By Arturo R. García

A number of ads during the Super Bowl Sunday night focused on the good things about Detroit and the auto industry. But the worst commercial of the day, aimed at Michigan voters, didn’t make the national airwaves.

The ad shown above for Republican state senatorial candidate Peter Hoekstra hinged its attack on incumbent Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) on Orientalism. The actress, playing a “Chinese national,” says:

Thank you, Michigan Senator Debbie Spenditnow. Debbie spend so much American money. You borrow more and more from us. Your economy get very weak. Ours get very good. We take your jobs. Thank you, Debbie Spenditnow.

The commercial, slated to run for two weeks, pointed viewers to its own website, of course, covered in a matching decor, with the video displayed front-and-center. The only mention of any of Stabenow’s policies comes at the very bottom of the page.

This marks the second major political ad in little more than a year to use xenophobia as a primary tactic, after Citizens Against Government Waste’s “Chinese Professor” spot from October 2010:

Hoekstra defended his commercial in an interview with WMMT-TV before the game, saying, “If it’s got their attention we must be doing something right.”

Unfortunately for Hoekstra, it’s getting the wrong kind of attention, too: not only is the ad getting rightly pilloried in media circles, but at least one in-state consultant within his own party, Nick De Leeuw, has criticized the spot, saying, “Stabenow has got to go. But shame on Pete Hoekstra for that appalling new advertisement. Racism and xenophobia aren’t any way to get things done.”

Funny thing, though: even though Hoekstra’s ad accuses Stabenow of letting jobs and money leave their home state, as Politico reports, the commercial wasn’t even filmed in Michigan; it was made in California, something state Democratic party chair Mark Brewer quickly seized upon, calling it “nothing more than a hypocritical attempt at a Hollywood-style makeover.

“The fact is, Pete spends a lot,” Brewer said. “Hoekstra voted for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout and voted for trillions more in deficit spending before quitting Congress to get rich at a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm. Hoekstra is using the big game to play games with Michigan voters, covering up his real record on deficit spending and rigging the rules for the big money insiders he serves.”

Stumbling through Tumblr, I found this gem from comedian and vlogger Hari Kondabolu breaking white liberal guilt all the way down.

Transcript after the jump.

So, I went to a prestigious small liberal arts college in Maine. Like many other people of color who’ve gone to prestigious institutions of higher learning, I had a lot of white liberal friends. And I am sick of some these white liberal friends telling me how guilty they feel all the time, how their whiteness makes them feel bad: “I feel bad. I have so much white guilt.”

You know, I’m not impressed! Because, if I had the choice between white guilt and racism, I’d take the white guilt every time. White guilt sounds great! Are you kidding me?!?

Imagine this: you’re on a line, right? You’re about to board an airplane. All of a sudden security shows up. They pull a sikh man with a beard and turban off. They’re search his bag again. And you’re watching, and what do you think to yourself?

“Oh, this is terrible. I feel terrible. This again? Racial profiling? That man’s done nothing wrong. How about they search me? They should search me. I’m a white man. I could be the next Timothy McVeigh. They don’t know that. Why don’t they search my bag? Because I’m white. I feel terrible. I feel so terrible—I mean, I’m still going to board the plane—but I’m gonna feel bad about it. I’m gonna sit in my chair and feel—oh! I’ll write Rachel Maddow an email! That’s what I’ll do! I’ll tell Terry Gross. And I’ll read bell hooks on the plane! Then everything…everything will be better! I’ll feel better. I’m a good white liberal…I’m a good white liberal…I’m a good white liberal…OK.”

So, by any chance, if there are any white liberals watching this video, remember this: your white guilt is a part of your white privilege. Enjoy it…while it lasts.

By Arturo R. García

It seems at least one scene in the upcoming film Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows will involve Robert Downey Jr.’s Holmes disguising himself as “a Chinese beggar” for laughs. Because crude racialized cosplay is funny, y’see – especially if there’s a British accent involved!

At least, that seems to be the reaction from some movie bloggers: The Huffington Post breathlessly reported that Downey’s yellowface get-up signifies director Guy Ritchie “has his hero going multicultural — to great comedic effect.”

Actually, what this bit threatens to do is continue a disconcerting trend: the creative teams behind the most recent attempts to “reimagine” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective stories can’t – or won’t – let go of some of their most xenophobic elements.

A similar issue emerged during the debut season of Sherlock, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ generally well-received modern spin on the detective. Last year’s episode “The Blind Banker,” written by Steve Thompson, went beyond using Chinese smugglers as villains to seemingly demonizing the whole of London’s Chinese immigrant community, as one viewer told Monique Jones:

Had it been based on a piece of canon that was rife with this kind of period-appropriate bigotry, I could have better understood it (although I’d have been deeply disappointed they weren’t capable of subverting it and reflecting the reality of London in 2010). But the fact is that this script is derived from a story which has NOTHING to do with Asia in the first place! So it was just egregious, lazy, stupid, reductive, racist codswallop. Which is a damn shame, because in other respects this is probably my favourite episode – but the whole thing is sullied by the racefail…I thought the mafia boss was fairly awesome, and she did a great job with her role, such as it was, and so I could have handwaved that. I like circuses, and so although it was fetishistic I was willing to work with them and handwave the Mysterious Oriental Circus thing. And I was trying to handwave the cliched depiction of the beautiful vulnerable maiden slain by her wicked brother.

But when they put OMINOUS MUSIC behind some normal footage of China Town, as if all the Londoners we were looking at were supposed to suddenly be Evil Scary Suspicious Figures just because they were of Asian extraction?

I wanted to punch someone in the face.

That portrayal was part of a bigger problem, according to 2010 Parliamentary candidate Philip Ling, who wrote in DimSum:

the next day after Sherlock Holmes, the current BBC Radio 5 Live advert for the new football season was on, and the Chinese character was a take away owner, celebrating in his shop. It makes you realise that actually almost all Chinese characters on British TV are:

• An illegal immigrant
• Linked to the criminal underworld
• Or a take away owner.

This despite the evidence that Chinese students in the UK are amongst the highest achieving academic group, many working Chinese are doctors, lawyers (not to stereotype here either), as well as bankers, IT experts, fashion designers, teachers, graphic designers basically any job you can think of that exists. Yet there is none of this on British TV.

Doyle wasn’t averse to orientalism in his original works: In his novel The Lost World, he name-checked Sir Richard Francis Burton, who made a living making his way thru South Asia. And in the Holmes story The Sign Of The Four, Doyle introduced the character Tonga in the most dehumanizing of fashions:

It straightened itself into a little black man – the smallest I have ever seen – with a great, misshapen head and a shock of tangled, dishevelled hair. Holmes had already drawn his revolver, and I whipped out mine at the sight of this savage, distorted creature. He was wrapped in some sort of dark ulster or blanket, which left only his face exposed, but that face was enough to give a man a sleepless night. Never have I seen features so deeply marked with all bestiality and cruelty. His small eyes glowed and burned with a sombre light, and his thick lips were writhed back from his teeth, Which grinned and chattered at us with half animal fury.

Moreover, colonialism informs how Holmes and Watson approach the case, which involves a set of gems from India that goes back and forth between the characters of Captain Morstan and Major Sholto. Sholto is criticized not only for killing Morstan to get them, but for stealing them from an Englishman. Morstan’s theft, however, is glossed over.

Despite this, Sign has been adapted no less than 12 times for the screen (although it’s possible an Indian adaptation, Neekkam (The Move), is more sympathetic to Tonga and Sholto), for its’ bigger contributions to the Holmes canon: it’s the first mention of his drug habit, and the debut of Doctor Watson’s future wife, Mary.

But both of these plot points were already in play when we met Downey’s Sherlock in the last Holmes movie, which makes this costume choice for Downey seem all the more arbitrary by himself, Ritchie and Shadows writers Kieran and Michele Mulroney. As IGN reports, the film is “influenced by” a Doyle story, The Final Problem, but isn’t “strictly based” on it. Of all the disguises they had to choose from, is this really the best they could come up with?

Which isn’t to say that Holmes’ reputation as a master of disguise shouldn’t be played on in any new interpretations of Doyle’s work. But put it this way: when Downey’s character in Tropic Thunder, Kirk Lazarus, went to absurd lengths to “credibly” play a black man, the absurdity of the choice was made plain. It’s possible the same will happen to Downey’s Holmes in this new scenario, but given what’s gone on before, it hardly seems worth it for the sake of a played-out sight gag.

On Sunday, three passengers at Detroit’s Metropolitan Airport were detained after someone reported “suspicious activity on board.” Not long afterwards, one of those three passengers’ story has gained national attention after blogging about her treatment by Homeland Security officials.

According to The Associated Press, Shoshana Hebshi and two men were detained and questioned after the crew on their Frontier Airlines flight “reported suspicious activity on board.”

Hebshi, an Ohio resident who identifies as half-Jewish and half-Arab, wrote on her blog that she was sitting with two Indian men from Detroit when the flight was first diverted to a different part of the tarmac, then boarded by armed personnel. She and the two men were subsequently “pushed off the plane” and detained. Hebshi wrote that she asked, “What’s going on?” but did not get an answer.

She wrote:

They put me in the back of the car. It’s a plastic seat, for all you out there who have never been tossed into the back of a police car. It’s hard, it’s hot, and it’s humiliating. The Indian man who had sat next to me on the plane was already in the backseat. I turned to him, shocked, and asked him if he knew what was going on. I asked him if he knew the other man that had been in our row, and he said he had just met him. I said, it’s because of what we look like. They’re doing this because of what we look like. And I couldn’t believe that I was being arrested and taken away.

When the Patriot Act was passed after 9/11 and Arabs and Arab-looking people were being harassed all over the country, my Saudi Arabian dad became nervous. A bit of a conspiracy theorist at heart, he knew the government was watching him and at any time could come and take him away. It was happening all over. Men were being taken on suspicion of terrorist activities and held and questioned–sometimes abused–for long periods of time. Our country had a civil rights issue on its hands. And, in the name of patriotism we lost a lot of our liberty, especially those who look like me.

An airline spokesman told the AP the crew reported that two people were in the bathroom for “an extraordinarily long time.” Also, FBI representative Sandra Berchtold said security was heightened because Sunday was the anniverary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

“All precautions were taken, and any slight inconsistency was taken seriously,” Berchtold said. “The public would rather us err on the side of caution than not.”

According to Hebshi, she and the two men were taken to a facility and incarcerated while still handcuffed. Though she needed to go to the bathroom, she said, she was dissuaded by the toilet in her cell, which she said had “probably never seen the good side of a scrubbing brush.” Unbeknownst to her, the other 113 passengers on the flight were also taken to the facility for questioning. At least two other officers refused to answer when Hebshi asked for more information about her detainment.

Hebshi was later strip-searched by a female officer, before ultimately being questioned by two FBI agents.

The male agent proceeded to ask me a series of questions about where I had been, where I was going, about my family, if I had noticed any suspicious behavior on the plane. The other agent took notes while I talked. They asked if I knew the two men sitting next to me, and if I noticed them getting up during the flight or doing anything I would consider suspicious.

I told them no, and couldn’t remember how many times the men had gotten up, though I was sure they had both gone to the bathroom in succession at some point during the flight.

They had done some background check on me already because they knew I had been to Venezuela in 2001. They asked about my brother and sister and asked about my foreign travel. They asked what I did during the flight. I told them I didn’t get up at all, read, slept and played on my phone (in airplane mode, don’t worry). They asked about my education and wanted my address, Social Security, phone number, Facebook, Twitter, pretty much my whole life story.

Again, I asked what was going on, and the man said judging from their line of questioning that I could probably guess, but that someone on the plane had reported that the three of us in row 12 were conducting suspicious activity. What is the likelihood that two Indian men who didn’t know each other and a dark-skinned woman of Arab/Jewish heritage would be on the same flight from Denver to Detroit? Was that suspicion enough? Even considering that we didn’t say a word to each other until it became clear there were cops following our plane? Perhaps it was two Indian man going to the bathroom in succession?

Hebshi said she was allowed to use an officers’ bathroom following her questioning by the agents, before being returned to her cell and subsequently released. Berchtold told the AP authorities determined there was no real threat. And the Detroit Free Press reported that Kowalchuk refused to comment on whether Hebshi and the two men were racially profiled, saying Frontier was “following safety protocols.” Representatives of the Wayne County Airport Police, who were involved in the arrest, did not respond to the Free Press’ requests for comment.

By Arturo R. García

And things only got more disturbing after that video.

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

In that regard, they did not disappoint.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BLITZER: What do you want?

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

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

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

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

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Yeah!

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

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

By Arturo R. García

Labor Day weekend brought with it the opening strains of the college football season, and according to Deadspin, Fox Sports wasted no time in going to the bottom of the “coverage” barrel.

In a segment at which only Alexandra Wallace could’ve LOL’ed, “investigative reporter” Bob Oschack set out to give the Universities of Colorado and Utah “an All-American welcome” to the Pac-12 Conference by going to the University of Southern California. The twist being, he only talked to non-white students.

More specifically, Oschack – a comedy writer by trade, if you’re generous enough to call Mind of Mencia “comedy” – focused his mock-report on what appeared to be international students who weren’t football fans. I say “appeared to be” because the students are given a textbook Othering: they’re never identified, nor are their studies mentioned. But that’s not what Oschack is going for here, of course. As Deadspin’s Emma Carmichael put it, “in the world of misguided network television humor, foreign accents and unfamiliarity with good old-fashioned football is funny.”

As Media Matters reported, Asian students made up just over 20 percent of the USC undergraduate student body as of Fall 2010, with international students making up 11.2 percent. About the only thing Oschack got “right” was the fact that USC’s enrollment is more diverse than Utah’s (75 percent white enrollment, according to a “Fast Facts” PDF) and Colorado’s (77 percent white, per CollegeProwler).

Fox quickly pulled the video from its site (although you can still watch Oschack’s compelling – and by “compelling” I mean “creepy wanna-be Daily Show” – report on why Oregon’s cheerleaders are “so f-cking hot”) and issued an apology promising to “review the editorial process” and the usual boilerplate expressions of contrition. No response from Oschack himself, but I’m betting he won’t get the chance to deliver it on any Fox Sports shows anytime soon.

UPDATE 9/7/11: The Associated Press is reporting that Fox Sports has cancelled The College Experiment, the program that aired Oschack’s segment, “effective immediately.”

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

At the dawn of the Latin alt burst in 1998, a Newsweek cover story announced “Se Habla Rock and Roll? You Will Soon,” and a year later the New York Times predicted Latin alternative was “Approaching Its Final Border.” But by 2005, the Los Angeles Times’ Agustin Gurza compared the Latin boom to an exploding rocket that breaks apart halfway into orbit.

But no matter how many times Mexico’s Café Tacuba held court in front of the gentle mosh pits of Irving Plaza, or local bands such as Los Amigos Invisibles proved that funk, pop, disco, salsa, merengue and occasional bouts of thrash metal could hold everyone together on the dance floor, there was something missing. The energy that came from Latin America, which had produced most of the significant bands, was not duplicated in American cities.

Latin alternative settled back into a niche accessed by the mainstream only in a rare NPR moment, while driving to New England to see the fall foliage. [Ricky] Martin has settled into life as a father; Shakira reinvents herself as part-stripper, part-philanthropist; [Marc] Anthony got a gig playing a cop on TV; and J-Lo, well, you know where she is.

How did this happen? Certainly the immediate atmosphere after the 9/11 attacks was characterized by the mainstream’s distancing from cultures from outside its borders. Although the decade began with Barnes and Noble and other booksellers offering extensive selections of books in Spanish, by its end more and more politicians called for English to be the country’s official language. And earlier this year, the Grammy awards dropped 31 categories, including Latin jazz and traditional world music.

- From “After the Latin Bubble Burst,” by Ed Morales, New Jersey Star-Ledger

By Guest Contributor Simba Russeau

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image courtesy of شبكة برق | B.R.Q

Coming on the heels of a seemingly endless surge of anti-Muslim bigotry in the U.S., CNN picked the most opportune moment to air its special on Muslims, titled Unwelcome: The Muslims Next Door with reporter Soledad O’Brien.

After having been glued to the news in the last couple of weeks, following Rep. Peter King’s hearings on Muslim extremism in the United States and the recent display of anti-Muslim bigotry to hit the community of Southern California, I cringed at the title of this documentary.

The commercials, accompanied by what can be described as the soundtrack to a thriller, seemed to employ fear-mongering tactics to get viewers to tune in. Ready for the onslaught of virulent stereotypes that usually accompanies stories about Muslims, I was armed with an arsenal of curses to churn out at the television screen.

However, I was fairly surprised by the way the documentary portrayed American Muslims and specifically, American Muslim women. Muslim women are portrayed as active members of American society and as a multi-dimensional group.

The hour long special documents the heated debate surrounding the building of an Islamic center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Local community members are polarized, prompting a series of hearings against the proposed Islamic center in order to justify withholding constitutional rights of freedom of religion. It is here that viewers witness a series of heartbreaking Islamophobic sentiments fueled by ignorance and bigotry.

In attempt to show how different community members of Murfreesboro, Tennessee have been affected by this controversy, O’Brien interviews a varied group of individuals. Among them were a handful of Muslim women, who are as diverse in their appearances as in their experiences as American Muslim women.

Two of these young women, who are both students at Tennessee State University, are among those interviewed by O’Brien. They say they always felt welcome in their city, even after 9/11.

For years, some 250 Muslim families, who consider the town of Murfreesboro home, have been practicing their faith and worshipping at the local Islamic center, which has now become too small to house the growing congregation. The proposed mosque would include a place for both men and women to pray, a swimming pool and a cemetery.  When the Muslim students heard about the new Islamic center one of them says, “It was a dream come true.”

As construction on the land (purchased by donations from mosque-goers) began, the community was shaken by acts of vandalism: the mosque sign was spray painted and building equipment was set on fire. One of the girls says that it was hard to see the words “not welcome” spray painted on the sign.

Another Muslim woman, Ivy, the wife of the mosque Imam, was also interviewed. She is a white woman who was raised Methodist and converted to Islam after 9/11. When asked by O’Brien why she converted, she said that anyone who knew a Muslim would hear the things said about Muslims after 9/11 and say it wasn’t true. So she picked up a Qur’an and started reading it to find out for herself.

In response to the mosque vandalism, Ivy says that the hardest thing for her is hearing her young daughter voice concern about her mother’s safety while wearing hijab outdoors. The tactics of intimidation, she says, have affected the children more than anything. When asked by Soledad if she thinks people hate her she replied, “No, I don’t. I just think they don’t know or understand who we are.”

Perhaps the most moving testimony comes from a 19-year-old woman, Lema Sbenaty, who is a member of the Muslim community of Murfreesboro. As hearings prompted by anti-mosque community members take place, Lema speaks out, saying she was raised as an American Muslim and she is like any other 19-year-old girl in the community.

Upon leaving the courthouse, she is met by a congresswoman who, in attempt to discredit the mosque, says that Shariah law oppresses Muslim women. Lema challenges the woman, but is ultimately ignored. The imam’s wife later reiterates Lema’s statements, saying, “I am not oppressed.” She says that even though she is the imam’s wife, she and her husband make decisions in the home as a family.

Soledad later asks Lema, “Why not just not build it [the mosque]?” Lema responds by saying that it is their right. She says she understands people’s fears but, an entire community of people cannot be condemned for the actions of a few.

Among the local anti-mosque community members who are interviewed, Sally Wall, a prominent Murfreesboro community member does not shy away from telling viewers how she really feels.

In a move so indicative of the pervasiveness of media images of Muslim women on American society, Sally produces the cover of a recent TIME magazine featuring a disfigured Afghan woman. She says that she is worried that this is what will happen to women here if this Islamic center is built.

If the alleged fear over the mistreatment of American Muslim women is the real concern here, I think it would suffice to say that the likes of Sally Wall and other members of the Murfreesboro community pose the real threat to American Muslim women. Their attempt to marginalize Muslim women and cast-type them as a fringe group of Americans, undeserving of their first amendment rights, is symptomatic of a larger problem: racism and Islamophobia is yet to be passé in America.

By Arturo R. García

Top Gear, the long-running British auto review show, is built upon a foundation of “guy talk.” But an outburst by the show’s three hosts this week once again crossed the line from mildly boorish to positively unnerving, this time prompting a political response.

The incident occurred during Sunday’s episode, when the trio – Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson and James May (above l-r) – turned a review of a Mexican sports car into an exercise in racist “banter” about the country and its’ people. Video and transcript are under the cut.

Update: The BBC has been trying to shut the video down, but here’s a version with Spanish subtitles:

And here’s a transcript of the segment:

James May: Have you ever wanted a Mexican sports car?
Jeremy Clarkson: Yes, I have!
JM: It’s good news, because there is one, and here it is [points to display] and it’s called the Tortilla.
JC: It is not – it is not called the Tortilla! What is it?
JM: I can’t remember, it’s something a bit …
JC: So you just made up the name, then, there you go.
JM: I’d forgotten, sorry
Richard Hammond: Why would you want a Mexican car? ‘Cause cars reflect national characteristics. So German cars are sort of very [unintelligible] and Italian cars, a bit flamboyant and quick. Mexican cars just gonna be lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight, leaning against a fence asleep looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat.
JM: It is interesting because, they can’t do food, the Mexicans, can they? ‘Cause it’s all like sick with cheese on it.
RH: Refried sick!
JM: Yeah, refried sick.
JC: How much is this Mexican sports car?
JH: The refried Mexican sports car is 33 thousand pounds.
JC: That isn’t enough. It isn’t enough because somebody’s paid for that to be developed and it’s gotta be shipped. That’s 800 quid to the car right there.
JM: You say that, though, but they do say in their blurb it’s got rack-and-pinion steering.
RH: Wow, it’s got steering!
RH: I’m sorry, but just imagine waking up and remembering you’re Mexican.
JC: It’d be brilliant! It’d be brilliant ’cause you could just go straight back to sleep again.
RH: ‘That’s all I’m gonna do all day.’
JC: That’s why we’re not gonna get any complaints about this – ’cause the Mexican embassy, the ambassador’s gonna be sitting there with a remote control like this. [Clarkson slumps in his seat and starts "snoring."] They won’t complain. It’s fine!

In fact, the Mexican ambassador to the United Kingdom, Eduardo Medina-Mora Icaza, called Clarkson’s bluff, writing to the BBC to demand a public apology from Clarkson and his cohorts. From Icaza’s letter, as quoted in The Guardian:

The presenters of the programme resorted to outrageous, vulgar and inexcusable insults to stir bigoted feelings against the Mexican people, their culture as well as their official representative in the United Kingdom …

These offensive, xenophobic and humiliating remarks serve only to reinforce negative stereotypes and perpetuate prejudice against Mexico and its people.

Having caught the show off and on over the years, what bothered me the most about this bit was that it really seemed different from many of their usual chats. Clarkson, in particular, will rip on cars from other European countries, but it’s at least presented in a more jovial manner, and directed at the auto makers, not their nationality. But the car was an afterthought here, and Hammond’s line about “remembering you’re Mexican” was delivered with a disturbing amount of flair. (SPOILERS for Mr. Hammond: I remember that every day, and it doesn’t get in the way of my workday.)

Moreover, this incident continues a recent trend of foot-in-mouth incidents for the show, and Clarkson in particular. Last year, he was chided by a British blind-person’s group for calling then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown “a one-eyed Scottish idiot” at a stage show in Australia. And two years ago, he had the remarkably bad idea of making a joke about lorry drivers killing prostitutes not long after a forklift driver was convicted in the murder of five prostitutes.

A BBC spokesperson told The Guardian it will respond directly to the ambassador regarding the matter.

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

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

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

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

Read the rest here.

The video quotes Glenn Beck saying that Obama “has a deep seated hatred for white people;” Rush Limbaugh saying his Barack the Magic Negro joke was “funny” and “brilliant;” Fox Business anchor John Stossel arguing that private businesses “should be allowed to discriminate;” Alabama gubernatorial hopeful Tim James leading off his ad with the line “This is Alabama, we speak English;” Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann railing against the idea of “multicultural diversity” by saying “it sounds good in theory,” but “not all cultures are equal.”

Presente notes “They have a vision for America that doesn’t include of all of us.”

It’s an important thing to remember.

By Guest Contributor Angry Asian Man, originally published at Angry Asian Man

Soon after that “Chinese Professor” got everybody talking, question started to emerge over the Asian participants in the commercial. A lot of people pointed out that it didn’t look like they were actually from China, and more likely young Asian Americans who were recruited here, in the United States, to be part of the ad. So who were these Asian faces?

Turns out, most of the extras in this commercial had little or no idea that their appearance in the ad would turn out like this. I was recently able to track down Josh H., who happens to be one of the extras in the now-infamous future Chinese classroom. He says he was recruited when he signed up to be an extra on Transformers 3. Here’s what he wrote to me:

So yes, I was an extra for this commercial. The way I got involved in this commercial is by signing up to be an extra for Transformers 3, which was being filmed in DC. So I got an email from my Kollaboration staff (I am on the board for Kollaboration DC) saying that they were filming Transformers 3 (Our show just ended btw too, like a week ago). Some of us signed up to be extras and a couple of us got called for this commercial because the Transformers 3 shoot was full, and they informed me that it was for a conservative – political ad, so I was aware of the political stance (thinking it wouldn’t be a serious issue). So thats basically how I got involved.

BTW, to sign up to be extras we had to fill out information like, our name, gender, age, height, ethnicity, and a picture.

It was filmed at a community college (NOVA in Alexandria VA) and when we got there, the production team did tell us about the ad, but in a misconstrued kind of way. I know that the ad was about the US deficit and they did tell us the premise of the ad (taking place in the future, and we all supposed to be “chinese” students in a lecture). I saw the commercial and it’s pretty intense and one thing I did not know that the commercial would do, is put this almost red-scare type of fear in the eyes of Americans (effectiveness wise, the political ad works, not saying I agree with the tactics).

What’s interesting is that the production team told us that we would all be laughing in the commercial because the “Chinese Professor” said something funny, so there were multiple shots where we all “laughed” after the “Chinese Professor” said his so called, “joke.”

At the end of the production, the person who was in charge of managing the extras came to us at the end of the shoot to inform us that the production crew is non-partisan about the issue, and that they were just doing it for the money. Of course as extras we all did get paid for the all day shoot. Another thing, the production team didn’t convey to us that this ad would be used in this way either.

Personally, I had no idea that this commercial would be aired nation-wide and as soon as it aired, it was put onto the politico blog. I got a few emails from friends who work in politics telling me that they saw me in this crazy ad, and it kind of took me off guard.

And there you have it. Apparently, a lot of Asian folks initially signed up with the hopes of being cast as extras in Transformers 3, but instead found themselves getting contacted to be in this commercial, with only a vague idea of what the spot was for or how their appearance would be used. That’s really sneaky. Like an Evil Chinese Professor.

Image courtesy of Angry Asian Man

13 year-old Asher Brown was an 8th grader at Hamilton Middle School in Cypress, TX who killed himself last Thursday because, according to his parents, he was bullied at school. The Houston Chronicle reports that Asher was bullied for being small and for not wearing designer clothes; MSNBC reports that he was also singled out for being Buddhist and having a lisp. Most of all, his stepfather David Truong and mother Amy Truong believe, Asher Brown was bullied for being gay.

The Truongs now say that they had complained to Hamilton Middle School officials repeatedly over the last 18 months about the harassment Asher experienced, but their phone calls went unanswered and their visits to the school failed to stop the bullying. The school district of which Hamilton is a part, Cy-Fair I.S.D., is denying that they ever received complaints from the Truongs, other students, or school employees.

This story hits home for me because that’s exactly where it takes place. I grew up in Cypress, TX. I graduated from the Cy-Fair school district, attending both middle and high school there. The house that I grew up in is 2.5 miles away from Hamilton Middle School, which is listed on its website as a “2010 Texas Exemplary School.” I actually would have gone to Hamilton had it existed when I was that age.

It’s been many, many years since I’ve lived in Cypress, and it has changed considerably from the small town on the outskirts of northwest Houston that it once was. The woods I used to play in behind my subdivision and the ones surrounding so many homes in the area are mostly gone, built-up with more subdivisions, box stores, gas stations, grocery stores, mini-malls, and malls.

The demographics have changed, too. Of the 1620 students enrolled at Hamilton Middle School this year, 7.3% are Asian. I’d have to dig up my old yearbooks to figure out what the percentage was back when I was in middle school, but I’m guessing it was less than half that number. I wasn’t the only Asian kid in school, but it sometimes felt that way. Back then, I was teased and bullied for being different; I was called “chink,” “gook,” “jap,” “snake eyes”; the very first high school football game I ever went to, an older kid ching-chonged me in front of hundreds of other spectators; people screamed from their cars at me and my family to “Go back to where you came from”; even my so-called “friends” told me one year at church camp that I could never date outside my race because the Bible said it was wrong. Still I feel like I had it easier than others because I was a girl–only once did someone threaten to kick my ass out by the school buses. Twice, if you count the time I voted for the Democratic candidate in a 7th grade mock election and wound up being the only one in a class of over thirty kids to do so, which got all the boys in my class spoiling for a fight, but that ballot was secret, so no one ever knew that the ass they had wanted to kick was mine.

I don’t have good memories of growing up in Cypress, even though it will forever remain in my mind as “home.” For those years when I was trying to be a fiction writer, almost all of my stories were set there. Looking back, most of those stories were really the same one told over and over. They were all concerned with misfits who couldn’t escape the intolerance of their small, conservative, close-minded Christian town. One reason I couldn’t hack it as a fiction writer was because I was frozen in this one place every time I tried to write. I couldn’t seem to write about any other. I even started to question if this place really existed, and if it was as bad as I remembered, whether it had calcified into something more terrible as time went by.

After hearing about Asher Brown’s suicide, and the story of another kid in the Cy-Fair school district who was bullied last year for being gay while school officials stood by and did nothing, I’m beginning to think I got it right the first time around, that my memory of where I grew up as someplace awful is, sadly, anything but a fiction.

By Thea Lim

I heard about Molly Norris for the first time last week, on Fatemeh’s blog. Fatemeh wrote that she had signed a petition in support of Molly Norris, and gave this reason:

I was unhappy to read that “Draw Muhammad Day” creator Molly Norris had voluntarily gone into hiding. While I thought the concept of “Draw Muhammad Day” was ridiculous and viewed it in the same light as the South Park episode that supposedly depicted the prophet, I recognize that Norris’ intent wasn’t to be offensive or malicious. In Islam, intentions count for something just like actions, and no one should be punished for simple naïveté. It’s atrocious that Norris has received threats and feels unsafe enough to go incognito.

I have to say that after doing a little bit of reading about Norris, “Draw Muhammad Day” and the outpouring of support for Norris, I am finding it difficult to be as generous as Fatemeh.

When Fatemeh writes that she supports Norris, what I understand is that Fatemeh supports Norris’ right to live a life free of violence and threats.  That, I find entirely reasonable – I too support Norris’ right to safety, as I support anyone’s right to safety.  But what I am struggling to understand is exactly what all the other people who say they support Norris, are actually in support of.

Aaron Goldstein at The American Spectator writes:

Freedom of expression in America took another step closer to a slow death last week when the Seattle Weekly announced it would no longer be publishing the work of cartoonist Molly Norris because she had gone into hiding…I cannot help but wonder that if Norris had been more assertive in her own defense then others would have been more eager to stand beside her…So given the current political climate regarding Islam in America who among us could be the next Molly Norris?

James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal writes:

Where is President Obama? Last month, speaking to a mostly Muslim audience at the White House, the president strongly defended the right of another imam held up as a moderate to build a mosque adjacent to Ground Zero. The next day, and again at a press conference last week, Obama said he was merely standing up for the First Amendment. As far as we recall, it’s the only time Barack Obama has ever stood up for anybody’s First Amendment rights.

Now Molly Norris, an American citizen, is forced into hiding because she exercised her right to free speech. Will President Obama say a word on her behalf? Does he believe in the First Amendment for anyone other than Muslims?

Abigail R. Esman at Forbes writes:

Let me repeat: The U.S. government is suggesting that Ms. Norris change her name, strip away her past, possibly even change her appearance, because she has been targeted by Muslim extremists who are not amused by her work or her ideas. Rather than protect her, rather than defend her, rather than stand up for her Constitutional and democratic rights, declaring their intention to route al-Awlaki out and bring him (and others who are threatening her life) to justice, the American government, as it were, is itself in essence allying with him by taking away her freedom and her life.

Now listen. I will say this again: I emphatically support Molly Norris’ right to safety. I think it is terrible that she has to go into hiding, and I can only imagine the fear and distress that she is feeling right now.

But. I 100% do not support Norris’ right to mean-spirited mockery. I do not support anyone’s right to belittle, poke fun at, show insensitivity or thoughtlessness towards anyone else’s system of belief – but especially at Islam, seeing how it seems to have become some sort of Liberal American pastime to see who can make the most Islamophobic joke.  And this is while the rights of Muslims to pursue their system of belief is under attack, all across the Western world.

And of course I support free speech. I support informed dissent. But what Norris did – and South Park, and Jyllends Posten and any other fool who carries on creating images of Muhammad as if to do so is some act of inspired and noble rebellion – was not informed dissent.  It was a nasty and childish response to being told, for once, that there was something we are not allowed to do, or cannot have.

In her letter of apology distancing herself Draw Muhammad Day, Norris writes:

My one-off cartoon does not work well as a long-term plan. The vitriol this ‘day’ has brought out, of people who only want to draw obscene images, is offensive to Muslims who did nothing to endanger our right to expression in the first place. Only Viacom and Revolution Muslim are to blame, so…draw them instead!

I apologize to people of Muslim faith and ask that this ‘day’ be called off…

That part of the letter I liked. This part of Norris’ letter I did not like:

My cartoon was the beginning and end of what I had to say about this creepy, historic censorship.

Creepy, historic censorship? How is a religious idea about how to show respect to your deity “creepy”? All religions have rules and ideas about the best way to show respect to God. In Judaism God’s name is never pronounced.  In Catholicism you must bow before the altar every time you walk in front of it.  I am sure any religion in existence has strict rules about addressing God and his messengers – after all, isn’t the very backbone of religion the idea of the sacred, where “sacred” means that which is entitled to veneration or respect?

Sometimes it appears as if  any benign request made by another power to the Western, white, (culturally) Christian world (WWCCW), is received as an affront. As in, how dare anyone else tell us what to do? WE RUN THIS PLACE! As in, this refusal is an extreme manifestation of the way that certain Western, white, cultural Christians think they are entitled to do anything and consume anything, because they are the West, the boss of this town, and ain’t no one ever going to tell them what to do.

Even if “what to do” is a rule relating to something that doesn’t concern the WWCCW at all – for example, depictions of Muhammad.  It is like watching a kindergarten bully stamp around the playroom knocking over other kids’ desks, because they have dared to do or have something that doesn’t include the bully – and then dared to ask that the bully respect the preciousness of those things. This is the core of entitlement.

Absolutely nothing entitles any non-Muslim to an opinion about depictions of Muhammad. If Islam had laws about the depiction of universal symbols, say, like any manifestation of God, and threats of violence were made whenever anyone drew these things, that would be one thing. But it is beyond me why the depiction of a solely Muslim entity concerns anyone who does not follow the teachings of Muhammad. And yet it feels like every few months another scandal rears it head where some a-hole decides to draw Muhammad. For what? For the pleasure of causing hurt and pain to Muslims by showing them you completely disrespect their beliefs, simply because you can?

I do not confuse my support and sympathy for Norris’ right to safety, with support and sympathy for her right to be disrespectful and mocking.  I do not believe that the latter right, is a right.

And if supporting only some rights to free speech and not others (namely, I don’t support the right to free speech that is arrogant and mocking) means that I don’t truly support free speech…well then, eff it. I don’t support free speech. Honestly, I’d rather be called a draconian censor than join the ranks of my fellow, select Westerners who have never truly learnt what it means to respect someone or something beyond their own worldview.

–
Photo Credit: Ikhwan Web

Tara: Trauma and Healing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Franklin Meets a Wooden Bullet

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

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

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

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

English Accents & Exotification

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

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

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

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

Thea: Aha!

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

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

Thea: Interruption sustained. I loved Rene. Dreamy!

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

Brown and Black Religions: Homage or Insult?

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

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

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

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

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

Sam & Masculine Violence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Russell’s Moment + Vampires as Analogy for…?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thea: Everything is dolls and showtunes!

For all my friends in the Bay Area, don’t miss the theatrical premiere of Eric Byler and Annabel Park’s 9500 Liberty, a documentary on how Prince William County, Virginia became ground zero in America’s explosive battle over immigration policy. Here’s the synopsis:

Prince William County, Virginia becomes ground zero in America’s explosive battle over immigration policy when elected officials adopt a law requiring police officers to question anyone they have “probable cause” to suspect is an undocumented immigrant.

9500 Liberty reveals the startling vulnerability of a local government, targeted by national anti-immigration networks using the Internet to frighten and intimidate lawmakers and citizens. Alarmed by a climate of fear and racial division, residents form a resistance using YouTube videos and virtual townhalls, setting up a real-life showdown in the seat of county government.

The devastating social and economic impact of the “Immigration Resolution” is felt in the lives of real people in homes and in local businesses. But the ferocious fight to adopt and then reverse this policy unfolds inside government chambers, on the streets, and on the Internet. 9500 Liberty provides a front row seat to all three battlegrounds.

Here’s the trailer:

It’s a powerful film, telling a very real story about one community’s culture war over immigration — a struggle more relevant than ever with what’s happening now in Arizona. Here’s a scene from the film:

The film opens this Friday, June 11 at Rialto Cinemas Elmwood and Landmark Lumiere in San Francisco. Some details:

“9500 LIBERTY” Bay Area Theatrial Premiere

Berkeley, CA
Starts Friday, June 11
Rialto Cinemas Elmwood
Daily Showtimes TBA
2966 College Avenue at Ashby
Berkeley, CA 94705
(707) 539-9771
Co-director Eric Byler in person at Friday, June 11 evening shows.
Co-director Annabel Park in person at Saturday, June 12 evening shows.

San Francisco, CA
Starts Friday, June 11
Landmark Lumiere
Daily Showtimes TBA
1572 California St. (at Polk)
San Francisco, CA 94109-4708
(415) 267-4893
Co-director Annabel Park in person Friday, June 11 evening shows
Co-director Eric Byler in person Saturday, June 12 evening shows and Sunday, June 13 afternoon shows.

Think what’s going down in Arizona is crazy and insane? Guess what? It already happened in Prince William County, and it tore apart an entire community. For more information about the film, go to the 9500 Liberty website here. Also read this piece by Eric in the Huffington Post: Arizona, Immigration, and the Coming Shake-Up.

The Arizona legislature recently passed and revised SB 1070, the so-called “papers please” anti-immigrant bill many believe will result in racial profiling. As a gay Latino man who comes from an immigrant family, I see a clear link between this measure and anti-gay marriage laws such as Proposition 8. Both laws make their victims feel marginalized and send a message that they do not deserve to be treated equally under the law. Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender (LGBT) people know what it’s like to be on the wrong side of laws like SB 1070 or Proposition 8.

Many of us, who fit into one or more minority communities, know all too well how it feels to be stripped of our legal protections and fundamental rights. Last year, Arizona’s Governor Jan Brewer, the same one who signed into law SB 1070, repealed benefits for LGBT domestic partners, further undermining the economic and emotional security of LGBT families. The LGBT community understands the threat when our leaders tell us that our families do not count. We know the pain caused by the government refusing to treat us equally. Accordingly, we should stand against SB 1070.

Arizona’s SB 1070 and California’s Proposition 8 are personal attacks because they deny our common humanity. SB 1070, which was passed ostensibly to allow the state police to more easily enforce federal immigration law, in reality it is a law that encourages racial profiling of Latinos. Even though the state made revisions to the law late last week restricting the use of race or ethnicity as a basis to question people, it nonetheless added provisions that allow the police to ask people about immigration status for violations of local ordinances. The original language of SB 1070 and subsequent revisions make clear that the law gives local police pretext or “cover” to engage in racial profiling. This is further made clear by the fact that the revision occurred only a week after Arizona lawmakers were publicly criticized for passing such a blatantly racist law. No one should be fooled by the recent cosmetic attempt to hide the clear intent of SB 1070, which is to target immigrants, many of whom are Latino and many of whom are LGBT.

The common denominator in SB 1070 and Proposition 8 is bigotry. These laws strip human beings of dignity. The indignity my husband and I feel when our marriage is not recognized by the federal government is no less painful than when my family gets harassed or pulled over for “driving while brown.” These are not minor inconveniences but rather a systematic erosion of our human rights and liberties. More and more lately we see government’s successful attempts to chip away at our fundamental right to be treated equally. With other states now wanting to follow Arizona’s lead, we cannot afford to ignore what is happening.

Immigration is an LGBT issue in that our broken immigration system affects hundreds of thousands of LGBT newcomers who have no path to citizenship and must live in the indignity and shame of the shadows. As gay people, we understand the harm of forced invisibility on our community. SB 1070 and Proposition 8 are attempts to push already marginalized people back into the closet and slam the door shut! Arizona’s law was passed in the absence of sane, effective and fair comprehensive immigration reform. Washington must act now to fix this country’s immigration system and stop the divisiveness that is driving a wedge between communities. America needs immigration reform that moves our country forward together and upholds our nation’s values of opportunity, fairness and justice, values every LGBT person holds dear. It is time to stand up, support the legal and political challenges to SB 1070 and condemn efforts to emulate it.

In a similar vein, we must remain vigilant and unified in our responses to the various and heinous attacks on our human rights. For an attack on the Latino immigrant community is no different from an attack on the LGBT community, or people of color, or people of faith, or who ever is next on the “hit list.” It is time we recognize our common struggles and work together to defend everyone from laws or policies rooted in bigotry.

—
Dan Torres is a staff attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center and works at the intersection of LGBT and immigration advocacy to facilitate dialogue and mutual support between the traditional LGBT movement and immigrant communities.  This work has synergistic impact of furthering the rights of both LGBT and immigrant communities and, particularly, LGBT immigrants.   ILRC provides technical support to advocates working with LGBT clients who have fled persecution abroad, have been victims of crimes or are LGBT immigrant youth placed in foster care in the United States.  Through the ILRC’s civic engagement efforts, Dan worked with LGBT immigrants to be counted in Census 2010, coordinated dialogues with local and state public officials on education discrimination issues impacting LGBT students, and continues to organize around marriage equality.

Before joining the ILRC, Dan represented clients as a staff attorney at the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation in Sacramento, and served as a staff attorney for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  He worked as a clinical instructor at the UC Davis School of Law Immigration Law Clinic, and was a member of both the La Raza and Lambda Law Student Associations. He is the son of Mexican immigrants, a fluent Spanish speaker, and a resident of Alameda with his husband.

What does an illegal immigrant look like?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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