By Sexual Correspondent Andrea (AJ) Plaid

I saw Shame a couple of weeks ago with my homie Sarah Jaffe…and, on the real, I wanted to check out the flick because I wanted to see Michael Fassbender’s full frontal nudity. (And, considering how quick the box-office attendant was asking for photo IDs for this NC-17 flick, I guess quite a few under-17 others were trying to see the younger Magneto’s full frontal nudity, too.)

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT after the jump.

Synopsis: Fassbender plays Brandon, a white, handsome, successful office-working something-or-other (the film never states what he does for a living or where he works) living the upscale–and rather white–NYC life.  Brandon also has a sexual addiction, which McQueen frames as Brandon lacking any emotional connections and/or the ability to go about forming healthy ones–even with his own sister–in tandem with a series of sexual behaviors: Brandon inviting and paying female sex workers of various races and ethnicities; constantly masturbating (you first see him jerking off in his shower, and later he’s shown doing it in his office bathroom; and his sister catches him jerking off in a toilet); getting paranoid about the IT department talking about his hard drive, only to have his boss call him into the office about the porn found on it (though the boss blames Brandon’s intern for it, not Brandon); hooking up with a white woman at a bar that his married boss initially tried to pick up; his picking up another white woman at a random bar and, after some consensual fingering, puts his fingers under her white boyfriend’s nose to sniff (which leads to the boyfriend assaulting Brandon); after the assault, Brandon following a racially ambiguous male sex worker into the backroom of a gay bar, where he kisses the sex worker and gets a blowjob; participating in a threesome with two female sex workers, portrayed by white burlesquer DeeDee Luxe and Asian burlesque star Calamity Chang (both links NSFW).

When Brandon attempts to form a healthy romantic connection–after his sister busts him masturbating into the toilet–he throws out his massive porn collection and a couple of sex toys and approaches Marianne (American Violet‘s Nicole Beharie), who works at his office. She is one of the few Black people (let alone people of color) at the firm. They go on a date:

Then Brandon invites Marianne for an afternoon tryst at a hotel. Hepped up on a line of cocaine and the sheer excitement at this opportunity to prove he’s conquered his sexual addiction by himself, Marianne and he engage in some foreplay, only for Brandon not be able to get erect. Ashamed, he sends Marianne away and later has penetrative sex with a sex worker, a white woman, in the same room.

All of this is to give context to this radio interview excerpt between film critic Elvis Mitchell and McQueen. Towards the end of the interview, McQueen says this about casting Beharie as Brandon’s love interest (unfortunately, KCRW doesn’t have a full transcript of the interview):

Elvis Mitchell: I found interesting, too…there are women in the film and the way you sort of develop what the women do from Brandon. They really are fleshly in a way that he is not. I mean, they’re sort of in touch with their bodies in terms of living in the world in a way he is not: both his sister and the woman he courts at the office want to use their bodies for a different thing than he does.

Steve McQueen: …of course, Marianne–she, of course, is played by Nicole Beharie–I like Marianne. She’s sort of willing to try to make something out of something, which may not be a good thing to do. But she wants to take a chance.

EM: She’s also the grown-up in the movie. She represents looking for a future, which neither Brandon or Sissy are capable of doing. They’re both about the immediate. I felt it was interesting to make the one African American woman in the movie, the one person of color, [as] the person looking for a future rather than trying to find a momentary satisfaction. Even [Brandon's] boss is like that–a person who wants to be immediately gratified.

SM: That’s interesting. [Laughs] I mean, other people saying to me when I came to America and I wanted to cast [Beharie]. Because when I came to research the movie, of all the people but for this one guy–I think he was from somewhere in South America–were white who were dealing with sex addiction. I suppose it’s a different kind of situation, I’d imagine, where you’d find one kind of ethnicity. But I found it fascinating.

But when it came to the workplace it was as you see it. It was one Black person. It was like, “Wow, that’s kind of interesting.” And this girl could be Brandon’s girlfriend. But what was interesting was there was all kinds of  objections about this, of saying, “Oh, that wouldn’t happen there. That wouldn’t exist.” I said, “What, I don’t exist?” It was a very odd thing, having these conversations about having a love interest that was a Black woman with Brandon. It was interesting, that. It was fascinating, that.

But then, what also fascinates me is you have a lot of white American filmmakers who never cast a Black person in their movies and they made quite a few movies. How can you avoid that? That’s kind of weird. It’s like walking around with blindfolds on. How can you make movies in this country–and consistently make movies–and not cast Black characters in the main leads? I mean, I made two movies–and they’re art films–and the feature film are 90 percent white and my art films are 90 percent Black. There’s no distinguishing the two; it’s just one thing–it’s not “art” or “film.” That’s how it is.

EM: I waited fifty years for someone to say that.

What Sarah and I chatted about over post-movie brunch is that we really appreciated McQueen’s decision to cast Beharie as Brandon’s love interest. As Mitchell observes, Marianne is an adult, a woman with her own relationship loose ends (she tells Brandon she’s separated, not divorced) and healthy sexual curiosity and appetite (she agrees to the tryst; she eagerly and sensuously kiss Brandon back as they’re hiding behind a patterned glass partition at the office). Brandon knows, regardless of his condition, he has to come correct with Marianne; his frozen face as he watches her through the window of the restaurant of their first date displays his terror. Even in the above clip, Marianne holds her own flirting with Brandon. More importantly, Marianne and Brandon are drawn to each other in the film because they’re interested in each other, not as a Very Special Episode of Interracial Dating in America. Unfortunately, their relationship is a very short one due to Brandon’s addiction — and you never see Marianne again after she leaves the hotel.

Yet, Sarah and I gave gasface to McQueen framing Brandon having sex with another man and a three-way to signify Brandon “hitting rock bottom.” Why, we rhetorically asked, does homosexuality and consensual multiple partners — neither of which are really respected in US society — have to be the film’s shorthand for “sexual depravity”? McQueen could have shown Brandon’s nadir when the boyfriend assaulted him. To show Brandon engaged with the partners as a sign his utter debasement smells of homophobia and anti-polyamory.

Is Shame worth seeing? If the frisson of finally seeing an NC-17 film (“Woohoo! Grown-ass flick!”) making it to your movie theater is worth the price of admission, then … well, maybe. But, like all frissons, it won’t last long. If you want to see an interracial couple that’s a couple and not a Big Social Statement a la Something New, then…well, maybe. The relationship is short-lived. But just to see Michael Fassbender’s penis? You’ll be wildly disappointed because you’re not going to see it for very long at all.

H/t to Shadow and Act

Photo credit: Filmofilia

If you’ve seen the latest episode of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl (ABG), you probably caught J’s best friend Cece refer to White Jay’s ex as a “tr***y bitch in heels.” Or J’s co-worker Patty ask her if she’s “gay” because J cut her hair to a tweeny-weeny afro (TWA). Or J’s nemesis, Nina, asking her when did she “catch cancer” due to the new ‘do.

Some fans responded to the overt transphobic insult with an open letter on Crunk Feminist Collective Tumblr:

Dear Awkward Black Girl,

We love the show! We also love your continuous engagement with fans and your commitment to staying on the Web to maintain your vision. What we don’t love is the transmisogyny and misogyny in episode 11.

In episode 11, CeCe calls White Jay’s ex a “tra**y bitch in heels.” The word tra**y perpetuates violence and divisiveness amongst women by relying on the idea that trans women are not “real” women; it suggests that White Jay’s ex is somehow less than the main character J.

The word “tra**y” has a very real history of violence and discrimination, often targeting trans women. It has been used as a slur, as a way to objectify women, and as a way of denying the personhood of trans women on the basis of appearance.

We have seen your responsiveness to the fans of ABG and we hope that by raising this concern you will respond accordingly by not using such language in future episodes. There are so many awkward queer, trans, and disabled folks who love the show and it hurts to see and hear our lives used as punchlines. For those of us, the awkward black, queer folks who have lived at the intersections of our awkwardness, our blackness, and our transness, words like “tra**y” erase our lives, and our humanity. Phrases like “No lesbo” and the use of affected speech to imitate hard of hearing people detract from the vision of creating representations for the rest of us who are all too often maligned in mainstream media.

We look forward to many more episodes of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl that are hilarious without the use of marginalized groups as a punchline. We have confidence that you have the creativity to continue to push comedic boundaries in new ways and educate your audience in the process.

With fierce love,
alicia sanchez gill
Claire Nemorin
Moya Bailey
Kimberley Shults
Anonymous Awkward Others

Another tumblrer reblogged a tweet regarding the creators’ response to the Open Letter.

The initial Tumbl’d responses to this:

“This does not look promising.”

“hoping the response letter does not cause more pain.”

“well, shit. so much for finding a non-problematic show to love.”

Here’s the reply from ABG‘s co-creators Issa Rae and Tracy Oliver, found at Clutch Magazine:

Some of our viewers may have been offended by some of the language in our recent episode. We take this matter especially to heart, considering the CFC and members of the LGBT community were among the first to embrace ‘The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.’

Since our first episode debuted in February this year, ‘Awkward Black Girl’ has received an incredible outpouring of support from hundreds of thousands of fans. We love and appreciate each and every one of our fans! In return, we strive to provide a show that uses irreverent comedy and humor to address the oftentimes uncomfortable situations that many people have experienced at some point or another in their lives.

In creating a series of this nature, we are willing to accept the praise when the jokes work and the feedback when they may not.

Sincerely,

Issa & Tracy

Whereas a few Clutch Magazine commenters thought Rae’s and Oliver’s letter was”respectful” and “very well said,” quite a few commenters applauded Rae for “not apologizing” because that “would change the nature of the show.” Even Crunk Feminist Collective’s Brittney Cooper agreed  that it’s an “excellent” response. And the post and the comments at Very Smart Brothers applaud the response, some of the commenters going so far as telling trans people (and the gay, lesbian, and bisexual people who are cisgender–oh yeah, and a few of us cis, trans, and gender non-conforming folks who love bell hooks) to “get over themselves” and “stop being so sensitive” because ABG “offends everyone,” especially with the liberal use of “bitch” and “n***a.” In fact, one commenter states that ABG using the “tr***y bitch in heels” line as a sign of acceptability for trans folks.

Dare I say it? Yes…

What the hell kind of no-pology is this?!?

Racialicious guest contributor Erika Nicole Kendall tweeted exactly why I felt this qualifies as a no-pology:

See, here’s my thing: if you’re saying that folks in LBGT communities are some of the first fans of your show, wouldn’t you go out of your way to not turn off that fan base  by simply saying something like, “I/We deeply apologize for saying the word “tr***y” on the ep. I could’ve used another word to talk about J’s discomfort instead of making trans people–and, by extension, our transgender fans–the butt of a joke,” instead of essentially stating you stand by a transphobic slur that is used in conjunction to do much more damage than just create “oftentimes uncomfortable situations that many people have experienced at some point or another in their lives?”

Because the word “tr***y” isn’t bantered about just to make trans people “uncomfortable.” As @graceishuman pointed out on Twitter:

 It’s only hilarious if you accept that trans women are by definition a joke. There’s no inherent humor to it beyond that.

The history of the word is that a lot of trans people, especially trans women of color, have had it used against them in the context of violence, sometimes as they were being murdered.

This post at the Tumblr a bell and a pomegranate further explains why the fans who wrote the letter–and the rest of us–found the  ”joke” unamusing:

Well, and naturally, what “may have offended” some people is language—as though that’s the important thing, that a nasty word (a word, to be fair, I cringe at) was used.  But of course it wasn’t—the meaningful portion of the trouble is that the use of “tranny” as an insult to cis women is about participating in the cultural notion that trans women are fake/grotesque/doing womanhood wrong/unworthy of respect and that it is shameful/disgusting for a cis woman to be similar to one.  It’s about functioning as a placeholder for certain policing discourses about the comportment and appearance of women in general by deploying the extreme danger of trans oppression as a veiled threat while subtly shoring up that oppression.(*)  That’s why people are troubled by the word in the first place, and why the first critiques of it were brought up—not because it is an inherently evil word, but because it participates in negative, damaging stereotypes about trans women.  It could have been any word.  The problem is that “tranny” is deployed as a shorthand for that cultural idea.  If they’d substituted in a nicer, less-charged word as shorthand to suggest that a given woman was like a trans woman and therefore fake/grotesque/doing womanhood wrong/unworthy of respect, it would still be transphobic.

When we focus over-much on contaminated words, we sometimes miss—and allow the people who use them to sidestep—the larger problem of what those words represent and why they’re hurtful in the first place.

(*) You know, in the same way that young straight men calling each other “faggot” don’t literally mean “I think you are attracted to other men,” but “you are not behaving as I think a man should and if you don’t get in line I am suggesting you be treated as is appropriate for the disgusting people indicated by this word, who also don’t get in line and who you know are visibly punished for it.”  In the same way that “whore” and “bitch” are deployed—they suggest that there is a category of people who you are culturally aware have fewer rights/more vulnerabilities to violence/etc. and that if you do not behave as expected you might be relegated to that category and treated accordingly.  Capitalism does it by threatening people who have money with the constant specter of poverty and homelessness—and then uses that to enforce cultural norms of behavior.  Sexism does it by threatening that men might be treated like “bitches” and “pussies.”  And cissexism/transmisogyny does it by threatening cis women with worlds like “tranny” and “shemale.

As for ABG‘s use of the words “bitch” and “n***a” as a reason why it should be OK for the creators to, therefore, use the words “tr***y,” I’ll say here what I said on a radio interview about those white feminists who defended the sign “Woman Is the N****r of the World” at SlutWalk NYC’s march: unless Rae and/or other people on ABG‘s creative team is a trans person, the word isn’t for them to use because they are outside of those communities. And, even at that, if there is a trans person on the crew, that person’s presence still doesn’t give permission or license for ABG‘s cisgender cast and crew to use it because the other trans folks didn’t vote on that person to give that imprimatur to use the slur.

Even Patti’s comment about J being “gay” because of J’s short cut pivots on both homophobia and transphobia, namely that Black lesbians are stereotyped as “looking” a certain way that is “outside” of the hetero male gaze (and, by extension, hetero male sexual/romantic consideration), namely having a short afro, which is construed as “trying to be manly,” thus policing J’s femininity. Of course, Nina’s comment comment about “catching cancer” is simply ableist.

But I also feel like this is the part in the post where I need to repeat what we say quite a few times around the R: just because a person belongs to one or more marginalized group(s) doesn’t mean that person has an innate empathy for people in other marginalized groups. And “doing it for the art”–or to not be “politically correct”–adds insult to injury. Again, to quote Erika, in response to another tweeter:

…the non-responsive response they wrote, the onslaught of people defending them and saying “you didn’t do anything wrong” as if Black people forgot what it feels like to have you[r] very existence turned into something undesirable and slur-worthy…let’s just say it’s DUMB disturbing.

So, as much as I love J’s misadventures, I can’t quite walk down this transphobic, homophobic, and ableist path with her and her crew in this ep.

Image credit: Get on the Sofa

By Guest Contributor Nicole Cunningham Zaghia, cross-posted from Muslimah Media Watch

One of the main criticisms of TLC’s All American Muslim was that the show’s characters were representative of only a small part of the American Muslim community.  If you felt that way, then a great antidote is Me, the Muslim Next Door, a web documentary produced for Radio Canada International.  Filmed in Montreal and Toronto in both English and French, Me the Muslim Next Door is over two hours of audio, video, and still photography, broken up into 4-6 minute segments, with each of the show’s participants having several segments.  These segments took place in the participants’ personal landscapes – at home, on the street, with their families.

Me, the Muslim Next Door is cast like a cross between the United Nations and a Benetton ad. I love it.  We have:

• Eduardo, a Brazilian convert who, by his own admission, used to hate Muslims;
• Dania, whose father is Eritrean and whose mother is a convert from  Quebec;
• Mehdi, a Moroccan married to Laila from Afghanistan; they met on Facebook;
• Suad, whose mother is Syrian and whose father is part Palestinian, part Bosnian and, to add some fun to the mix, her husband Karim is part Finnish, part Egyptian;
• Rizwan, of South Asian background, who lives in Toronto and takes us to his neighbourhood masjid.

One of my recurring problems with Muslims in the media is that we are often portrayed answering the same questions in the same ways. Every show has something about polygamy or hijab or “fitting in.” We either go on tape with platitudes (“oh but you can only be polygamous if you afford it, isn’t it great that widows can be taken care of”), with statements designed to shock the middle classes (“jihad is ok for the kuffar!”), or with instant fatwas about how our religion says things in black and white (“Islam says music is BAD”).

These topics show up in Me the Muslim Next Door, but the  “personal landscape” format of the videos allows a fresh, personal light without bringing down the level of the discourse.

Mehdi and Laila, a mixed Sunni-Shia couple, explain that for them, the most important part of Islam is at the level of the shahada. If you say the shahada, you’re ok, and sectarian or other differences don’t matter.  That spoke to me. Jamila, part of a large family, explains why she stays close to her parents – because they made sacrifices for her when she was a child, so she will make sacrifices for them as an adult. Suad and Karim had a marriage semi-arranged by their MSA, “but” played the piano at their wedding. And Dania’s 23^rd birthday party was alcohol-free. She mentions alcohol – that she has never had it, but doesn’t see what it could bring to an already good time. These are people and situations I can relate to and the type of Muslims I want people to see when they ask me about my religion. The show’s participants leave out “Islam says this” and instead talk about these topics in the terms of personal choices they have made in their private lives.

As a francophone Louisianian who lived and studied in Canada, I absolutely LOVED seeing normal Muslim people I could relate to in their living rooms talking about their families, hopes, jobs and dreams. I found my place more in this show than I did in All-American Muslim. The difference is that the goal of Me, the Muslim Next Door isn’t sensational. It nails the fine line between “educating the mass market” and giving Muslim viewers characters who are different enough to be interesting yet similar enough for all of us, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, to find common ground.

I really, really wanted to like CNN’s Black in America 4: The New Promised Land: Silicon Valley (which premiered last night) as well as Miss Representation, a documentary currently airing on OWN. Both, however, left me feeling the same way, which looks something like this:

A couple of synopses before I state why I felt this way:

Black in America 4 explores the rarely discussed facts and stories of Black people in digital technology, especially those who are inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Host Soledad O’Brien frames this through the stories of eight African American entrepreneurs who move into together as part of digital business owners Angela Benton’s and Wayne Sutton’s NewME Accelerator program, which provides Black entrepreneurs time and (relative) quiet space—and possible connections with venture capitalists—for their business ideas.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s Miss Representation connects some of the dots between the stats, the personal stories, and media images about women and how those images affect not only those in the media— Margaret Cho recounts the fatphobia and other drama around her 1994 comedy All American Girl — but also those consuming the media, meaning the rest of us.

Now, I know that both shows are, respectively, very much Black Studies and Women’s Studies 101, presented as and for those who may know very little to nothing about either Black tech innovators and owners or media literacy and feminism. So, I can see both try to provide a “hook” for their audiences with that in mind. However, the way their respective creative teams frame their stories does both topics a disservice.

When I asked O’Brien about the aim of this installment at a preview screening, she said, “First of all, [Blacks] are clearly using the technology, but we’re not innovating the technology. And Silicon Valley keeps saying how colorblind it is. So, this part of the series examines that statement.”

Watching BiA4, I felt like I was watching O’Brien trying to mash a news report with a reality show. (“Watch what happens when tech-y Black folks get real…with Soledad O’Brien!”) I can understand that the NewME Accelerator was a good (and, from a seeing-news-as-a-business standpoint, a fiscally feasible way) for CNN to gather a group of Black tech business owners (and the non-Black people who attempt to help and/or comment on them) to tell a relatable narrative about the dearth of Black people in the field.  (BiA4 states early on that less than 1% of digital entrepreneurs are Black. The majority, it says, are white, young, Ivy League and first-tier university drop-outs, which, as pointed out in the post-screening Q&A screening I attended, is a privilege unto itself as far as starting businesses.) But I actually think a better way to tell both stories is to decouple them. If I could reconstruct the story, I would have had O’Brien, say, follow one or two Black digital entrepreneurs in depth as they attempted to get investors and utilized Benton and Sutton as pundits— along with angel investor/philanthropist Mitch Kapor, who directly refutes Michael Arrington’s claim of the digital ownership as “meritorious.” Or I would have followed the NewME Accelerator crew as the main subjects of a full-length documentary to air on CNN.

Also, another questionable point is how Asians and Asian Americans are considered in this report. The show starts off by saying that the tech-innovation worlds are “white and Asian.” Though the presence of Asians and Asian Americans should not lead to Arrington’s erroneous conclusion that the tech world is, therefore, “colorblind,” the presence of Asian and Asian Americans shouldn’t be discounted as failing to bring racial diversity to tech communities. The more subtle equation BiA4 makes, however, is “Black=racial diversity.”

At least BiA4 addresses, albeit imperfectly, race and racism in the tech field, Miss Representation — for all of the visually racial diversity (you see Cho, former Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice, Dreamworlds director Sut Jhally, media-literacy advocate Malkia Cyril, and Newark, NJ mayor Cory Booker, among others) — fails to talk about the issue of race and racism. When I asked why at a post-screening Q&A, the response was “We only had 90 minutes, though we’re planning a second movie to deal with race.” (Refer to image at top of this post.)

However, there were places in the film where race and racism could be mentioned, and it would have taken about 30 seconds. For example, a young Black woman talks about her hair and how media images make her feel about it. The narrator could easily say something like, “Far too many images we see in the media are of white women swinging long, flowing hair. Imagine how that would make a woman of color, whose hair may not do that, feel?”

I timed it: the quote took all of 15 seconds to read out loud. (I’ll be generous and give it about 30 seconds to account for dramatic voiceover.) Or even acknowledge that the majority of media images—both in the film and in entertainment itself, from news to shows to porn—are mostly of white women as both idealized and in variety of roles…and these are, quite a bit of the time, functioning in tandem. Again, all of a thirty-second voiceover or a statistic that could be one of many the film uses to further its argument on how the media hurts women and other people. The silence about race (actress Rosario Dawson is the only person who explicitly mentions “people of color”) — as well as class, gender identity, sexual identity, and  and physical ability, though the film does give a nod at how the media, especially television, fails to acknowledge women above the age of 35 as an audience or as characters — flattens the documentary’s discussion about women to the category of “woman,” as if female-presenting people all suffer from media images the same way. Of course, we don’t.

And I just quite can’t with Black in America 4 and Miss Representation.

Image credit: Bossip

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

The way our society talks about black women and marriage–from the daily paper to the pulpit to movies and self-help books–is flawed, sexist and damaging. When black women tell their own stories, a more thoughtful truth emerges.

I am working on a project juxtaposing the authentic experiences of African American women with the tragic common narrative about black women and marriage — a narrative that narrows lives, turns black female successes into failures and unfairly burdens us alone with responsibility for the success of black male/female relationships, black families and the black community. My goal is that my efforts will result in a published book.

I am currently working to identify black women to have frank discussions about how they navigate relationships, sexuality, singleness, marriage and divorce. If you, or someone you know, is willing to be a part of this effort, please contact me at Tamara@BackTalkBook.com.

Some things to know:

I am interested in interviewing black women of all ages, backgrounds, geographic locations and experiences. One goal of my effort is to illuminate the lives of women often erased in discussions of the black marriage rate, including married women, divorced women, women who don’t wish to marry, lesbian women, women in interracial relationships and others.

Subjects should be willing to participate in multiple one-on-one interviews both in person and through technology. Initial interviews will be conducted by phone in November. While I will not require an inordinate amount of time from interviewees, I will need to interact with them enough to understand their stories, experiences and perspectives.

Elements of participants’ stories, including quotes, will be included in a published work, written by me. Women have the option of being referred to by their full, real names; first names only or a pseudonym.

Beyond the ABC specials, “think like a man” romantic advice tomes and panic-inducing women’s magazine articles, exist the real stories of black women—too often told from another perspective and voice. Everyone is talking about black women and marriage. I want to talk back.

Please help by responding to and sharing this call for participants through your networks. Please direct questions about this project to Tamara@BackTalkBook.com.

So look, David: Chinese people eat weird food. There is a saying that “Chinese will eat anything with its back to the sky,” and another that says “Chinese will eat anything with legs but a table and anything with wings but an airplane.” These are Chinese sayings, I might point out — a sign that Chinese aren’t exactly unaware that the “delicacies” that send prim Westerners to their fainting couches are a little off the beaten path.

But Chinese are far from the only culture that eats weird food, and fuck, given that you’re from North Carolina, have you looked at what American Southerners traditionally eat? No? Chitlins! Possum! Muskrat! Bull testicles! Oh wait, you’re from suburban Raleigh, so probably not, given that most of the more exotic dishes in Southern cuisine, like in many culinary traditions, was the offspring of necessity — invention midwived by destitution. If you’re hungry enough, rodents will start to look tasty, as will chicken claws, stray innards and balls. And once you’ve eaten them long enough, all these things evolve into nostalgic signifiers — especially after you’ve pulled yourself out of poverty. They go from things you have to eat all the time to things you choose to eat once in a while, to remind yourself you don’t have to eat them all the time.

And this is what’s truly ugly about your piece, David: For someone who’s spent a lot of your career puncturing middle-class aspiration and self-delusion, your essay is unpleasantly blind to the fact that all of China is just a few generations removed from dire, desperate want, and that many people, like the peasant family you had such a bad experience sharing a meal with, continue to subsist on an annual income that’s a tiny fraction of what a sophisticated awesome American literary superstar like you loses in his sofa. And in a country of 1.3 billion people, even having braised pig’s stomach to occasionally go with your daily rice is a fucking luxury.

–From David Sedaris Thinks Chinese People (and Food) Are Repulsive, Which Makes Me Sad, Because I Used to Like David Sedaris

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JMB: Your reaction…

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

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

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

[COMMERCIAL]

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

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

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

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

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

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

The good women from Disgrasian have pointed out that American Apparel is selling a rice paddy hat for $15. I’m a little surprised it has taken American Apparel so long to get on with this “trend.” I remember first seeing it on whipster (white hipster) fashion student Nora from the first season of Project Runway, and that was like 8 seasons ago. Anyway, AA is really scraping the bottom of the PBR barrel with this one.

The Disgrasian bloggers let the hat speak for itself and instead eviscerate the would-be wearers as fashion victims. Fair enough. Wearing it would make you look like an asshat. But is it racist?

The hat brings me back to the sweet times of my youth when Abercrombie & Fitch was the hip brand (hey, I’m from Florida). A&F stirred controversy for their excessively racist t-shirts, that depicted caricatures of Asian men wearing – yup, you guessed it – rice paddy hats with slogans like “Two Wongs Can Make It White.”

Rice paddy hats have a long history in the American imagination stemming, most directly, from the Vietnam War. Movies like Oliver Stone’s Platoon, and other Vietnam War movies, often depict desperate, fleeing Vietnamese in rice paddy hats. The hats are also a common trope in editorial cartoons.

The hat itself isn’t racist, but it has a deep, Orientalist history that subsumes multiple nations, histories, and billions of people, under one big coolie hat. What is truly offensive is the ability of the West to take something like a rice paddy hat, something that has actual meaning and substance and shape and turn it into a cheap symbol of the Orient. If I drew a head with that conical hat on it, a viewer would immediately know to reference: Asian person.

I’m trying to think of a time and place where I would welcome the coolie hat, that is not mid-summer on Bedford on a whipster or traveling in rural Asia. It would be Halloween. The wearer would be an Asian American female, dressed like a Vietcong guerrilla fighter with a sniper rifle slung around her in a reference to Full Metal Jacket. The hat would look pretty badass.

I’m back, America.

I have been home, on U.S. soil, for the past 3 weeks, and it has given me some time to reflect on being a black woman in U.S. vs. being a black American woman in France. Living in France for the second time was rather colder than the first but a bit more illuminating in terms of race. That can be attributed to the fact that while Aix-en-Provence, the first city that introduced me to the entrancing world of French culture, is an international student-city in the sunny south, Vannes is situated in Bretagne, in the rainy north-west of the country. Aside from the nonstop rain, Vannes was whiter than white. Not to say I didn’t see black people – indeed, I noticed black women on my daily bus route to work, but many public spaces, like the port, the library, and the grocery store were lacking in color. Admittedly, there were actually two black hair stores and a café Afrique that shut down while I was there, but that was about it.

Binta, the young Senegalese woman who did my hair, broke it down for me one day, “There’s no black people here because it’s too small because there are no jobs. But a lot of them marry French.” By “French”, she meant white men, and her sister, the owner of Ebene Cosmetique, was one such example. I noticed, with a certain amount of chagrin, that many Europeans of color refer to their privileged compatriots as the standard of that country, while they are specifically marked by their race. “English” are white, but English blacks are, well, black. The same goes for conversations I have had with German blacks. I suppose we hold the same standard in America, but because of our sordid misdealings with the social construction, although blacks may not be considered true “Americans” we do not refer to our white counterparts as simply “Americans”. Indeed, we are obsessed with race but rarely given the proper tools to talk about, much less acknowledge, our race problems. And white Europeans know it, effectively allowing them to ignore their own issues, I discovered.

When I first arrived in Vannes, I befriended a couple of local boys, and we often went out to bars since there is little else to do in the city. Amazed at the utter whiteness of the venue, one night I asked my friend, “Do you ever notice that there are essentially no black people here – why is that?” and he said, “There are some, just not many. But it’s very different in France, we are much less conscience of race in France than Americans.” He smoothly side-stepped my question and turned the focus to America’s racism. Because America is a popular topic in the media, the nightly French news frequently reported breaking American news. Thus, the world beyond our borders is informed of how race issues are part and parcel to American culture.

While visiting Budapest, Hungary, a completely inter-ethnic group of us twenty-somethings went to smoke hookah – an American, two Portuguese, an Indian, and a Hungarian native to be exact. The inevitable subject of Barack Obama was broached and the U.S.’s fixation on race quickly followed. I mentioned how racist America truly is in its practices – on institutional and structural levels, as well as individual, and Pedro said, “Well of course this is because of your history with slavery, but it is absurd because America is a nation of immigrants.” Once again, we were able to discuss America’s hot-button issue, illegal immigration, without a mention of colorism in India or the Neo-Nazi march in Hungary last year.

Although I am the first to extol Europe’s interracial dating practices, it is no less difficult to have real discussions about xenophobia, racism, or Islamophobia as it is here in the U.S. And Europeans seem to have the ultimate trump card: America is the first and the worst of them all.

During a brief visit to Bordeaux, a beauteous, sparkling gem in the south of France, I paid a visit to the Museum d’histoire naturelle, The Natural History of Museum. I was pleasantly surprised to see there was an extensive exhibition of Bordeaux’s slave history. To my dismay, French historians downplay and minimize slavery parallel to American history. I have been to many history museums in the U.S., but none to my memory have put such a heavy emphasis on tribes selling their own into slavery.

Transcript:

Like many other civilizations, African societies practiced slavery. European demand boosted this practice and, from Senegal to Angola as well as in East Africa, African rulers and dealers made substantial profits from the slave trade. Most of those who were enslaved were captured in battles or were kidnapped. Some were the children of slaves, or were sold by their parents during times of famine. As demand in Europe increased, the African dealers carried out raids further into the interior and many of the captives died before reaching the coast. In time the slave trade moved to new areas and after 1780, the dealers from Bordeaux started buying slaves in Mozambique and Zanzibar. The slave shops spent 3 to 6 months traveling to different parts of the coast buying their cargo. Mortality rates were highest amongst those who were embarked at the start of the voyage.

Slavery has been practiced by all civilizations down the ages [first written record in Mesopotamia]. Often, as in ancient Rome, ‘slave’ was a synonym for ‘foreigner’, since most societies were repelled by the idea of enslaving people who belonged to their culture. Slavery was therefore sustained by wars and since captives had to be displaced or transported, the slave trade was developed. The African and Arab slave trades pre-date the arrival of Europeans. However, the European demand for the slave labour to exploit the resources of the New World saw this trade in human beings rise to the unprecedented levels over a short period. In the New World, slaves were considered to be property, no more than a raw work force.

Although it was probably futile, I attempted to re-read these descriptions from the perspective of someone who was unaware of slavery in Europe. These re-made versions of history would have us believe that slavery happened because it has been happening and Africans wanted to make money from it. Europeans merely wanted to take advantage of what was already going on. To my chagrin, beyond in-depth diagrams of slave ships and maps of the trans-Atlantic, there was no mention of the extant racism embedded in French culture. Like the new ban on veils, which reeks of Islamophobia but is also the status quo for Nicolas Sarkozy and his administration.

While I did receive a few stares, and the same questions about ethnicity over and over again, I never had overt experiences with racism: being followed around stores, out of pocket remarks or foreign hands touching my hair. As before, I strongly encourage all people of color to travel or live abroad, if it is feasible. Just know that the racial ‘baggage’ you take with you will be greeted with a brand-new, dare I say it, exotic version: racism exists abroad, you know, just not as bad as it is in America.

As a lot of other people have written already, it’s going to be hard for Hollywood not to take notice of the fact that a big tent pole picture with a mostly non-white cast can be hugely successful. Will this lead to studios suddenly populating their films with brown, black and yellow people (yes, I’m looking at you Akira)? Maybe not right away. But in an industry that often “copies” what’s already been successful, it’s definitely not going to be business as usual. And we know there’s at least one Asian American director now who actually cares about the community and has a lot more clout now to do what he wants. And that’s significant.

Hollywood has always been behind the rest of the arts when it comes to reflecting the world in which we live. You look at other fields like music where out and proud Asian Americans like our friends Far East Movement and Bruno Mars are at the top of their game and it’s clear it’s only a matter of time before the movies have to start reflecting that reality too or it’ll go the way of fax machines, VHS and CDs. Hopefully, the success of something like Fast Five will give Hollywood a big push in the right direction.

But where this reality is truly reflected is online where the young and Asian American generation of YouTube stars like Wong Fu, KevJumba and Ryan Higa are already the rock stars and pioneers. I know there are people (usually “old” folks on the other side of 25) who dismiss these guys as passing fads who will be unable to cross over into the “mainstream.” But I think those people are going to be eating their words if history is any indication.

- Excerpted from “What Does the Success of ‘Fast Five’ Mean for Asian Americans?,” on You Offend Me, You Offend My Family

On March 30 hip-hop producer Calvin “Mr.Cee” Lebrun—he of Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready to Die fame–was busted by New York City police allegedly receiving oral sex from a sex worker. Reports said Lebrun supposedly received the sexual favors from “a man” .  This got some people feeling some kind of homophobic way, complete with saying that “we all should have seen this coming” because of his alleged “golden showers” kink.  As Sister Toldja wrote earlier this week :

To be totally fair, this isn’t the average gay rumor; not only was the other person in the case allegedly paid for the act, the writer who dropped this gossip also claimed that Mister Cee has a thing for urinating on female strippers. So while much of the chatter is about Mister Cee being (allegedly) infected with The Gay, folks are aghast by this pee thing, too. Considering our attitudes about sexuality, that’s no surprise.

With homophobia and anti-kink sentiments roiling—and Lebrun and his supporters doing the NYPD Hip-Hop Conspiracy Step —hip-hop artist and critic dream hampton provided some level-headed analysis about the situation:

While highly regarded in the hip hop industry and in New York, Mister Cee is not necessarily famous. Still, his arrest gave opportunity to talk about the persistent poking around hip hop’s “closet,” where speculation about sexual orientation is practically a sport. Charlamagne actually elevated the conversation by asking why a married 44-year-old man was seeking sexual favors from a 20-year-old, professional or otherwise, and if that, then why in a parked car? I argue that none of this would be a discussion, viral or anywhere else, had Cee been arrested with a 20-year-old woman, be she prostitute or not. I also don’t believe, 2011 or not, that hip hop is a safe space for anything other than aggressively heterosexual public behavior or affirmation. While obviously lesbian women MCs and personalities remain silent if not closeted about their sexuality, there is even less space for men to appear bisexual or homosexual.

I believe that Mister Cee’s sexuality is a personal matter, one he must reckon with himself and his wife. But Charlamagne’s co-host Angela Yee took the position widely held by heterosexual women—that closeted bisexual men are a health hazard, exposing trusting women to AIDS and more. While I’m not dismissive of those concerns, particularly in a marriage, where condom use is expected to be abandoned, I do know that we heterosexual Black women don’t exactly offer safe spaces for bisexual men to express their desires.

I’m also far more concerned that the transgendered 20-year-old who allegedly serviced him be safe, particularly if he is a sex worker. I wished aloud on my own Twitter feed that the discussion about Mister Cee would be one about decriminalizing sex work and focusing on harm reduction rather than speculating if Mister Cee is closeted.

Hampton is right in this respect.

The sex worker who is said to have provided the service, it turns out, is–based on the clues and cues I have picked up on from the media as well as personal education around trans issues and media literacy–a trans woman named Brooke-Lynn Pinklady not a “transvestite” that the first link’s source and other news and gossip sites—both cisgay and presumably cisstraight–thought to misgender as “a man.” (Even hampton refers to her as a “transgendered male.”) There’s a difference—a big difference—between a cis man, a “transvestite,” and a trans woman. (And, for the 50-11th time, the word is not “transgendered.” As several trans activists have point out, no one says “gayed” or “heteroed.” It’s “transgender” or “trans.” And I’m not going to go there about the word “trannie.” Suffice to say: don’t. It’s a slur. Don’t.)

To make the whole matter much worse, several outlets—and even the NYPD, never known at the bastion of tolerance, let alone acceptance and advocacy of trans people–refer to Brooke-Lynn by her government name instead of, like this post, honoring her as how she presents gender-wise.  Since too few people accorded her any sort of respect around her gender identity, we’re getting transphobia–specifically transmisogyny–twisted in the homophobia. Because of the constant misgendering of Brooke-Lynn as a “he,” out comes the assumption that Mr. Cee supposedly had sex with a “man.” No, Mr. Cee had sex with a woman, full stop—regardless of how he sexually identitfies. As Monica Roberts at TransGriot writes:

Many of us still have ID’s with mismatched name and gender code info or are in states that despite us having legal name changes, refuse to change gender codes until the person undergoes GRS.

…

SRS is not the end all and be all to determining gender identity or when a person transitions to the other gender.

As far as I’m concerned, the second you swallow you first hormone or take your first shot of testosterone, begin living in the opposite gender and make moves to harmonize your body with that gender role that may or may not include surgical options, you ARE that gender.

Many transpeople who would like to have it either aren’t able to afford genital surgery or have health issues that prevent it. There are many transpeople successfully living in our new gender roles despite possessing neoclits in our panties.

To break this point down for you: gender is between your ears, not your legs.

With that said, let’s bring this back to hampton’s concern.

According to a landmark report from the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force , sixteen percent of trans people of color (TPoCs) who responded to the organizations’ survey have turned to selling sex and drugs in order to survive. Furthermore, the report states:

• Respondents who were currently unemployed experienced debilitating negative outcomes, including nearly double the rate of working in the underground economy (such as doing sex work or selling drugs), twice the homelessness, 85% more incarceration, and more negative health outcomes, such as more than double the HIV infection rate and nearly double the rate of current drinking or drug misuse to cope with mistreatment, compared to those who were employed.
• Respondents who had lost a job due to bias also experienced ruinous consequences such as four times the rate of homelessness, 70% more current drinking or misuse of drugs to cope with mistreatment, 85% more incarceration, more than double the rate working in the underground economy, and more than double the HIV infection rate, compared to those who did not lose a job due to bias.

I agree the cruel parlor game of Suspecting Teh Gayz, especially on spurious reasons like being down with kink, needs to cease within some Black communities as well as a conversation around decriminalizing sex work needs to open up.  I also think what happened with Mr. Cee is a perfect opportunity to talk about transphobia, gender identity, and gender policing, too—which, as an ex-friend pointed out to me, tend to be the “what’s really going on” when some want to go homophobic because they want to judge what a “real man” or a “real woman” is supposed to look like and act like.

We’re wrecking too, too many lives with this basic disrespect.

Photo Credit: thesmokinggun.com

1. Diversity is content knowledge and text: as stated earlier, there is a wealth of information, lessons, techniques, and vocabulary that diversity has unearthed and exposed for all people to draw from. Much of my own Latinidad was informed by W.E.B. DuBois’s introduction of double-consciousness to American culture. Gloria Anzaldua’s notion of borders can help higher education look at how they frame “global” “intercultural” and “internationals” as it has informed me with understanding the intra-group dynamics between Latinos who come to school as International Students, and those who are U.S. domestic.
2. Diversity provides a set of tools: When I first designed a Latino Leadership course for the University of Maryland, I introduced leadership halfway through the semester, not until we laid out a vocabulary of what Latinidad is in relation to social consciousness, followed by a survey of social issues affecting Latinos. Reappropriaton, code-switching, critical thinking, inclusion, dealing with difference, combating oppression, dialogue, and the third-eye feeds directly into Leadership as a tool for social change, a hybrid, not an addendum to be added afterward. Resulting models would inherently have these components within their DNA. Early Hip Hop is another example of a set of tools designed by a certain few, carrying on the ability to be held and utilized by many outside.
3. Diversity a continuous process with an outcome to be seen and felt: building blocks and  masonry must result in the creation of a building. But what does it look like? Take into account which voices were present, what conflicts arose and how were they addressed, what processes and structures were reframed for inclusion, what knowledge was unearthed, what issues of power and privilege eradicated in the process. In addition, the process of diversity means constant revaluations of the questions, which are answered and used again as a new equation to be recalculated again.

I may be off here. But, I hope future events can take into account the entire scope and range of the “D” word. It hurts when people walk with you, but still don’t get you. Again, I’m not a fan of the word. I use it alongside “equity,” “inclusion” “multiculturalism” interchangeably. I’m not championing the word, but advocating for a more comprehensive terminology that does not leave me as a checkbox, but a complete change agent and contributor to the new.

(Image Credit: “Unfinished Painting” by Keith Haring)

Remember this?

Toni Bond Leonard, President/CEO of Black Women’s Reproductive Justice BWRJ), said this about it (from RH Reality Check):

“The groups behind these heinous attacks upon Black women care nothing about Black children or the Black community. These are some of the same groups who fought against healthcare reform and oppose government safety net programs that would directly benefit Black women, our families and our communities.”

“This billboard and the twenty-nine others they plan to erect are offensive to Black women and the Black community, overall. We saw them cowardly placing the billboards in the dark late last night. These billboards are painting an abhorrent image of Black women as perpetrators of a plan to eradicate the future Black race.”

“That they would place these billboards in the Black community with such a despicable lie is reprehensible. It also must not go unnoted that they placed the billboards on the side of a building facing a vacant lot filled with garbage and broken glass. This only further shows their disrespect for Black women and the Black community that all they could think to do was put up billboards telling us Black women are preventing future leaders from being born. What about highlighting the need for economic resources to remove garbage-filled lots in urban areas and creating safe communities.”

And, according to BWRJ, Life Always, the anti-choice group who placed these billboards around Chicago’s South Side,  is backed up by the same funders who are down with Sarah Palin. o_O

Akiba Solomon, in her analysis of the Chicago anti-choice ads, writes on how artist Stacey Muhammed re-imagines them:

(The small print says: “Police terrorism, incarceration, medical apartheid, miseducation, poverty, racial profiling.)

As well as this:

(The copy: “The most dangerous place for an African American is in a world that criminalizes its mothers.”)

Then, thanks to a tip from reproductive-justice advocate extraordinaire Aimee Thorne-Thomsen, we heard that Chicago Tribune reports on a group–who wanted to remain anonymous beyond identifying as “social workers and community members”–who felt like this about those ads:

This sign says, “In 21 minutes this sign should be gone.” Another sign from the protesters said, “Abort Racism.” Chicago Tribune’s Megan Twohey writes that one blew away.  Unfortunately.

Photo/image credits:  Life Always; Stacey Muhammed/Colorlines; Heather Charles/Chicago Tribune

By Arturo R. García

Bill Cosby seems to be behind the idea of a “Muslim Cosby Show,” which is understandable – until we remember that he paid for research that contradicts his argument on its behalf.

According to The Root.com’s Jenée Desmond-Harris , Cosby called the site to defend the concept, brought up almost flippantly by CBS’ Katie Couric on her webseries this past December. As part of a panel discussion – which included Desmond-Harris’ colleague, Sheryl Huggins Salomon – Couric made this suggestion:

Maybe we need a Muslim version of The Cosby Show… I know that sounds crazy, I know that sounds crazy. But The Cosby Show did so much to change attitudes about African-Americans in this country, and I think sometimes people are afraid of what they don’t understand — like you, Mo… If they became part of the popular culture …

During the call, Desmond-Harris wrote, Cosby emphasized his show’s focus on the family unit as a way viewers could find common ground:

When I get into taxicabs and/or limousines — and you know the taxicab situation in Washington, D.C.; that’s little Africa — every time I take the cab and I go to the hotel — the Madison, the Jefferson — the guy will look in the rearview mirror with recognition. And then I say, ‘How is the family?’

That’s when [the cab drivers] will break out pictures of the children. These are people from different countries in Africa, all of ‘em males — I’ve not met the females yet. But they talk about the family, they talk about what the children are doing, what they themselves are doing. They work 16 hours a day, and they all echo the same thing: You know why I like that [Cosby] show? Because it’s about family.

Later in the interview, he says a family-friendly show involving American Muslims would “put the truth out” and force the viewers to ask themselves key questions:

Am I a person who needs to change my attitude about [someone]? Was I a hater, and enjoying hating, and enjoying the fact that I really did not understand? That like an awful lot of racists, I didn’t care to know the truth, I just enjoyed hating? In the Muslim religion and culture, it can be different [from what we believe], but it’s what they believe in. If we take the good [from it] and the good works, it’s all there and it’s all about the same thing: Do good unto others. The strength of oneself.

What Cosby doesn’t mention are the less-than-positive results of a study he funded by University of Massachusetts-Amherst professors Sut Jhally and Justin M. Lewis, released in 1992 under the title Enlightened Racism: The Cosby Show, Audiences and the Myth of the American Dream. A synopsis of the findings is posted at Professor Jhally’s website:

[The Cosby Show] promotes the dangerous myth that blacks who don’t “make it” have only themselves to blame. The authors interviewed 52 focus groups, learning that viewers involve themselves deeply with the show and often see it as reality. White viewers can identify with and accept TV’s Huxtable family as “nice” blacks; black viewers appreciate the show’s lack of racial stereotyping. However, the authors argue, The Cosby Show ‘s images of the black upper class — like most images broadcast in recent years — hide and distort how most blacks live, thus relieving white viewers of responsibility for such inequalities.

However, Azeem Ibrahim, a Fellow and Member of the Board of Directors at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, defended the idea in a column for Illume Magazine, citing the work of playwright Wajahat Ali as a guidepost:

Ali’s characters bicker, laugh, complain, pontificate and discuss topical issues such as racial profiling, the War in Afghanistan, religious values and the importance of lamb biryani in a refreshingly honest, self critical and amusing manner reflecting the diversity of opinions that exists within Muslim communities.

But the core of the play deals with their very common and universal issues that everyone struggles with on a daily basis regardless of religion or race — questions of identity, purpose, sibling rivalry, dating, and parental expectations. The globalized dialogue, which mixes slang, proper English, Urdu and Arabic, feels authentic and reflects the multicultural mosaic of modern America.

By creating real, complex human characters, who just happen to be Muslim and American, Ali’s play illuminates the beautiful thread of commonality that exists and is shared between two allegedly alien cultures that some incorrectly assume are destined to clash. The play is a rare cultural story that simultaneously satisfies both Muslim and non Muslim audiences and proves conclusively that being Muslim and American is not mutually exclusive.

Plays like The Domestic Crusaders and TV shows like The Cosby Show cannot shoulder the burden in magically erasing bigotry and the cultural divides that persist. However, these universal stories, in conjunction with active political and civic engagement, education, responsible and effective foreign policy, fair and balanced stories by the media, and successful partnerships with multicultural communities, can help eliminate fear and misunderstanding.

Phrased like that, the thought of an American counterpart to Canada’s Little Mosque On The Prairie sounds more plausible. But if anything, a more informal “study” by The Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi showed … well, it’s apparently going to take a lot to win over the “average American”:

In the story, Mandvi interviews Cordoba Initiative chairman Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a consultant on The Cosby Show, before unveiling a near pitch-perfect mock-up of the show featuring a suburbanite family – the teenage son listens to Toby Keith! – to a focus group that is less than receptive, offering up these critiques:

• “If you’re trying to portray Islam, maybe you should talk about Islam.”
• “You gotta have that closet terrorist or something.”
• “You could have, like, an uncle Rahib or something, who came over and he’s a Bedouin and he lives in the basement in a sandbox or something, with a goat.”

Like a lot of the Daily’s best stories, Mandvi’s conclusion is as cringe-worthy as it is true: “Apparently, the best way for a show to combat Muslim stereotypes is to confirm Muslim stereotypes.” It would seem Jhally’s and Lewis’ findings still hold up.

By Sexual Correspondent Andrea (AJ) Plaid

I’m glad I saw the legend, at least.

I had heard about Samuel Fuller’s film White Dog in whispers, like a deeper-than-the-FBI-and-the-Illuminati-plotting-in-Area-51 conspiracy theory among my more “conscious” Black acquaintances — mostly because the film was banned, though no one ever said exactly why.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I attended a screening of the film at the the Maysles Cinema in Harlem, hosted by the the Ego Trip hip hop collective – who are, in full disclosure, the R editrix’s heroes – as part of the movie’s house series, “I See White People,” billed in the theater’s program as a “quarterly series on the visibility of white racism, white privilege, and unacknowledged white culture.” Ego Trip’s Chairman Jefferson Mao added, deadpan, that the film was chosen because “we’re fans of the racist dog horror genre.”

To say the film’s history is “complex” should qualify it as one of the word’s understated synonyms. The history of the book upon which it’s based would qualify as another synonym. Spoilers and highlights from a Q&A discussion Ego Trip hosted after the screening are under the cut. (If you have a slightly deeper quick-and-dirty curiosity, read here.)

SPOILERS AHEAD

The plot is rather simple: Julie, a young white actor (played by 80s teen star Kristy McNichol) decides to adopt a white German shepherd she hit during a nighttime drive.  She thinks the dog is the perfect pet. However, other people suss something’s wrong with it, starting with the actor’s white boyfriend (Jameson Parker).  What’s wrong is the white dog is a “white dog,” a canine trained to lethally attack Black people, from the sanitation worker to the actor’s Black co-star to a random pedestrian.

When Julie finally recognizes this, she sends the dog to a wild-animal training refuge for re-education. The refuge’s owners are divided on what to do with it: Carruthers (Burl Ives), a white man, tells her the dog is a lost cause; Keys (Paul Winfield), a black man, reluctantly, then determinedly, tries to reform it.

Keys also explains to Julie that the dog’s behavior was probably the result of conditioning: the original owner paid homeless and/or drug-addicted Black people to abuse the dog when it was younger, to the point that the dog was conditioned to associate Black people and being attacked. This is underscored by an encounter between Julie and the owner, an older white man and his two granddaughters. Later, the dog, retrained to not attack Black people, hesitates about attacking Julie, then turns and runs towards Carruthers in teeth-baring mode. The dog leaps, and Keys shoots.

Director Roman Polanski was hired to direct White Dog in 1975 before his being brought up on statutory rape charges led him to leave the U.S.  Six years and several creative teams later, screenwriter Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential), who was to have worked with Polanski, and director Samuel Fuller took on the project (with the encouragement, curiously, of ex-Disney CEO Michael Eisner.)

At the time, the NAACP, along with other civil-right leaders and organizations, expressed concern that the film would spark racial violence, questioned using a book written by a white man (and a “pulpy” book at that), and criticized Paramount for hiring the mostly white film crew. The studio brought in two Black consultants to critique the Black characters. One, a vice-president at the local PBS station, said he found nothing wrong with the depictions; the other, an NAACP vice-president, thought the film would aggravate race relations in light of the Atlanta child murders occurring at the time.

Fearing a NAACP-threatened boycott, the studio shelved the project without telling Fuller. Infuriated by Paramount’s action, Fuller moved to France and “never directed another American film.” White Dog was theatrically released in France and the U.K. to positive reviews in 1982. The first time the movie appeared in wide release in the U.S. was as an edited-for-TV movie for cable in 1983. NBC planned to broadcast White Dog in 1984, but scrubbed the plan due to continued pressure from the NAACP. At best, some people may have caught the flick in the subsequent years in art-house movie houses and at film festivals. Finally, the Criterion Collection released White Dog on DVD in 2008.

The ensuing Q&A became a fascinating discussion of why the dog would have become such a trigger for the NAACP’s fear. As Ego Trip’s Gabriel Alvarez noted, “Using the dog to symbolize racism is interesting because the dog is seen as part of family.”

One audience member said that, because of the furor surrounding the Michael Vick dog-fighting scandal, the pop consciousness around dogs and African-Americans, especially men, would drastically alter White Dog’s reception if released today — especially in light of Keys having to kill the dog at film’s end. Other audience contributions from that night:

• “The symbol of dog is ingrained into the consciousness of Black people with the civil rights movements with dogs and hoses.”
• “I remember hearing about an MLK park where some people wanted to have a dog park.  But it became a big issue along racial lines.  What I found out was Black people felt it was disrespectful to have a dog park in a park named after MLK due to the history of dogs and Blacks and violence.”
• “What the movie shows is that there’s a need to be truth and there needs to be reconciliation. What I’ve noticed is that young white people need to be aggressive with their parents regarding racism.”
• “I want to know from white people how can white people facilitate change….”
• “By creating such things as film. Yeah, the film is cheesy, but there’s also a film language that Fuller uses.”
• “What people need to do is to understand and deconstruct that the country has been founded on inequality.”

The discussion turned to how the film dealt with racism itself, a topic I engaged in with Jefferson:

Me: It was a very ’80s message film.
The moderator responded that White Dog was “straightforward” about white racism.
Me: It was straightforward because it was the ’80s. So the racism was (more) obvious, so the message was obvious. Now it’s morphed into Glenn Beckian ‘I can be racist, but don’t call me a racist.’
Jefferson: Stylistically, it’s very 80s. But it was ahead of its time. Fuller’s career was interesting. He was known for a lot of B movies but tried to sneak in social issues. Yes, it’s 80s exploitation, but there are powerful moments, like the child getting whisked away while the dog is hunting.
Me: But saying that it’s very 80s isn’t a slag, but a simple observation.

After the Q&A, I shared my opinion with Gabriel that every decade has a “message” film about racism that is reflective of not only of time period stylistically, but also where ideas about racism were and are. The 80s had White Dog and John Sayles’ Brother from Another Planet. The 90s had John Sayles’ Lone Star, Anthony Drazan’s Zebrahead, and Tony Kaye’s American History X. All of them were “race message films” that were very much of their time.

Exiting the theater that night, I noted the strange irony — and hope – of the series being housed in an indie theater located in the nexus of white-gentrifying Harlem. Perhaps this series is a good tonic, if not a great meeting point, for whites and the PoCs left in Harlem to gather to talk about the transitioning nabe and how well-off whites gentrifying it isn’t simply viewed as a “the neighborhood changing” so much as a blithe takeover, fortified by unaddressed white privilege, of a perceived spiritual and physical home of some Black people and our allies in the US and the world. However, considering that two white couples who came to watch the flick left as soon as the film was over—and, as a result, tipped the Q&A audience to majority people of color. We’ll see.

The Maysles Cinema crew wants to take their “I See White People” series on tour. Next stop: Brooklyn, NY.

The thought of writing about my faith terrifies me.

This terror is (mostly) irrational.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those were challenging times, man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But.

Here’s my ‘but.’

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

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

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

Watching black folks on Twitter tells no more about African American culture than watching the forums at Salon or Gawker reveals about white culture. Sure, among certain Twitter groups, black folks relax and use vernacular and call on experiences that are unique to us. But attempting to assign deep cultural meaning to trending topics like #hoodhoe is a reflection of racial bias. We do ourselves no favor by buying into the thinking that topics like this and #itaintrape reveal something particularly significant about black people. Don’t get me wrong, these memes are misogynist. But anyone who has spent more than two seconds online knows that misogyny and sexism are everywhere–a reflection of American…no…world culture, not that of any particular race. Consider the deeply sexist conversation surrounding the Julian Assange sexual assault accusations and the trolling on the #mooreandme hashtag. These were hardly driven by black Twitterati.

If some white people are amazed at what black folks do on Twitter, it is a sign of their own ignorance and prejudice. Williams laments that on the anniversary of the disaster in Haiti, the #haiti hashtag peaked at number 76 on the Twitter trend list, far below a slew of vulgar and sexist tags. But are black people solely to blame for that? Were all the white people on Twitter discussing Haitian relief efforts? Why should black people be more or less ashamed of the idiots among us than people of the majority culture? Why should silly and profane Tweets written by black folks hold more weight than the equally silly and profane Tweets written by everybody else?

I, for one, refuse to be burdened with the actions of @lilduval, some dude I’ve never heard of who created the  #itaintrape meme, nor those of @slimthugga, who waxed yesterday about sleeping with white women in honor of MLK Day.

~~Tami Winfrey Harris, “Rejecting the Notion of “Black People Twitter“

Image credit: Boing Boing (via Portfoli)

By Arturo R. García

With the Green Hornet trailer attached to various showings of the latest Harry Potter movie, more of America got introduced to Jay Chou, the newest Kato. Sort of.

See, if all you had to go by was the preview, you’d guess Chou’s Kato was there solely to help Seth Rogen discover his inner Jack Burton, or something. But according to Asian Angry Man, who got to read some of the script, the Kato role represented a golden opportunity – for an Asian-American actor:

There are plenty of Asian stars with international appeal and all that, but I get the feeling it would work out best for everyone if English-language proficiency wasn’t a major hurdle for whoever gets this role. Of course, I’m not the guy making decisions at Sony.

One theory suggests that the guy making said decisions cast Chou  – and before him, of Stephen Chow, who was also slated to direct Hornet before dropping out – because of the hope to tap into the markets where he’s a multi-platform star:

By this reasoning, the film’s dynamic would be flipped in promoting the film in Asia: Kato would be highlighted as the heroic half of the team, with Rogen’s Britt Reid getting tagged as the sidekick. But I’m curious to get our reader’s takes not just on seeing Chou get what could be a breakout role for him in the U.S. market, but arguments like AAM’s.

By Guest Contributor Eric Arnold, cross-posted from Colorlines

I am hip-hop!—KRS-One

I am Oscar Grant!—anonymous graffiti

As the Oscar Grant saga has played out over the past 22 months, the Bay Area hip-hop community—a multi-ethnic, multi-generational coalition of musicians, visual artists, activists, students and ‘hood kids—has stood at the forefront of the movement to hold police accountable for his death. Within a day of the New Year’s morning 2009 shooting, Oakland rapper Mistah F.A.B. and singer Jennifer Johns recorded a tribute song, which addressed not only the shooting, but the larger issue of violent deaths of young black men at the hands of police.

Over the past months, F.A.B. and Johns’ initial response has grown in the hip-hop world to encompass rallies, benefit concerts, panel discussions and lectures, spoken word ciphers, blog and vlog posts, even bike rides in honor of Grant’s memory. When former transit cop Johannes Mehserle’s trial was moved from Alameda County to Los Angeles, youth activists and organizers in L.A. picketed daily in front of the courthouse. It’s not a stretch to say that Grant has become the Lil’ Bobby Hutton of his generation—a young black man, killed by a police bullet, who has become representative of a larger struggle for self-determination.

“People have kept Oscar Grant on the public’s mind,” says Boots Riley of the Coup.

So, why? What has made Oscar Grant so resonate within the hip-hop community?

For one, as Riley says, “There’s no sidestepping the egregiousness of the act. It was a brutal murder.” But Grant’s youthfulness also can’t be ignored. Just 22 when he was killed, Grant was part of the hip-hop demographic. When other youth looked at pictures of him, they saw themselves, their siblings and their friends reflected in his toothy grin, black hoodie and watch cap.

Police accountability has long been a theme in hip-hop. For decades, rappers have decried racial profiling, brutality and corruption by law enforcement officers. Yet those efforts have been undermined on a national level by rightwing coalitions whose targeting of gangsta rap has also caught activist emcees in their crosshairs. By focusing on violent, sexually explicit lyrical content, hip-hop’s critics have muddled rap’s accountability message—while major labels, commercial radio and cable TV have shied away from promoting political themes in rap. As Mistah F.A.B. says of his Grant tribute (“My Life”), “The major corporations who have the ability, they’re not gonna play a song like that. That’s the last thing they want to do, is rally the troops.”

But while hip-hop’s engagement around police accountability may not have coalesced into a national movement, it has taken hold in the Bay Area’s activist-infused environment, where social justice and hip-hop have long overlapped.

The Bay’s unique combination of street-level organizing and numerous independent hip-hop groups that are unafraid to express themselves politically has come together around Oscar Grant. According to Riley, “The organizing hasn’t really stopped.” He adds: “I don’t accept this idea that people are apathetic.”

The legacy of Black Power is well-evident in Oakland, where ex-Black Panthers have become parents, in many cases, of hip-hop generationers. Add the Bay’s history of radical labor and student protest movements, and you have an explanation of why its hip-hop community has maintained a grassroots awareness and political consciousness not always present in major urban areas.

The Panther influence has clearly rubbed off on rappers like F.A.B., who says he recorded the Grant tribute out of respect and concern for the community. “Instead of going out and ignoring [the issue],” he says, “I felt I needed to bring awareness to it outside of Oakland, Calif., and outside of the Bay Area.”

F.A.B. adds that while he’s known for his street anthems and party songs, “There are many people who don’t know that I do conscious songs, uplifting songs, community awareness songs.” His tribute to Grant, he says, “got great reviews from family members and close friends of his.” And he certainly helped bring national attention to the cause by wearing an Oscar Grant t-shirt during an appearance on BET.

But F.A.B. wasn’t just riding the Grant bandwagon to boost his own fame. He solidified his grassroots status by appearing at a rally held at the site of Grant’s death—the Fruitvale BART station—a week after the incident, when the community was still in uproar and before Mehserle had been charged with a crime.

Other local musicians, including Zion-I and Kev Choice, volunteered their services to perform at subsequent justice rallies held in downtown Oakland, where many of the crowd donned Oscar Grant masks. I am Oscar Grant.

When ranks of police assembled in the Oakland streets, a young, dreadlocked African-American man bravely confronted a phalanx of officers dressed in full riot gear. Laying down in front of the officers with his hands behind his back, symbolically recreating Grant’s last action before his death, the gesture made for a powerful image, one widely circulated by mainstream media outlets. It was a scene reminiscent of the student who faced the tanks at Tiananmen Square—with a hip-hop twist.

In the weeks and months that followed, F.A.B. was joined by many other Bay Area rappers who also referenced Grant in song, from socially-conscious artists like Choice, Ise Lyfe, Native Guns, D Labrie, and The Burnerz to turf-identified rappers not usually associated with cries for justice, like AP.9 and Beeda Weeda. Instead of telling us to dance, sell drugs, get stupid, or wear clothes we can’t possibly afford, the emcees who tackled the Grant topic were  reporters for GNN—Ghetto News Network—giving listeners a street-level perspective sorely lacking in much of the mainstream press coverage.

Their influence eventually extended across cyberspace—over 2,400 YouTube videos were tagged with “Oscar Grant” and everyone from Pittsburgh rapper Jasiri X to the Vancouver website GetGrounded to the Helsinki music blog Multitunes weighed in on the issue. As the legal process played out, constant hip-hop updates reacting to new developments in the case—from the shooting to the verdict to the sentencing—kept the community engaged.

Grant’s memory was also kept alive by the efforts of numerous graffiti artists; the motto “I Am Oscar Grant!” began appearing all over Oakland, along with aerosol renditions of Grant’s now-iconic face. One of the more notable visual representations of the Grant movement was a huge mural painted on plywood sheets—ironically erected to deter possible rioters—at the Youth Radio offices at the corner of 19th Street and Broadway. The mural’s creators, known collectively as Trust Your Struggle, are a multiethnic group of artists, activists and graphic designers who had painted another mural in New York after they heard the news of the shooting.

Another example of hip-hop activism around Oscar Grant has been the numerous community-engaging events thrown by West Oakland non-profit Bikes 4 Life. In July, B4L’s annual “Peace Ride” led a 300-strong contingent of cyclists to the Fruitvale BART station for a candlelight vigil.

“We see ourselves as agents for change,” explains B4L founder Tony Coleman. “Everything that we do, since we hip-hop, it just has that flava. And we use that to our benefit, because we’re able to reach those other folks that are also a part of that hip-hop culture.”

What differentiates Oscar Grant from Bobby Hutton, Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, Michael Stewart, Aiyana Stanley-Jones and the many others who have died at the hands of police is the fact that his death was captured on video and posted on the Internet for the world to see. This, too, speaks to Grant’s relevance to the hip-hop generation.

Since its inception, one of hip-hop culture’s underlying themes has been repurposing technology as a tool for community empowerment. In an age of cell-phone cameras, social media and viral Internet memes, technology in the hands of the people has the potential to impact both the legal system and mainstream media perspectives—as the Grant case has shown.

The emergence of eyewitness videos depicting the events leading up to the shooting, as well as the actual incident, not only fueled public outrage, but changed the tone of media reportage around the case. Had Karina Vargas and the other BART passengers who documented the events that fateful New Year’s Day acceded to police demands to hand over the footage, it’s not only possible, but probable that Mehserle never would have been brought to trial.

During the trial, defense attorney Michael Rains’ tactics were fairly typical of such cases. Grant, he seemed to argue, was a petty thug whose disobedience caused his own death. But the most powerful testimony of all remains in the public mind. Over and over again, civilian videos have contradicted police testimony. Grant’s uncle Bobby Johnson has said the picture taken with Grant’s own cell phone, showing Mehserle with his Taser drawn minutes before he un-hosltered his handgun, is what ultimately brought some measure of justice for his nephew.

Mehserle’s conviction, even for the minimum charge of involuntary manslaughter, will be remembered as a win for the police accountability movement. But it’s also a win for the hip-hop community. The fact that hip-hop has continued to organize around Oscar Grant for almost two years restores faith in the culture’s ability to promote social change, if not systemic reform.