Last night, while channel surfing, I decided to check out So You Think You Can Dance. I was instantly attracted because of the diversity of cast and crew and the interesting, complex performances.

This is a really bad video, but this was the only video of this really amazing performance by Alex Wong. (If anyone spies another, let me know.)

Wong really is poetry in motion – here is a different performance of his:

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find other videos but there aren’t any performers I dislike. The whole crew seems to be both talented and professional, and the choreographers really know their stuff.

Did anyone else catch the show?

Reader BW sent in this op-ed published in the New York Times, which argues that the world should stop recognizing certain African nations. Pierre Englebert, of Pomona College, believes this will end many of the problems on the continent:

[F]or the past five decades, most Africans have suffered predation of colonial proportions by the very states that were supposed to bring them freedom. And most of these nations, broke from their own thievery, are now unable to provide their citizens with basic services like security, roads, hospitals and schools. What can be done?

The first and most urgent task is that the donor countries that keep these nations afloat should cease sheltering African elites from accountability. To do so, the international community must move swiftly to derecognize the worst-performing African states, forcing their rulers — for the very first time in their checkered histories — to search for support and legitimacy at home.

Radical as this idea may sound, it is not without precedent. Undemocratic Taiwan was derecognized by most of the world in the 1970s (as the corollary of recognizing Beijing). This loss of recognition led the ruling Kuomintang party to adopt new policies in search of domestic support. The regime liberalized the economy, legalized opposition groups, abolished martial law, organized elections and even issued an apology to the Taiwanese people for past misrule, eventually turning the country into a fast-growing, vibrant democracy.

In Africa, similarly, the unrecognized, breakaway state of Somaliland provides its citizens with relative peace and democracy, offering a striking counterpoint to the violence and misery of neighboring sovereign Somalia. It was in part the absence of recognition that forced the leaders of the Somali National Movement in the early ’90s to strike a bargain with local clan elders and create legitimate participatory institutions in Somaliland.

Englebert believes derecognizing nations would go like this:

The logistics of derecognition would no doubt be complicated. Embassies would be withdrawn on both sides. These states would be expelled from the United Nations and other international organizations. All macroeconomic, budget-supporting and post-conflict reconstruction aid programs would be canceled. (Nongovernmental groups and local charities would continue to receive money.)

If this were to happen, relatively benevolent states like South Africa and a handful of others would go on as before. But in the continent’s most troubled countries, politicians would suddenly lose the legal foundations of their authority. Some of these repressive leaders, deprived of their sovereign tools of domination and the international aid that underwrites their regimes, might soon find themselves overthrown.

Reading the article struck a few chords with me. I’m not particularly well versed in the issues facing various nations. I read Arise and check for news about telecoms and major political/technological/cultural innovations on the continent, but that doesn’t really provide a solid foundation for post-colonial political deconstruction.

However, a few questions linger in my mind:

1. The argument seems to be applauding the death of old school colonialism, but into the rise of a neo-colonialism. Expelling various nations from the UN, cutting off aid, and withdrawing embassies are major moves – so who gets to define failed states? Is it by military coup or by suffering of the people?

2. I have yet to see these arguments made about destabilized regions in other areas of the world. Is Africa being singled out, or am I missing some critical discourse around places like Kyrgyzstan?

3. I am not finding a lot of critiques (or engagement, really) of Englebert’s work. (There may be some in French, which I am not fluent in. However, since a few of his works were translated into French, it is entirely possible there is another dialogue going on.) Much of his writing is locked behind scholarly paywalls and/or textbook priced. The book he is currently promoting, Africa: Unity, Sovereignty, and Sorrow, is sixty-five dollars in paperback form. However, in an op-ed for The Christian Science Monitor, he suggests the societal ills plaguing the Democratic Republic of Congo could also be solved by forgoing typical government solutions and instead bypassing the state:

Congo presents Mrs. Clinton with the most daunting challenges and greatest opportunities of her seven-country trip to Africa. Yet outsiders have too often made things worse by cajoling and rewarding rapacious politicians and soldiers, reinforcing rather than abating the authority of a criminal state. Recent UN-supported operations against Rwandan Hutu rebels, for example, have encouraged the deployment of unpaid and poorly trained soldiers who loot, rape, and terrorize more than they protect.

Although Clinton will speak against “gender-based violence,” and Congress has approved a $15 million project for a “professional rapid reaction force” of Congolese trained in “the fundamental principles of respect for human rights,” this is unlikely to achieve much. Soldiers terrorize because they, like other state officials, benefit from near total impunity; they steal because their officers and politicians hijack their pay; and they rape because it is an easy way to control and dominate civilians.

It is only by exposing and stopping the scam that Congo’s tragedy will end. The more we contribute to rebuilding the state, however, the more we inadvertently restore authoritarianism, domination, and predation, features that have characterized Congo since its creation by Leopold II of Belgium in 1885. However failed a state Congo might be, Clinton must avert uncritically embracing its rebirth.

Englebert seems to share a similar philosophy as Dambisa Moyo (author of Dead Aid), by believing that reducing direct aid will force many governments into self-sufficiency. However, when I read critiques of the West (and some of the East) from a global South perspective, one of the recurring ideas is that developing nations are a petri dish, a place where theorists experiment with the people on the continent paying the price. Is Englebert’s proposed solution more of the same?

Your thoughts, readers?

Over at Sepia Mutiny, Anna writes about the fact that the new Facebook trend of replacing your profile pic with a photo of the celebrity who looks most like you poses a unique problem for some people of colour. She quotes from a number of friends who couldn’t find a celeb that looked like them:

“I’ve noticed that most of my friends of South Asian descent have changed theirs to Kal Penn when they don’t resemble him in the least… “all look same” syndrome, perhaps? “

“I’m only half-brown, and I hate that my doppelganger is white. I feel like I’m insulting my Dad with that picture. I’m not just white, even if I look it. I’m Indian, too!”

“I don’t look like Apu or that girl from the “Office”, so I guess I can’t play. Bummer.”

“I know I do not resemble anyone in the small group of desi celebs familiar to most Americans (e.g. Mindy Kaling, Padma Lakshmi, etc.). I couldn’t instantly think of a Latina/Persian/Arab/other brown-skinned celeb familiar to most Americans that I might resemble. (This is a small pool too! How many can you think of? The Kardashians don’t count ! Therefore, the number of potential possibilities seemed much larger in celebs more famous in South Asia than in the US. “

Personally I put up a picture of Pee Wee Herman. Unless it is hidden somewhere on his Wikipedia profile that he has some Chinese or Anglo-Irish heritage, I believe we don’t have any ethnic commonality.

Anyone else struggling to take part in the celeb doppelganger meme?

While I was at Web of Change, I proposed a caucus to discuss issues of race, class, gender, ability and access online. I gave a quick presentation outlining why technology is not neutral, and then opened it up to questions, comments, and discussions.

One of the attendees, Pam, brought up the term intersectionality. From the blank looks, I received from the rest of the room, I determined that this word has not gone far outside of the feminist blogosphere or feminist academia. I defined the term, then explained that sometimes we use this term to discuss our interlocking oppressions, or parts of our identity that cannot be separated from others.

Another attendee, Andrew, had a lightbulb moment and asked “Well, what about Interlocking Privilege and Oppression?”

Hmmm.

Good question.

Much of my focus is on cross-cultural organizing between various groups. Andrew had pointed out earlier, in another session that while I could identify potential allies based on visible minority status, he was rendered invisible by this type of organizing. (Andrew actually attended all three sessions we hosted on access.) After mentioning how he as a poor white person who organized in rural areas defined community, we started to bat around two core ideas: How do we organize to achieve similar goals among disenfranchised people while taking into consideration the very real issues of racism/classism/gender oppression/ableism that keep us divided? And two, how do we deal with interlocking privilege and oppression, which is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to organize along class lines?

(Image Credit:  shho)

It may very well be time we stopped giving Kanye West attention, but what do y’all think of this NSFW graphic from his blog, promoting his upcoming Fame Kills Tour with Lady Gaga?

Check it out after the jump…

Check out the graphic in its original context – it’s actually animated. For some reason when I transferred it over the animation coding didn’t come along.

My guess is that this is Kanye creating an image that features very graphic interracial sex, in order to demonstrate how much White America doesn’t care about black people. What, you looked at the graphic and didn’t like it? It’s because you’re racist! You hate seeing a black man violate a white woman! Or something.

But this graphic makes me uncomfortable, not because it features interracial sex, but because it manages to dehumanise both the woman and the man of colour.

There is something extremely generic about the woman (who incidentally is Lady Gaga). She’s blonde, thin and wearing bright red lipstick. (I read somewhere that Lady Gaga considers herself to be “redefining beauty.” Pullease! She’s a young skinny white woman who doesn’t wear pants. I do not see any boundary breaking there.) Basically, you couldn’t define female sexuality in a more uncreative way.* And she’s covering her boob, so she is simultaneously coquettish and sexually accessible: the ultimate male fantasy. Vomit. In other words, she doesn’t seem to exist for herself; the way she’s arranged, she very much exists solely for the titillation of the viewer.

Yet the man of colour is not doing any better. You don’t get to see any part of his experience, apart from the aggressive way he is grabbing the woman’s waist and his pink tongue flicking at her ear – two visuals that both seem to animalise him. And that’s just what we need, more images of black folks looking like wild animals.

And the graphic is also just boring; it reduces the race conversation to being a face-off between black and white folks. The racial make-up of the US is sooooo much more complicated than that. I’m just tired of folks dredging up tired and inaccurate controversies in order to appear daring.

I dunno. That’s my read. What’s yours?

*Incidentally I’m not saying that real live white women with blonde hair and red lipstick have a “boring sexuality.” I just mean this in terms of this being a manufactured image, it falls flat from my POV in terms of “shockingness.”