke giant Columbia River salmon. We did it on the grill of a junked 1964 Impala, suspended from a rusted swing set, placed over a large fire of larch wood. I went to find a bathroom inside a nearby trailer house and walked into the room of a teenage boy, but no one was there. On the wall, I saw a poster of Michael Jordan dunking a ball—alongside my poster. My tribe didn’t have many modern heroes. We had old ones: chiefs, warriors, rebels who fought the coming of the white man. Now, people thought I was one, which really put the spin on my head, not because they thought I was a hero, but because we were so bereft of them.

And so I went to England, and it was in Oxford that I crashed and burned. No story is pre-determined. To this day I search for the signs of what happened, the warnings. I’ve mentioned that while the Rhodes was important and lauded, I had no real idea of what it involved. I was also very far away from a world that made sense to me. This is all true. But there is something more. Another person with these same factors might have gone to Oxford and thrived. When I got there, I felt the alienation of a place unlike any other I had experienced. My fellow Rhodes had gone to the better schools in America and found in Oxford something familiar: soaring architecture, manners, a belief in a pursuit of excellence. For some, even the tutorial system was similar. I was a fish out of water, or a buffalo out of the tall grass plains, or an American Indian away from his tribe. A sense of displacement reared up. It wasn’t just the crowded stone passages of the medieval city. Nor was it the lack of mountains and truly wild wildlife, though I felt these things. Something was wrong with my orientation, the direction I was facing. Whether from Brazil, South Africa, Singapore, or Palo Alto, students came to Oxford to tap into something old (but not old in the sense of the stories of my tribe), and yet of this moment. Everyone there was trying to get ahead, everyone was concerned about making it, it didn’t matter if you were from Seoul or New South Wales, you wanted to plug into the global culture, via the cultural landmarks of English-speaking society. England had been a great power, and had left its mark everywhere. All of these former colonies, and some former enemies, felt a desire to measure up to the Oxfordian model of civilization. Wasn’t this why Cecil Rhodes endowed his scholarship?

It was here, along the river Cherwell, in the wood-paneled rooms, at high table, among white china and crystal glassware that I fell out of place, out of time. Perhaps I didn’t have enough concern for career and success. If I had stayed long enough, I could have become a convert. Things are not so different on my reservation, we want success. In the whole world, success—measured in terms of resume, salary, material goods—has become our common denominator, and perhaps Cecil Rhodes rightly celebrates the English, but to the nomad in me, all this makes no sense. It is the opposite of sense.

Rhodes Scholars will sometimes talk about the relationships they made at Oxford, but it’s a matter of perspective. An Indian elder once told me that nomadic tribes had figured out a way to live so that they only had to spend about twenty hours a week “making a living.” The rest of the time was spent really living: socializing, telling stories, singing songs through long winter nights. In Western culture, we haven’t figured out how to spend less than forty hours at a desk. In this world, in Oxford’s world, relationships aren’t as important as getting ahead.

Asking these kinds of questions, I foundered. My meetings with my tutors were a study in acute, almost laughable anxiety and misunderstanding. The Don would say, Mr. Bear Don’t Walk, for next week please read these twenty books, and write an essay on the topic “The French Revolution: What and Why.” I would rush out to find these books. Searching the picked over libraries of my college (Merton) then the History Faculty library, then those of other colleges, I came up with two or three books from the “secondary” class. In a bind, I would consult various and sundry lesser books and come back to my professor in a week, with a handwritten tome entitled “The French Revolution What and Why.” As I read aloud, the Don would indicate his displeasure by lighting a cigarette at the nearest possible opportunity. If I could read a few paragraphs before he lit up, my essay was considered decent. Once, and only once, did the Don wait until the end of my essay, only after giving remarks did he remember the cigarette. This was my lone triumph.

Perhaps my mistake was studying for a second BA in history. Classmates who continued on to higher degrees, in their area of study, seemed to enjoy their time better. I had no classes, just the occasional voluntary lecture. There was no hand-holding, and despite the tutorial system of one-on-one teaching, very little attention was paid to me. I had gone from a student of promise at my home to just another face in the crowd. I had been coddled in my old university. As a philosophy student interested in ideas, I had written papers about things like Romanticism, where the professor lectured, interacted with the students, and then expected original thought. Oxford had no such illusions about original thought. As an experiment at Oxford, I presented the paper I wrote on Romanticism from my first university, and got my Don smoking immediately. He didn’t like my presumption to present original ideas. He wanted me to simply restate what the sources he had assigned said. This I did not do very well. After my first term of little feedback from my Don, I bought, on my trip home, a couple of large university textbooks of European and world history. I used these and their bibliographies much more than the list of texts from the Don that I couldn’t find. I won’t justify this, I was drowning, my head was barely above water.

Depression reared up, then. The gray rooms and sidewalks and bare trees of winter were becoming too much. The sun seemed to show its face only a few hours during the late fall and winter months. After the winter break, the sun went away completely. An avid runner, I tried to cope by working out. Something was coming on the edges of my eyesight. It felt like my vision and my mind were going gray. To head it off, I ran daily along the crowded city streets, and tree-lined paths, and the muddy trails of the river. Oxford is a scenic place, with the boats and high-tension power lines—but nothing compared to my home.

Spurred by the coming grayness, I visited the college nurse. She listened and gave sympathy. With her, and not with my Dons, I could talk freely. She recommended I see the counseling service of the university. I gathered that depression was a common problem, a given discontent of the place. I read that Oxford had the highest rate of suicide of any school in the UK. I read about medications available in America to treat depression. The news stories in Britain about Prozac, which had just become available, were skeptical. Foul moods and black dog depressions were considered a right, and those bloody Americans were trying to medicate away their feelings.

During my summer home with family and tribe, when the sun was in the sky, I felt better. But during my second year at Oxford, as the summer light waned, I felt a more serious depression coming. It felt like a hole in my skull where darkness was escaping. Waking up in my small bed in my small room, I thought, “Oh shit, I’m still here.” I wanted Prozac; I got group therapy. In a room, around twenty Oxford students spoke of their problems. One had just tried suicide with pills, another had been found tying a rope to a light fixture, another had gauze bandages on her wrists, another with dark circles under his eyes barely spoke. Depressed as I was, I was still fighting. And I wasn’t going to get better around students who were worse off than I was. It terrified me to think of the quiet rooms of Oxford full of students who alternated between having the usual “essay crisis” and suicidal thoughts. I wasn’t there yet, but group therapy wasn’t enough and the hole in my head seemed to be expanding, the grayness in my vision growing.

I finally went to the doctor and asked after other kinds of treatment, for medication. They could give old-type antidepressants with a long list of side-effects and negative interactions with common foods. The other possibility, if I were serious, was hospitalization and shock therapy. A child of the 1970s, I had seen the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, based on the book by Ken Kesey. In the movie, the Indian, Chief Bromden, played by Will Sampson, must smother his fellow mental hospital patient, who had been lobotomized, then throw a sink through a window to escape. In a way, that’s what I did, without smothering the lobotomized fellow patient part—there were too many.

Talking with fellow Rhodes Scholars, I found similar feelings of despair and dislocation. People felt like they were treading water at Oxford, some talked of leaving. After speaking with my counselors, my support group peers, the school nurse, and the student advisor at the Rhodes Trust, after a year and a half, I decided to leave. It was apparent that while depression and feelings of displacement and alienation were common, very few people left. This game was for keeps. It was also clear that while there were many resources available to a Rhodes Scholar, real help with the one thing that was keeping me from staying, namely depression, was not available. It was simple and not so simple. Depression touched everything.

Before I left, I met a fellow Montanan who went to my high school thirty years before me. He was not Indian and he took to England, marrying an English woman and having English children. When I told him that I was planning on leaving Oxford and the Rhodes, he said that he continually made plans to take a trip to the Bighorn Mountains on my reservation. First he planned this trip with his kids. Now that they were grown, he made plans by himself. He said that there wasn’t a day that he doesn’t dig into the bottom drawer of his desk and pull out the topographical maps. Maybe more than anyone else in England, he understood, and he told to leave while I still could.

The day before I packed up my suitcase and boarded the bus to the airport, I visited the Pitt River Museum. Located about a mile from my dorm, it’s an old-fashioned anthropological collection of spears and masks and other tribal ephemera collected from all over the world. In a dark corner, I stumbled upon a display case. In it, a large American Indian war bonnet, covered with many eagle feathers, stood atop a black velvet wigmaker’s stand. The headdress’ headband was beaded with distinct colors, the powder blue and dusty pink of my tribe. Every piece that made the headdress had been gathered in the tribal world of the person who made it—I had seen war bonnets made. Though the maker was unknown to me, the world it was made in was familiar. I knew the same rivers, along which the bald eagle, who gave his long feathers and down, hunted for fish. Ermines, white in winter, were hung down the sides of the headdress, framing the face of the wearer. I knew these weasel-like animals hunted in rock piles and stumps along river bottoms of the Yellowstone and Bighorn Rivers. Deerskin was used to make the headdress cap. Sinew held it all together. My tribal name is Outstanding War Bonnet. The plaque identified the owner of this war bonnet, a great chief of my tribe, a man named Plenty Coups. He had given his war regalia to an anthropologist who placed it in the museum. The sight of it cut through layers of darkness. I wanted to touch those feathers behind the glass, and feel the way a single feather comes together like a zipper when you run your fingers along its edge. I wanted to feel the ermine soft against my face. I wanted to take in the smoky smell of things that had once been alive, walking and flying along the riverbanks of home. I wanted to feel the subtle weight of the headdress as I hoisted it and put it on—it feels like wearing an eagle on your head. But I didn’t dare, the display case glass was too thick. In England, people don’t wear such things. I saw the war bonnet as a sign, I had earned a great honor for my people, and now I could come home.

Scott Bear Don’t Walk (Outstanding War Bonnet) is a member of the Crow Tribe. He is also a descendant of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. He writes fiction and poetry. The Rhodes Project is an independent research project and online publication exploring how female and male Rhodes Scholars are redefining success within, and beyond, Cecil Rhodes’ remit. The RP’s Findings Report on the lives of the first generation of female scholars will be released in 2010.

Asians love being the best. But here’s one superlative we don’t love–Asian-American women are most likely to think about and attempt suicide, more than all other Americans, according to a new University of Washington study.

The study, published in the current issue of the Archives of Suicide Research, found that 15.93 percent of U.S.-born Asian-American women have contemplated suicide in their lifetime, as opposed to 13.5 percent for all Americans, and that suicide attempts among us were also higher than the general population, at 6.29 percent vs. 4.6 percent. It did not attempt to explain why Asian-American women have more suicidal tendencies, however:

“It is unclear why Asian-Americans who were born in the United States have higher rates of thinking about and attempting suicide,” said Aileen Duldulao, lead researcher of the study.

But if you’re an Asian-American woman who has struggled with depression her whole life like I have, it’s not unclear to you, is it? You don’t need this study, published in 2007, to tell you that we own some of the highest rates of depression and suicide because we’re pushed to achieve. Or this one, published in 2008, to tell you that Asian-Americans are less likely than any other group to seek treatment for mental health disorders. You know this already. You know it in your bones. Personally, not scientifically.

You know it because, growing up, there was no such thing as “depression.” Because feeling blue always had something to do with you “not trying hard enough.” And feeling like you wanted to yell at somebody or start crying in class over nothing was the result of “not having enough self-control.” And wanting to feel better simply involved “doing better.” How could you be unhappy when your father hugged you? (His father beat him with a stick.) How could you feel sad when you had your own bedroom, your own phone, call-waiting for Christ’s sake? (Your mother had her ancestral home stolen from her, pillaged, plundered, sold for scrap. Top that.) What is this “therapy”? What are these “drugs”? If you really think you have problems, could you please keep quiet about them? Better not to advertise your own failure. Best to keep silent, lock up those feelings in shame, and, while you’re at it, lose a few pounds, your moonface is starting to look fat.

I don’t really know how to end this post without sounding like a PSA. I’ve been in therapy for 12 years, and I’ve been medicated for all kinds of things–anxiety, insomnia, depression. At times, I think my family has viewed me as “the crazy one” because I’ve been open with them and the rest of the world about how I’m dealing with my depression. And you know what? I don’t give a fuck. On the subject of mental health, I not only talk, I tend to ramble, because keeping silent and being ashamed of it, that’s really the crazy thing.

[Science Daily: US-born Asian-American Women More Likely To Think About, Attempt Suicide, Study Finds]

(Image Credit: Angry Asian Girl)

I was looking forward to “The Soloist” for two reasons: having played the violin all my life, I love those rare contemporary films that dare to explicitly appreciate classical music, but also because I am a sucker for based-on-a-true-story films.

The dynamic between the two protagonists (Jamie Foxx as Nathaniel Ayers, a Julliard-trained cellist turned homeless man suffering from what appears to be schizophrenia and Robert Downey Jr. as Steve Lopez, an L.A. Times reporter) evolves from a relationship between a potentially successful article topic and a struggling journalist into a mutual friendship. “I’ve never loved anything as much as he loves music,” Lopez muses in awe about his subject. Flashbacks into Ayers’s childhood reveal that his mental illness was probably always present but began to torment Ayers during his time at Julliard when he was a college student (which is a common age for symptoms of schizophrenia appear).

Among the voices that haunt Ayers’s mind is a woman telling him: “They’re white, heartless aren’t they? . . . Turn you white . . . Whiteness, whiteness, whiteness,” which not-too-subtlety reminds the viewers that Ayers is one of very few students of color (and the only African American student that we see) at Julliard.

When I see a film that I enjoy or that makes me think, it is generally after I have left the theater or turned off the TV that I look to see what critics thought of it in order to avoid having the opinions of “experts” keep me from seeing a film I’m interested in. For example, I was recently shocked to find that “Spinning into Butter,” the recent film starring Sarah Jessica Parker about the administration’s response to a racially-based hate crime on a college campus, was almost universally loathed (I loved it). I was similarly surprised when a quick Internet search of reviews of this film revealed a plethora of viewers dismissing this film and its two stars (both Foxx and Downey, Jr.) as a typically racist tale of white superiority and the exploitation of the downtrodden black à la “Dangerous Minds.”

I disagree with this opinion, but upon some further reflection, I believe this reaction comes partially from the race status of the two actors. The movie poster, for example, shows Foxx cast in shadows and looking down: black, disheveled, poor. In the background is Downey, Jr. looking directly at the viewer: white, relatively well-dressed, and lucid. Criticisms have been made that a white actor was cast as Lopez, but upon further research, I see that the real Steve Lopez is of Spanish descent and physically resembles Robert Downey Jr. Another element is the fact that Lopez’s point of view dominates; we are rarely given the direct perspective of Ayers. This stems from Ayers’s unstable mental status, however, and not his race; flashbacks provide glimpses into Ayers’s psyche, but we as viewers, like Lopez, can only speculate about what is really going on in Ayers’s mind.

I see this film less as a commentary on race relations than on class relations. Lopez is visibly out of his comfort zone as he immerses himself into the streets and shelter where Ayers resides. The articles he writes do help bring money and attention to the homeless community in Los Angeles, but the problems of drug addiction, mental illness, and police brutality toward the homeless are not glossed over in the film. It could be argued that it was exploitative to cast not actors but real homeless individuals as the men and women in the shelter, but this realism provides potential for increased awareness that hiring actors could simply not provide. Those who critiqued Lopez for exploiting Ayers, including his editor and ex-wife in the film (played by Catherine Keener, who, in one of the few lines spoken by a woman in the entire film, jokingly encourages him to “keep . . . exploiting him like you are now” to further his career. This is spoken at an awards ceremony where Lopez receives a prize for his columns on Ayers who is, unsurprisingly, not invited.

Lopez voices his conflicting feelings regarding his overwhelming desire to help this man who, he does not deny, was at first merely a subject for an interesting story to save his career. As the movie poster states, the dynamic between the two men evolves into an “unlikely friendship” that, despite the odds, eventually becomes an egalitarian relationship. This evolution takes its time as Lopez and Ayers first address each other as “Nathaniel” and “Mr. Lopez” respectively. Yet Lopez is disconcerted when Ayers begins referring to him reverentially as “a god.” This additional (and unnecessary) reminder of the power dynamic between the two men makes the viewers’ uncomfortable as well, but Lopez comes to realize that he has indeed been condescending toward his subject/friend, and he insists on formalizing how he addresses his friend from “Nathaniel” to “Mr. Ayers.”

The film culminates at a concert where, while watching in fascination as Ayers immerses himself in the pleasure of the music, Lopez admits that besides providing Ayers with a cello and an apartment, “Maybe our friendship has helped him. But maybe not.” It is clear, however, that Lopez has “learned the dignity of being loyal to something you believe in” from Ayers. As a Beethoven symphony swells and the credits appear, the duet of characters attempt to become a trio, just as the image of the cello in the movie poster attempts to become a third protagonist. A message of this film suggests that music can bridge social and racial divides. But as the cameras scan the well-dressed, primarily white audience in the concert hall, it is clear that music, much like Lopez’s newspaper articles, is limited in the amount of concrete good that it can do.

A New York Times article reports that more and more courts are ordering mentally ill youth to jail as community mental health programs are facing bigger cuts and thinning resources.

“We’re seeing more and more mentally ill kids who couldn’t find community programs that were intensive enough to treat them,” said Joseph Penn, a child psychiatrist at the Texas Youth Commission. “Jails and juvenile justice facilities are the new asylums.”

Some judges say they’ll get the help they need in prison. However several lawsuits and federal civil rights investigations in Indiana, Maryland, Ohio and Texas say these prisons neglect and abuse incarcerated youth, a majority of which are youth of color, with mental illnesses, sometimes body slamming them and breaking their bones. While across the country, many of them are over prescribed with drugs sometimes just to help them sleep. But there seems to be little other recourse for some families.

From the article:

According to a Government Accountability Office report, in 2001, families relinquished custody of 9,000 children to juvenile justice systems so they could receive mental health services.Donald has been in and out of mental health programs since he attacked a schoolteacher at age 5. As he grew older, he became more violent until he was eventually committed to the Department of Youth Services.

“I’ve begged D.Y.S. to get him into a mental facility where they’re trained to deal with people like him,” said his grandmother, who asked not to be identified because of the stigma of having a grandson who is mentally ill. “I don’t think a lockup situation is where he should be, although I don’t think he should be on the street either.”

I’m not an expert on prisons or a psychiatrist, but a prison system that thinks about mental illness as a crime is most definitely not any path towards mental health and personal healing.

Angry Asian Man reports on the story of Xiu Ping Jiang, a 35 year-old Chinese illegal immigrant diagnosed with a mental illness who has been stuck in immigration limbo for over a year. From the New York Times:

[Jiang] has spent more than a year in jail, often in solitary confinement, sinking deeper into the mental illness that makes it impossible for her either to fight deportation or to obtain the travel documents needed to make it happen, according to a pending habeas corpus petition that seeks her release. It contends that she is suicidal, emaciated and deprived of proper medical treatment.

More distressing is the report of her first court appearance in the NYT, which led to her deportation order:

Twice the immigration judge asked the woman’s name. Twice she gave it: Xiu Ping Jiang. But he chided her, a Chinese New Yorker, for answering his question before the court interpreter had translated it into Mandarin.

“Ma’am, we’re going to do this one more time, and then I’m going to treat you as though you were not here,” the immigration judge, Rex J. Ford, warned the woman last year at her first hearing in Pompano Beach, Fla. He threatened to issue an order of deportation that would say she had failed to show up.

She was a waitress with no criminal record, no lawyer and a history of attempted suicide. Her reply to the judge’s threat, captured by the court transcript, was in imperfect English. “Sir, I not — cannot go home,” she said, referring to China, which her family says she fled in 1995 after being forcibly sterilized at 20. “If I die, I die America.”

The judge moved on. “The respondent, after proper notice, has failed to appear,” he said for the record. And as she declared, “I’m going to die now,” he entered an order deporting her to China, and sent her back to the Glades County immigration jail.

As Angry Asian Man says:

The situation illustrates the vulnerability of the mentally ill in the immigration system. While Immigration and Customs Enforcement keeps putting increasingly strict enforcement measures in place, more and more people with mental illness are being put into detention — and no one is really looking out for them.

In a bizarre twist, the only reason Jiang’s case is getting attention is because she happens to have the same name as the ex-wife of Jiverly Wong, a Vietnamese American who shot 13 people in April at a Binghamton immigration services center. In looking for Wong’s ex-wife, reporters stumbled across Jiang.

Yet Jiang is by a long stretch not the first (or I imagine) the last immigrant of colour with a health issue to be forgotten within the double prejudice of a system that is both xenophobic and ableist. Jiang’s case is a disturbing 2009 echo of something that happened in 1935, when the government of British Columbia deported 65 Chinese nationals back to China. The documentation of these men, kept by the courts and their psychiatrists, is for the most part is so paltry and dismissive that it is difficult to tell if all the men were actually struggling with mental health. In any case the men were deported because they fit into neither the ethnic nor medical norms of their day.

The level of bureaucracy under which Jiang is struggling multiplies when we look at the conditions under which she came to be in the US in the first place:

In their home village in Fujian province, in southeastern China, the sisters said, Jiang was married under age. She hid in their mother’s house when she was pregnant with her second son, they said, because under China’s one-child policy, the village government would have forced her to have an abortion.

“She did not deliver in a hospital, and she almost died,” said the younger sister, Yu, 33, the first to emigrate. A few days after the birth, she added, officials found Jiang, sterilized her and imposed a heavy fine. Later, divorced and desperate, Jiang borrowed the equivalent of $35,000 to be smuggled by boat to the United States, hoping to find political asylum and bring over the young sons she left with their grandmother.

But grueling months at sea left her emotionally fragile, and in the summer of 1997, about a year after her arrival, she became so despondent about her separation from her children, and the burden of her debts, that she tried to kill herself by drinking bleach, her sisters said. The police took her to Bellevue Hospital Center.

“She was afraid of being arrested, so the next day she ran away,” Yu recalled. At times over the next decade Jiang seemed better, as she moved from work in Manhattan garment factories to waitress jobs in Chinese restaurants across the country. But an effort to bring her younger son into the United States through Canada when he was 8 or 9 backfired: he was caught by Canadian officials and placed in foster care.

“He intended to join up with her,” the younger sister said of the boy, now 16. “Now it’s impossible, because he’s being adopted.”

It is impossible to disentangle the different strands of prejudice; where the psychiatric system is used to persecute people of colour, the justice system or immigration system persecutes people with disabilities, and inhumane systems in general combine to drive people to madness — or as in the case of Jiang and Junius Wilson, a combo of all of those things.

In 1932 Junius Wilson (pictured right), a 24 year-old deaf black man in North Carolina was castrated and imprisoned in the state hospital after being found guilty of rape. In 1990s, when Wilson was in his 80′s, after 65 years he was cleared of charges and released. He did not actually leave the hospital though – after all that time it had become his home.

It is not a coincidence that both Jiang’s and Wilson’s story involves the brutal violation of reproductive rights; the role forced sterilisation has played in the dehumanisation of both people of colour and people with disabilities is nauseating. You can go here, here and here to read about how the forced sterilisation of indigenous people has been used to colonise the land we live on, and you can go here to look at how contemporary birth control programs are used to try and restrict the reproductive choices of young indigenous women.

Our history is rife with examples like Jiang and Wilson; but for the most part people are forgotten in a system where it may be easier to keep someone institutionalised, rather than probe the massive bureaucracy and prejudice that keeps them there.

The original articles I have linked use the term “mentally ill” to refer to Jiang; I choose not to use that language. As with Wilson, in Jiang’s case it seems more important to recognise that it is the illness within our system that creates the real tragedy, not Jiang’s condition itself. A huge part of ability rights activism (which, as is painfully clear in both Jiang and Wilson’s case, has innumerable links with anti-racist activism) is recognising that the problem is the system, not the person with the disability; it is not our bodies that are the problem, but how we culturally define health, and how we treat people who don’t fit with that definition. In the words of Jiang’s sisters who have been fighting to Jiang’s deportation order overturned:

The exact nature of Jiang’s illness is unknown, and immigration authorities would not release her medical records, even to her lawyers, saying she had refused to sign a privacy release. Her two sisters, who live in New York, describe her as a sweet, quiet woman whose mind broke under the strain of life as an illegal immigrant seeking asylum.

When it is clear that the catalyst to madness lies just as much within the systems we have in place to deal with bodies as it does within the bodies themselves, terming something simply a “mental illness” and placing the onus only on the body just doesn’t seem to cut it.